How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? NINA SIMONE
Together for Palestine was an event organised for 17 September 2025 in support of a suffering people at London’s Wembley Arena. I was lucky enough to have a ticket to this 12,500 seat sold-out evening.
It was Brian Eno’s initiative, working with the Palestinian artist, Malak Mattar, as executive director. They assembled performances and talks from 69 musicians, actors, dancers, writers, poets, journalists and human rights spokespeople. Itraised nearly £2 million for three indigenous Palestinian NGOs: Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Palestinian Medical Relief and Taawon, who run orphan care programmes in Gaza.
The event took place with the Gaza genocide now crossing all red lines. The UN had, for the first time, declared it to be so, and the death toll was now estimatedto possibly be in the hundreds of thousands, 75% of them women and children. Meanwhile, the 50-boat Gaza Sumud Flotilla was assembling near Sicily to maketheir way there to break the blockade.
In this situation I decided that I had to include an account of this event in mybook, even though the manuscript had been edited for delivery to my designer.When I arrived home from Wembley, I made myself several cups of coffee and wrote a first draft.
On the morning of the concert, Brian wrote in The Guardian, ‘Politics sits downstream of culture. The stories we tell ourselves and each other are how we develop and share our feelings about this world – and other possible worlds. This gives our storytellers – writers, musicians, artists, actors – incredible power to shape the space in which politicians are able to operate.’
The event proved Brian to be right, that ‘politics sits downstream of culture’. It opened with oud player Adnan Joubran, rapper El Far3i and the singer Nai Barghouti. Yara Eid spoke about the 270 fellow-journalists targeted and killed in Gaza.The pianist Faraj Suleiman was followed by Neneh Cherry, and Benedict Cumberbatch recited a poem by Mahmoud Darwish.
On this land there are reasons to live,
This land the lady of lands,
The motherland of beginning,
The motherland of all ends.
She was named as Palestine
She will forever be known as Palestine.
My land, my lady,
You are the reason to live
That night I was sitting with Brian’s former wife, Anthea, and their two daughters, Irial and Darla. All three are active in their support of Palestine andall have been there. Irial had planned to return to work as a doctor on a university-approved placement at Ramallah Hospital, but was refused entry at the Israeli border. Because she was not a tourist and had visited the West Bank previously, she was banned from re-entry under Amendment No 28 of the Entry Into Israel Law.
Francesca Albanese is the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories. She has been sanctioned by the Trump administration. Albaneseencouraged us to continue the struggle against genocide. She outlined her estimate as to the extent of the killings. ‘65,000 is the number of Palestinians confirmed killed, of which 75% are women and children. In fact, we should start thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim as being the real death toll in Gaza ...If this number is confirmed, 380,000 of these are infants under five.’
She was followed by 87-year-old, Stephen Kapos, who said, ‘The genocide we are witnessing today is something that I recognise from my own experience as a Jewish Holocaust survivor … what is happening today in Gaza is an extreme form of repeat genocide, a Holocaust in our own times, in front of our eyes.’ He received the evening’s loudest applause, exposing the Zionist lie that opposition to their genocidal policies is ‘anti-semitic’.
Brian was joined by Paul Weller who performed a composition themed on Arabic rhythms and given the Eno ‘stamp’. It included eight musicians: from oud to cello to guitar and drums.
Damon Albarn teamed up with the London Arab Orchestra and Juzoue Dance Collective to perform a medley of traditional Palestinian songs.
Portishead performed ‘Roads’.
How can it feel this wrong?
From this moment
How can it feel this wrong?
Paloma Faith sang wearing a dress made from a keffiyeh.
At the end of the evening, Richard Gere stepped on stage and said, ‘This is a caravan, not of despair, but of love, compassion and sacrifice. Stand up and let love and compassion be generated. Netanyahu has to go and all the enablers have to go. There is one who says he can stop wars in one day – my President Trump. I end by paying tribute to all the doctors who have been in Gaza.’
All wonderful people talking to, and performing for, an audience vibrantly alive and loud in solidarity with Palestine. An emotional evening of consciousness-raising. Gorillaz opened their hip-hop song in front of a video of a Palestinian flag flapping in a sea-breeze with these words, ‘Navigate the waves wih a light and a flag. Stars in the heavens and a breeeze on my back’. I thought of the GazaFreedom Flotilla, making its way across the Mediterranean, on a brave attempt to break the blockade. I looked around at nearby members of the audience. Many were dabbing their eyes. I was one of them.
Brian has said, ‘Maybe one day future leaders of western political parties will issue a mea culpa for their complicity in the brutal violence currently being inflicted on Palestinian families. It will be too late to save tens of thousands of civilian victims of this war. But if there is a reckoning it might be, in part at least, because actors, artists, writers and musicians helped us to see Palestinians as human beings.’
Sadly, that day is a long way off. As I write this, I read that the UK Foreign Office Minister, Jenny Chapman, has refused to consider sending home the Israeli soldiers currently being trained by the British military while the genocide is ongoing. Her reason: ‘it would be unnecessarily disruptive to [the Israeli soldiers] and their lives.’
I have read that the RAF continue with daily reconnaisance flights over Gaza to give targets to the IDF. Turning to the Israeli regime itself, I recently came across these words from Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister, ‘In six months, Gaza will cease to exist. The surviving population will be herded into a single ‘humanitarian zone’ and, broken by despair, will depart.’
The Wembley event was livestreamed on YouTube and was viewed across the world. A friend of mine in LA, film producer Emre Izat, emailed me the following day with these words: ‘I watched online yesterday, sobbed a bit, and was humbled by the gathering and outpouring of love and support.’
I hope this powerful event was seen in Palestine, so that they could experience that ‘love and support’. I know that they are still able to experience music itself. From my contacts at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Ramallah, I am told that music is still being played in Gaza. I recently watched a film of young people playing guitars and ouds on a Gaza beach.
The power of music. From Wembley to Gaza.
