Tel-Chai Nation

Natalie Sanandaji, one of the survivors of the Hamas bloodbath at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, finds the Kneecap band's attack on Israel repulsive:

Sanandaji said she relives the moments of her escape when certain artists hijack the stage to relay political messaging.

Sanandaji specifically addressed the band Kneecap’s performance April 18 at Coachella, which included targeted political messages. The band projected the words, “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” during their set at the popular music and arts festival.

“It is being enabled by the U.S. government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes. Fuck Israel; free Palestine,” the band wrote. The band’s actions were met with some backlash.

“I am horrified, heartbroken, and disgusted by what transpired at Coachella,” Sanandaji, a public affairs officer for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “Music festivals are supposed to be places where people come together to celebrate life, love, and connection through art and music.”

Artists have increasingly been using their platforms to convey their political views at public events, a forum that Sanandaji and clinical and forensic psychologist Ann Monis believe to be dangerous.

“In a music festival, people show up expecting release, escape, maybe even a little healing through the music and energy around them. So when an artist suddenly shares a strong political message, especially if it is charged or confrontational, it can catch people off guard,” Monis told the Daily Caller. “It does not matter if someone agrees or disagrees with the message.”

Sanandaji described the horrors she experienced Oct. 7, 2023, and how such messaging at events is a reminder of what she endured.

“To see a band project ‘Fuck Israel’ over the stage is not only offensive, it’s triggering,” she told the Daily Caller.

“That day at the Nova festival, 364 people were murdered by terrorists and dozens were taken back to Gaza as hostages. To use the stage of another festival to spew hatred, in any direction, is a betrayal of what these spaces are meant to represent.”

[...] “Sometimes when I’m dancing in parties or festivals anywhere else in the world, you’ll see people on the dance floor with a keffiyeh, and you know that when they’re making that statement of wearing that to a party, that their statement is that they think October 7 was justified,” she said. “Those are the moments where I have panic attacks on the dance floor.”

The politically charged messaging that has been plaguing a number of music stages in recent months have left her deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of all attendees, and she’s not alone.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human rights organization, issued a statement to the Daily Caller condemning “the incendiary and anti-Israel hate displayed by the band Kneecap during their performance at the Coachella Music Festival.”

CEO Jim Berk issued a statement to the Daily Caller saying, “at its best, music should bring people together and spread empathy, not hate.”

“It’s therefore remarkable that Kneecap used a music festival to foment hate, exactly the kind of gathering where, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered, raped, burned and kidnapped innocent young people at the Nova Music Festival in Israel,” he continued. “Kneecap’s stunt wasn’t a political or artistic statement: It was a rallying cry for hate that puts a target on the backs of Jews worldwide and dehumanizes an entire national group.”

It also runs the danger of encouraging violence against them, as she noted further down the article. Coachella's management, of course, has to shoulder some of the blame here too, and if they want to apologize, they'll have to stop hosting Kneecap's concerts.

Update: see also this op-ed by Catherine Salgado.

Labels: anti-americanism, anti-semitism, dhimmitude, islam, Israel, jihad, misogyny, Moonbattery, racism, sexual violence, showbiz, terrorism, United States, war on terror