British group Massive Attack join over 400 musicians in No Music for Genocide campaign
The group have blocked their music from being streamed in Israel on Spotify.
An open letter calling for a boycott of Eurovision has received over 1,100 signatures from musicians around the world, including Macklemore, Massive Attack and Kneecap.
The letter from the No Music for Genocide campaign calls the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) out for continuing to include Israel in the annual Eurovision Song Contest despite the state’s ongoing killings in Palestine.
Referring to Israel’s brutal 2023 invasion of Gaza, it says audiences at the event will “find Israel celebrated on stage despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while Russia remains banned for its illegal invasion of Ukraine” for the “third year running”.
The letter rejects “Eurovision being used to whitewash and normalise Israel’s genocide, siege and brutal military occupation against Palestinians” and commended broadcasters from Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands for refusing to participate in the competition unless Israeli broadcaster KAN was excluded.
Calling the EBU “hypocritical”, the letter said the organisation believed letting Russia participate after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine would bring “disrepute” to Eurovision, “Yet more than 30 months of genocide in Gaza… aren’t considered sufficient to apply the same policy to Israel.”
The artists said they refuse to be silent “when children in Israeli prisons endure beatings for humming a tune. When all that’s left of nearly every stage, studio, bookshop and university in Gaza is piles of rubble, under which slaughtered bodies still await recovery and proper burial.”
The No Music for Genocide campaign started as a group of over 400 musicians geo-blocking their music in Israel. The movement was inspired by a similar boycott of Israeli institutions by film workers including big names such as Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield and Mark Ruffalo.
Simultaneously, over 1,000 literary figures, including winners of the Booker, Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes for Literature, have pledged not to work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications “complicit in violating Palestinian rights”.