Brian Eno Christmas single for Palestine

 

Brian Eno has set his sights on Christmas number one with a new charity single in aid of Together for Palestine.

'Lullaby' is due for release on 12 December.

This follows the 'Together for Palestine' event he helped organise at Wembley Arena in September. 

I wrote about that event in 'My World Music'

A HOLOCAUST IN OUR TIME

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. It raised 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 estimated to 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 make their way there to break the blockade. In this situation I decided that I had to include an account of this event in my book, 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 and all 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. Albanese encouraged 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 Gaza Freedom 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 recentlywatched a film of young people playing guitars and ouds on a Gaza beach.

The power of music. From Wembley to Gaza.

My World Music

 

 MY WORLD MUSIC is now available on Kindle and as a paperback It can be bought at Camden Guitars, with other shops to follow.

You can order the book here at £12 (£10+ £2 postage) UK only

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My World Cafe was published by Riversmeet in 2023 and is on sale from the publishers

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Left Field was published by Unbound in 2016 and can now be read for FREE here   
The harback edition can be bough here  and is vailable as an audiobook here

"David Wilson has lived a life and a half. I was proud to play a minor role in War Child, an organisation in which David was inspirational. The broken world needed people like David then; it still does and it always will." -- Sir Tom Stoppard

"David Wilson is an adventurer and a free-thinker who ... did something truly useful with his life. His stubborn and yet self-effacing commitment to his ideals carried him through many daunting situations, and his sense of humour kept him able to see the funny side." -- Brian Eno

Nazis are guests of the Israeli government

 

Gaza is a concentration camp: its inmates are dead, dying or waiting to be killed. Kidnapped flotilla volunteers are drinking from the toilet and Greta Thurnberg has been tortured. In London geriatrics are arrested for being 'terrorists'. Meanwhile, Tommy Robinson is invited to Israel!. All this and Starmer remains silent

An explanation ....

“Israel has written one of the darkest pages of human history and the world is still holding the pen”

FRANCESCA ALBANESE  United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories

"On behalf of the State of Israel I am proud to host the British patriot, Tommy Robinson , who will visit Israel in mid-October (2025). Tommy is a courageous leader ... he has proven himself to be a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people ... Together with Tommy Robinson we will build stronger bridges of solidarity, fight terror, defend western civilisation and shared values." 
AMICHAI CHIKLI, Israeli Minister of Diaspora & Combatting Antsemitism

Are you shocked and surprised? It’s nothing new.

Eliezer Livneh of the Israeli paramilitary organisation, Haganah, and speaking in 1966, said “For the Zionist leadership the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means”.

The truth about Zionism is well put by Tony Greenstein here, “Zionism is at its heart a racially exclusive ideology for the promotion of white supremacy – but it also wants a specifically Jewish supremacy in Palestine.”

A Holocaust In Our Time

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.

PALESTINE WILL BE FREE (Lowkey)

Together for Palestine

 

Last night I attended the sold-out‘Together for Palestine’ concert at Wembley Arena. Produced by Brian Eno, and working with Palestinian artist Malak Mattar as executive director, they assembled an eclectic mix of music and speeches. 

There was oud player Adnan Joubran, rapper El Far3i and the singer Nai Barghouti. The journalist, Yara Eid, spoke about the 270 colleagues killed in Gaza.The pianist Faraj Suleiman was followed by Neneh Cherry. Benedict Cumberbatch recited a poem by Mahmoud Darwish. Francesca Albanese of the UN encouraged us to keep going in the struggle against genocide and Holocaust survivor, Phillip Kapos, received massive applause, when he said, as a Jew, he remained active in support of Palestine. Then there was Damon Albarn and Paloma Faith, who performed wearing a dress made from a keffiyeh. Brian Eno performed with eight musicians, ( from oud player to cello, to guitar to drums) a composition themed on Aabic rhythms and given the Eno ‘twist’

All wonderful people talking to and performing for an audience united in solidarity with Palestine. OK no one should be picked out for special reference here, but I am going to do so. I have known Brian Eno for thirty years, ever since he supported War Child’s music projects at the time of the Bosnian war. Later he was there again in support of the Iraq anti-war movement. 

Last night reminded me of the 2005 Rachid Taha/Brian Eno/Mick Jones ‘Rock the Casbah gig for Stop the War. So thank you Brian and not forgetting his supportive family and office. 

I am including below his article which was published in The Guardian on the day of the Wembley event.

Damon Albarn: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-xqeUZRWjMg  

At the end of  the evening Jameela Jamil announced, the show had raised £1.5m. This money would go to Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), Palestinian Medical Relief Society, and https://www.taawon.org/en  which runs orphan care programess in Gaza. 

BRIAN ENO: ‘Why I am Hosting Together for Palestine.’ The Guardian, 17 September 2025

In the summer of 1988 the music festival producer Tony Hollingsworth organised a concert at Wembley Stadium in London to celebrate the 70th birthday of Nelson Mandela. He offered the BBC the rights to broadcast it live, but the corporation was nervous. Mandela had been in jail since 1962 and, to the extent that he was a well-known figure, he had been branded a ‘terrorist’. Hollingsworth met BBC executive Alan Yentob, who was wavering. “Alan,” Tony said, “you’ve got to bite the bullet.” Eventually Yentob agreed, replying: “I’ll give you five hours. If the bill improves, I’ll increase the time.”

Conservative MPs were soon organising a parliamentary motion, deploring the BBC’s editorial decision. Opponents of Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) were right to be worried about the concert. The event was broadcast to a global audience of 600 million people, it made Mandela a household name around the world and, in all probability, hastened his release. Oliver Tambo, then president of the ANC, told Hollingsworth the concert was “the greatest single event we have undertaken in support of the struggle.”

he concert worked because, then as now, 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.
Which brings us to Gaza.

More than any other conflict since the birth of the modern communications age, more so even than South Africa in the 1980s, the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been conducted with words and images as well as with bullets and bombs. And for that reason, those artists who oppose the occupation and advocate for justice for Palestinians have been subjected to a cynical, pernicious censorship designed to severely narrow the scope of the stories they can tell.

Examples abound. Last year there was a concerted ampaign by supporters of Israeli policy to have Jewish film-maker Jonathan Glazer cancelled. Actor Melissa Barrera was dropped by a Hollywood production company after she she posted on social media referring to “genocide” in Gaza. Multiple artists in Germany have had their exhibitions terminated for making entirely defensible critiques of the Israeli government. And the BBC recently refused to show a remarkable documentary about Gaza’s health workers because its broadcast would have risked “the perception of partiality” (my italics). It was eventually shown to great acclaim on Channel 4.

The BBC’s recent cowardice is the product of a wall of fear constructed by supporters of Israeli government policy, designed to punish those artists whose stories might mould a different culture, one with the power to radically change our politics. But that fear is abating.

Take, for example, Together for Palestine, a concert to be held tonighy at Wemble Arena - the huge indoor auditorium next to the stadium that hosted that Mandela birthday concert 37 years ago. I and others have been defensible critiques of the Israeli government. I and others have been working for a year to bring the concert to life. Even finding a venue proved challenging: the mere mention of the word “Palestine” was a near-certain precursor to refusal. (I wonder what the reaction would have been had it been called Together for Ukraine?) But at some point in the past few months, something changed. Wembley signed a contract, YouTube finally consented to streaming the event, and – most importantly – artists agreed to appear.

And so this evening, Wembley hosts the biggest cultural event in support of Palestinian rights since the destruction of Gaza began. Some 12,000 tickets sold out in two hours. Appearing on stage will be, among many others, Oscar nominees Benedict Cumberbatch and Guy Pearce, musicians Bastille, James Blake, PinkPantheress and Damon Albarn – and Palestinian artists such as Saint Levant and Elyanna. The concert will be opened by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, recently sanctioned by the Trump administration. 

Five years ago, perhaps even as recently as this time last year, it would have been impossible to imagine dozens of notable global artists coming together to support Palestine. But the brutality of Israel’s assault on Gaza, its deliberate starvation of the population and the unabashed public statements of Israeli ministers advocating ethnic cleansing have combined to create deep cracks in the wall of fear. I’m not sure the Israeli government, or indeed the wider Israeli populace, quite understands the extent to which the censorious policing of commentary around Palestine is breaking down. Indeed, the greater risk to some artists’ reputations may now come from not speaking out on Palestine.

One foundation of that wall of fear has been the association of the words “Palestine” and “terror” – the result of a deliberate, decades-long campaign to conflate the two. That same conflation was made in the 1980s with Nelson Mandela. Looking back now, it seems preposterous that debate around South African apartheid could have been so effectively policed by its proponents. But times change. What was once disputed can suddenly become suffused with moral clarity, with advocates for one side left stranded on the wrong side of history. In 2006 the then-Tory leader, David Cameron, said his fellow Conservatives were wrong in their approach to apartheid. He praised Mandela as “one of the greatest men alive.”
Maybe one day future leaders of western political parties will issue a similar mea culpa for their complicity in the brutal violence currently being inflicted on Palestinian families. It will be too late to save many 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, as much deserving of respect and protection as their Israeli neighbours.

As the Egyptian-Canadian writer Omar El Akkad says, one day everyone will have always been against this.

Parliament Square Terrorists

 

"I've been to peaceful protests for 60 years and this is the first time I've been afraid".   A retired doctor speaking to NovaraMedia

I have not been so angry nor so traumatised since I was in Sarajevo at the height of the siege and bombardment of that city in 1993. After I returned to London I could not understand why the latest football scores were more important to so many of my friends than the death ‘score’ in that city. I began to realise that our political leaders and corporate media were not intent on telling the truth. 

And here we are again. I woke up this morning to Sky News quoting Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart, who led the police operation in Parliament Square. "In carrying out their duties today, our officers have been punched, kicked, spat on and had objects thrown at them by protesters."

In the six hours I was there I agree with the Defend Our Juries spokesperson who said the afternoon had been "the picture of peaceful protest" and that the Met Police's statement about its officers being abused was an "astonishing claim. I've been here all day and I haven't seen any violence or aggression from anyone. I've only seen aggression and violence from the police."

Me, Jan Woolf & Allen Jasson,

Allen arrested two minutes later

Handicapped woman arrested soon after

85 year old priest, Sue Parfitt, arrested for 2nd time

woman arguing with police

woman waiting to be arrested

women terrorising with their words

They only want to respect the dead

Did they arrest these Quakers?

Blind man, Mike Higgins just before his arrest

Not in My Jewish Name

Disabled retired RAF pilot being arrested

Fascist photographers at work

Got them to turn round and say 'cheese'

Raphael Prais, me and Jan Woolf

A Sufi putting it all in perspective

We must continue our despair for the victims of the genocide but let it act as the catalyst for our actions. With Joe Hill, ‘Don’t mourn, organise’. So make sure you continue to demonstrate. Solidarity with the 40 boat flotilla making its way to Gaza and support for the Italian dockers who have pledged to bring European sea trade to a standstill within 20 minutes of any Israeli attempt to board or attack the boats.

And our police? Yes, they were out in brutal force on 6 September in Parliament Square, but my own experience allows for optimism, at least for some of them. A police ‘gang’ of 7 or 8 were dragging an old man to his arrest and ploughed through us. I was pushed against a metal barrier and was doubled up over it in panic. A policewoman helped me stand and then placed herself between me and the thugs. She then led me to a safer place. I thanked her and said ‘you are doing your job’. 

                    A Change is gonna come