At Wembley Arena in London on Wednesday night, 12,500 excited music fans gathered for what many saw as a landmark moment in British music: the first arena concert to benefit Palestinians in Gaza.
Older stars including Brian Eno, Neneh Cherry and Damon Albarn performed. Trendy young pop acts including PinkPantheress and Rina Sawayama gave heartfelt speeches or chanted “Free, free, Palestine” onstage. Jamie XX performed a pumping techno set with Sama’ Abdulhadi, a Palestinian D.J.
But the audience at the gig, called Together for Palestine, weren’t really there for the music. During the four-hour show, the biggest ovation from the crowd — many of whom were wearing kaffiyehs or draped in the Palestinian flag — went to Francesca Albanese, a United Nations expert on the Palestinian territories who gave a nine-minute speech that included a call to “disrupt, strike, boycott, speak.”
Over the past two years, showing support for the Palestinian cause has become common in Britain’s music industry, with bands regularly displaying Palestinian flags onstage or condemning the war in Gaza between songs. As the humanitarian crisis in the enclave has worsened and young music fans have rallied to the Palestinian cause, more and more acts have begun speaking out.
“It’s a snowball effect,” said Adam Behr, a lecturer at Newcastle University who researches pop music’s relationship with politics: The more artists speak on an issue, the more others feel confident to join them.
There was a tradition in Britain for musicians to rally around causes, Behr added. One of the first major examples, he said, was the Rock Against Racism movement that began in the 1970s.
In 1980s, Behr added, Wembley Stadium — the soccer venue next to the arena where Together for Palestine took place — was the location of a major anti-apartheid concert and Live Aid, which raised money to address famines in Africa.
Billy Bragg, one of Britain’s best-known political singer-songwriters, said in an interview that Together for Palestine was not on the same scale as Live Aid, which featured some of the biggest acts in the world at the time, including Queen, David Bowie and Madonna.
Still, he said, “when you go to a music festival, now, you see so many Palestinian flags.”
“It’s the audience leading on this,” he added.
Though Bragg did not take part in Together for Palestine, he is scheduled to headline another benefit concert for the Palestinians in London on Saturday. A month later, the rock star Paul Weller is set to headline a “Gig for Gaza” in the city.
Support for the Palestinians has certainly grown among young Britons over the past few years. YouGov, a British polling company, has surveyed Britons since 2019 about where their sympathies lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In June, 58 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed said they supported the Palestinians — up from 16 percent when the survey began. Only 6 percent in the latest survey said their sympathies were with Israel, and 36 percent said they didn’t know or had no sympathies.
The British musicians rallying at events like Together for Palestine are of little interest in Israel, said Ben Shalev, a music critic at Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. Most of the names on the concert lineup would be unfamiliar to music fans there, he said. “Maybe if someone like Bruce Springsteen appeared at an event like that, then the Israeli public would say, ‘Here’s someone we care about,’” Shalev added.
Israeli news outlets followed more closely a controversy about Kneecap, an Irish-language rap group with a large British following, after British lawmakers and some Jewish groups complained that the band took onstage criticism of Israel too far.
Prosecutors this year charged Mo Chara, one of Kneecap’s rappers, with a terrorism offense for displaying the flag of Hezbollah, the militant group based in Lebanon, onstage. (In interviews, Mo Chara, whose real name is Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has said that the flag was thrown onstage and that he held it up without knowing what it was.) A judge in London is expected to decide on Friday whether the case will proceed to a trial.
The night after Together for Palestine, Kneecap took the stage at the same venue. Many of its fans wore kaffiyehs or soccer jerseys with the word “Palestine” on them.
At one point, Mo Chara told the crowd that musicians were “filling a void” because politicians had not stopped the conflict. The crowd roared in response.
A dozen fans at the Kneecap show said in interviews that they were primarily there to have a good time but that the group’s activism for the Palestinian cause was a key part of its appeal. Eamonn Flannery, 27, a personal trainer, said that until a few months ago he had avoided the group, believing “they were kicking up fuss just to get attention.” But he changed his mind after watching one of Kneecap’s sets at a festival, he said, and he was impressed by “the way they support people who’re less well off.” Now, he is “getting more into politics,” he added.
At the end of Kneecap’s show, which ran for more than an hour, the group displayed the words “Free Palestine” on a huge screen at the back of the stage, and the sold-out crowd chanted “Free, free, Palestine.” As they left the arena, some were still chanting.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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