How Jew-hate is becoming the norm in the music industry

Itay Kashti will never know whether it was one of his comments on social media pushing back against the anti-Israel narrative in the music industry that led to him eventually being kidnapped. He just has a hunch
that it was.

A record producer who has lived in the UK for nearly two decades, his case – where he was lured to a remote farmhouse in Wales before being physically beaten up and handcuffed to a radiator – was certainly motivated by antisemitism. The three attackers, who were each jailed for eight years in March, had a plan to keep him hostage and then extort money from his family, who they believed were rich.

“Even the police weren’t able to tell me where this thing started but it seems that someone who worked with me or knew of me had given them my name,” he says. “I believe it was probably a product of a heated debate. I had a lot of friends in the music industry who were posting about the war and against Israel and I was responding to them.

“In the group chat between the three kidnappers, the conversation very quickly turned from calling me ‘the music producer’ to ‘the Israeli’ and then just ‘the Jew’.”

After his attackers were sentenced and the story became public, Kashti was approached by some of his former friends, people he had fallen out with after October 7. People who had put the Palestinian flags on their social media on October 8 and told him, “Well, those people shouldn’t have been living there in the first place” when he challenged them about Hamas’s murderous rampage.

“A couple of my former friends reached out but they didn’t make any connection with what they had written about Israel,” he says. “There was no remorse or accountability. Nothing along the lines of, ‘Yes, I now see things in a slightly different light.’ So, it felt more that what they were really saying was, ‘I’m sorry this happened to you, but unfortunately you are still the bad guys.’”

Antisemitism, or at least, anti-Israel hatred in the music industry is in the news thanks to Kneecap, the Irish band who yelled “Up Hamas” and “Up Hezbollah” at one concert and “kill your MP” in another. They are a symptom of an anti-Israel mindset that sees pro-Palestinian activism encouraged while companies, bands and individuals with a connection to Israel are boycotted and cancelled. Those advocating for Kneecap’s free speech are often the same people ruthlessly trying to get Israelis and Jews cancelled.

In fact, this week Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa, one of Israel’s leading rock stars, have blamed threats from pro-Palestinian activists for the cancellation of their UK shows next month and called out the hypocrisy of those defending Kneecap’s right to expression while simultaneously silencing them. The venues where they were due to play – Bristol’s Beacon Hall and London’s Hackney Church – and their “blameless staff” received “enough credible threats to conclude that it’s not safe to proceed”. In a letter, they said: “Forcing musicians not to perform and denying people who want to hear them an opportunity to do so is self-evidently a method of censorship. Intimidating venues into pulling our shows won’t help achieve the peace and justice everyone in the Middle East deserves.”

Forcing musicians not to perform and denying people who want to hear them is censorship. Intimidating venues into pulling our shows won’t help achieve the peace everyone in the Middle East deserves

An example is the case of British dance company Boiler Rooms – which records and hosts live events. In January it was bought by Superstruct, the second largest festival group in the world which, in turn, is owned by the private equity group KKR, which was founded by three Jews.

Because one of the KKR founders has donated to Israeli organisations including the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Boiler Room has found itself at the centre of a boycott organised by a small but powerful activist group called Ravers for Palestine, which claims to be “a revolt for Palestine against Zionism, against colonialism, against the West”.

To stem the threat of boycotts and online fury, Boiler Room issued a statement claiming it was “unapologetically pro-Palestine” but that was not good enough. As a result, it has dropped all its livestreams from its previous events in Tel Aviv – dozens of Israeli DJs said their performances were dropped without warning or explanation.

October 7 should have been a wake-up call to the music industry, which had already seen the Bataclan massacre and bombing of Ariana Grande’s concert at Manchester Arena. The slaughter at the Nova festival followed a pattern of Islamic extremism but it was one most of the music industry was unwilling to even mention.

“The first shock for me was the silence of the dance music world after Nova,” says Donna*, a veteran club promoter. “I cannot imagine this happening at any other festival – with DJs and dance music fans being massacred and no one says anything. Anywhere else in the world, there would have been an outcry, there would have been fundraising, there would be activism.

“But in the dance music industry it was like nothing had happened. That was the first sign for me – how de-humanised Israelis were in these people’s minds. There was this great big silence. The next was the people becoming obsessed with the Palestinian side. These are people who don’t normally say anything about politics and now they are non-stop tweeting about the war with some incredibly provocative material.

“I had one person say to me the other day, ‘Why would you have a dance festival next to a concentration camp?’ and they actually believe this stuff.”

Record boss Anthony Broza, whose Wienerworld label represents Gipsy Kings, says he was shocked at last year’s Glastonbury festival when he accompanied the band there.

“We went in backstage and everywhere I looked I was being greeted with Palestinian flags,” he says. “It was like a mania. It just felt so wrong. The whole ethos of Glastonbury was one of unifying and creative, beautiful collective love but that was all gone and I don’t understand why with this war everyone feels like they have to spout on about it. Kneecap is an example of this mentality and how this type of behaviour fuels more.

“People think it’s cool. They don’t care about other wars – look at what Russia is doing to Ukraine and no one cares.

I see artists in our company accuse Israel of genocide and deny its right to exist while painting Hamas as the good guys

”As a seasoned person in the industry – I’ve been in it for 45 years, I have never seen anything like it. I had quite a few people where artists assigned to our label rang me up after October 7 saying, ‘We stand with you’ and that was lovely but I think to myself now, ‘Would any of them say that publicly?’ And in some ways, I don’t blame them.

“I’m not sure I would take Gipsy Kings to Israel in this present climate. That’s a horrific admission, isn’t it? But we’d be frightened. Not only for a backlash against the band but, God forbid, their families too. You don’t want to go there and yet it is bonkers to be so afraid.”

Rachel* , a dance music executive at one of the biggest music labels in the world, started making a log of antisemitism in the music industry when just weeks after the October 7 attacks, her company – which is meant to be strictly non-partisan – hosted an event in aid of Gaza.

When she queried this with her human resources department, a colleague told her: “The event turned out not to be impartial but I didn’t know that the whole music industry is controlled by Jews.” Later, she would discover that an Israeli dance act a number of labels had been pursuing was dropped on the day of the album’s release “due to the current political climate”.

Like Jews in all industries, people in the music world who didn’t know each other before October 7 have gathered in WhatsApp groups to talk about what they are dealing with. Some of the stories Rachel had heard are truly terrifying.

One British-Israeli artist described how shortly before she went on stage, fellow acts engaged her in conversation about her ethnicity. “You are Jewish, because you have a big nose,” one of them told her. Two others starting debating the size of her nose and whether it was a Jewish one. “She was standing there feeling like a circus act,” says Rachel.

Other examples sent to her include: people frequently being told, “Jews don’t need our help, they run the business”; a record exec being sent nasty messages from an artist client “telling me she was receiving calls from people to inform her that her manager supports Israel and she said she can’t be associated with me if I don’t insist on a ceasefire”, and October 7 denialism.

There is a silent and not-so-silent drumbeat of cancellation. “I see artists in our company accuse Israel of genocide and deny its right to exist while also painting Hamas as the good guys,” one person said. “I am an organiser of events for the Jewish community and have received many rejections and cancellations – we are not welcome in 95 per cent of the venues,” said another.

Louise* who has been a music festival organiser for nearly two decades says industry Facebook groups have become filled with posts about boycotting “Zionist-funded” festivals and Israeli artists.

“When I told the admins that this went against their non-political policy and was propaganda, they said they were happy to encourage healthy debate. They are all singing the praises of Boiler Room after they binned the Israeli gigs,” she says.

“I wrote a post saying that as a Jewish person within the industry I wanted to highlight how dangerous this rhetoric was, and how it felt like modern-day antisemitism. All the commenting on my post was stopped and I had a warning from the admin saying my post was too political.”​

The festival community, in particular, has always had abided by an ethos of peace and love. But that goes by the wayside when it comes to this war, adds Louise.

“All the festival programming is quite unbalanced – not just bands or DJs but also chefs and speakers – they almost all have an anti-Israel bent. What I don’t see is the perspective of people who actually want to talk about peace.”

*names have been changed