The music industry has a mixed track record when it comes to altruism: For every Concert for Bangladesh, a thoughtful and timely project that has endured as a piece of era-defining art, there is a “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” a song conceived by a handful of rich white musicians who seemed to assume the Christian-majority Ethiopia didn’t know the most important Christian holiday.
I was fearful that Together for Palestine, a huge charity event at London’s 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena organized by Brian Eno, Khaled Ziada, Khalid Abdalla, and Tracey Seaward, would fall into the latter category: Israel has been waging a full-scale assault on the Gaza Strip for nearly two years, and, for the vast majority of that time, the upper echelon of the music industry has largely been silent. Many of the musicians and speakers on the initial lineup had barely said a word about Palestine in the early months of Israel’s siege and vastly disproportionate, violent response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks. That these famous names were dedicating time and energy to the cause nearly two years later felt to me like a poor attempt to rectify what felt like eons of damning, upsetting silence.