“We're like the poster child of discrimination and diversity,” says Neta Rozenblat of Israeli Palestinian boy band As1one. “You have so many people around the world voicing their opinions, but there's not enough voices talking about what it's like to be both [Israeli and Palestinian].”
Last week the band’s six members – Palestinian Christian Aseel Farah, Palestinian Bedouin Muslim Sadik Abu Dogosh, and Jewish Israelis Nadav Philips, Neta Rozenblat, Niv Lin and Ohad Attia – went on a tour of UK schools, where they performed songs and discussed mental health, discrimination, diversity and cyber bullying.
At North Birmingham Academy, Halesowen College in the West Midlands, Haven High Academy in Lincolnshire, and Winifred Holtby School in Hull, they played a 20-minute set including Stranger and Together As One, followed by a talk and question and answer session.
A documentary series, first aired last year on Paramount+, followed the band’s journey from their beginnings on a bootcamp in Neve Shalom – part of the search and audition launched by industry hitmakers James Diener and Ken Levitan (who signed and developed Maroon 5 and Kings Of Leon) to find the most talented singers and musicians in Israel. Brought together to show the possibilities of co-existence, in 2023 the six young Jewish Israelis and Palestinians embarked on their life’s dream as a boy band bound for Los Angeles to record their debut album. And then they arrived in the entertainment capital of the world the day before October 7.
They were offered the chance to go home. But instead of allowing their dream to be crushed, they forged ahead and have represented coexistence as Israelis and Palestinians ever since.
To date, As1one have only performed to their family and friends. So it is, as Attia tells the JC at a private London showcase just before their UK schools tour begins, “very exciting” and “a big step forward” for them to be performing their first public shows.
“We want to see people's reaction,” says Attia. “We love performing live. We love to see their faces when they get emotional. Something very important for all of us is to show how we are all musicians who can sing live.”
Rozenblat adds, “We've been recording, we've been writing, we've been producing, we've been rehearsing. The last piece of the puzzle was just to perform. To now be able to perform is incredible.”
Through their talks, the band also hope to help children who are struggling with stress and mental health issues. They discuss how their own mental health has been affected by the discrimination they themselves have faced, their differing religions and backgrounds, and, in their collective words, why they “choose harmony and friendship over animosity”, the importance of treating each other fairly, and why diversity should be celebrated.
The band’s manager Andrew Berkowitz described the school audiences – Year 7 and 8 pupils aged 11 to 13 – as “responsive, enthusiastic and engaged” as they listened to the six-piece discuss the importance of speaking up and turning to others for help.
“We're bringing up subjects that are important,” says Rozenblat. “We have a unique story, and we deal with a lot of challenges: being Israelis and Palestinians, and being far away from home in order to fulfil our dreams. Even though it's such an incredible opportunity, it's still hard. These are all things that, while we experience a very extreme version of them, every single person relates to.”
Farah shared his personal experiences as a Palestinian living in Israel and stressed that “regardless of race or religion we are all humans and it is better to go forward together than apart”, as well as the importance of exploring and embracing each other’s differences.
The band are aware that they might receive challenging political questions along their journey. However, Philips stresses that they are not political.
“We have nothing to hide,” he says. “We're just Israelis and Palestinians together. We can just answer what we feel because we're not politicians, we're musicians. We are a bunch of guys around the same age who love to make music. We all have different experiences, so tough questions are normal – people are interested to understand how we are dealing with it.”
And anyway, Rozenblat adds that people asking these questions can’t expect just one textbook response – although at least theirs will come from direct, personal experience.
“If you ask each of us for our opinion, you’ll get six different answers. You have millions, if not billions, of one-sided opinions around the world, and not many opinions focusing on what it's like to be Israelis and Palestinians on the day after [October 7], so we have that perspective.”
Lin adds that the media fuels such black and white perspectives, and division. “The media is full of people that have opinions about it, but they're not Israeli or Palestinian. Hearing just from the people, what they feel and how they experience it, is very different.”
That the world seems so keen to divide only makes them more committed to their togetherness.
“We like to say that we're the third side,” says Philips, who is also a wedding singer. “We choose to not have a side; we just choose to get along with people. And we have the music that connects us. We wanted to do music together, and this is what keeps us united, because it's one language that everybody speaks and everybody can relate to, and we perform. We don't care if you're Israeli or Palestinian, or whoever you are – if you're in the audience, you're all welcome.”
I wonder then, what they make of those trying to exclude and silence Jewish and Israeli artists in the UK. The pro-Palestine boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement has led to the censorship most recently of Dudu Tassa and Jonny Greenwood, whose Bristol and London shows scheduled for next month were cancelled after a campaign.
“Censorship of art is not the way forward,” says Rozenblat. “A band like ours is representative of the fact there's only one way forward – together. Otherwise, we’re stuck in the past.”
