Massive Attack and Kneecap set up ‘syndicate’ to support artists over Palestine

“We won’t stand by and allow other artists to be threatened into silence or career cancellation”

Bristol band Massive Attack have joined with controversial Irish rap group Kneecap and 70s legend Brian Eno to set up a syndicate to support music artists who speak out about Israel and Gaza.

The Bristol group, who have long been outspoken about the ongoing situation in Palestine, as well as UK military action, said the syndicate was set up to support artists who are threatened or have gigs cancelled for speaking in support of Palestine.

Posting on the band’s Instagram page, Massive Attack said they and others had been subject to ‘aggressive, vexatious’ campaigns against them for speaking out on Israel and ‘multiple individual instances of intimidation’. The Bristol group have joined with other artists, including Brian Eno, Fontaines DC and Kneecap, who announced they are to play their biggest show in Bristol to date, with a gig at the Prospect building in November.

Massive Attack’s Rob del Naja and Grant Marshall said the syndicate’s aim would be to protect other artists, especially those in the early stages of their career, who are pressured not to speak out on Palestine.

The statement called out the organisation UK Lawyers for Israel, which was the subject of a film produced by Led By Donkeys late last week.

It was UKLFI who reported Bob Vylan to the police for chants during their set at Glastonbury. The band is still under investigation by Avon and Somerset police, but an investigation into similar allegations concerning Kneecap’s set at Glastonbury was dropped by police last week.

But Kneecap’s Mo Chara is still charged with a terrorism offence, over a gig in which he allegedly displayed a flag connected to the proscribed organisation Hezbollah – which was initially reported to the police by UKLFI.

Both Kneecap and Bob Vylan have had concerts cancelled as a result of these controversies. Just yesterday, Monday, July 22, a campaign began to call on the organisers of Boardmasters in Cornwall to take Bob Vylan off the bill.

The post shared by Massive Attack and other groups in the syndicate, said: “The scenes in Gaza have moved beyond description. We write as artists who’ve chosen to use our public platforms to speak out against the genocide occurring there and the role of the UK government in facilitating it.

“We’re aware of the scale of aggressive, vexatious campaigns operated by UKLFI and of multiple individual incidences of intimidation within the music industry itself, designed solely to censor and silence artists from speaking their hearts and minds.

“Having withstood these campaigns of attempted censorship, we won’t stand by and allow other artists – particularly those at earlier stages of their careers or in other positions of professional vulnerability – to be threatened into silence or career cancellation,” they added.

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In a statement provided to The Guardian, Massive Attack added: “This collective action is really about offering some kind of solidarity to those artists who are living day after day in a screen-time genocide, but are worried about using their platforms to express their horror at that because of the level of censorship within their industry or from highly organised external legal bodies, terrifying them and their management teams with aggressive legal actions. The intention is clear and obvious: to silence them.”

UKLFI said they had most recently acted against Massive Attack following complaints they had received from Jewish and Israeli audience members at a Massive Attack gig, which showed images on a big screen that they said compared Israel’s actions with the Holocaust and, separately, the former Hamas leader.

“We wrote to Massive Attack to convey this, and requested that future performances do not repeat these actions,” UKLFI told The Guardian. “We believe in free speech and artistic expression, however we felt this performance crossed a line and made audience members feel deeply traumatised,” they added.