Some of the big name celebrities who converged on New York at the weekend need a rocket over their Gaza hypocrisy. Andrew Gardiner reports on Hollowood and big-names running scared.
You’ve heard them all: big name musicians and movie stars, lamenting the injustice of it all and they crusade, it seems, for whatever fashionable campaign has captured the moment. And while causes like global poverty or renewable energy are worthy, where are these luminaries on the more than 230,000 dead and injured in Gaza?
In some cases, the answer is “nowhere to be found”. Take the celebrity output on Gaza at New York’s Global Citizen festival on Saturday, which was downright demoralising.
Timed for the weekend after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Global Citizen saw the strangest of role-reversals. Days earlier at UNGA, most of the politicians and diplomats we expect nothing from put Gaza front and centre, while at Global Citizen, ‘virtue signalling’ celebs were largely silent on what some have called Israel’s “holocaust”.
A rare but notable exception came, not surprisingly, from Palestinian singer Elyanna, who opened the show, wanting “to pray for my homeland in Palestine.” But after that, the world’s most urgent current crisis gave way to solar power in Africa or the Amazon rainforest.
On the latter, actress Liza Koshy and ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye asked the crowd to hold its collective breath, because the Amazon is the “lungs of the Earth.” “It produces about 20 per cent of the oxygen we breathe worldwide (while) pulling global warming carbon out of our atmosphere at the same time”, Nye explained.
In Australia, precious few celebrities have spoken out against the Genocide. Hugo Weaving went public speaking about the “climate of fear” in the entertainment industry, a climate clearly fearful of backlash by Zionist arts donors and craven administrators.
Courageous pianist Jayson Gillham continues to fight efforts by the Melbourne Symphony to silence him over Gaza, and after a backlash by the arts community when Creative Australia caved to the Israel lobby, artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino were reinstated as Australia’s representatives to the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Guy Pearce is notable as one of Australia’s few big-name actors to speak out against the “normalised horrors” in Palestine. Others have been as quiet as the proverbial church mouse. The suppression of free speech and expression is however a global phenomenon, as evinced by events in New York over the weekend.
Global citizens and uncitizens
Among other things, Global Citizen and its founder, Melbourne’s own Hugh Evans, present themselves as central elements in a movement for advocacy on famines stretching from Haiti to Sudan, not unlike Bob Geldof and Live Aid.
But Geldof has been scathing in his condemnation of Israel’s Gaza onslaught, which “enrages (him) beyond the point of comprehension”. “The (sic) government is clearly out of control, and their army probably as well (and) for the Israeli people to allow this in their name is a despicable disgrace”, he said.
By contrast, Evans has been pretty well mum on Gaza, despite bringing home the Sunhak Peace Prize earlier this year, and despite a consensus emerging from international and Israeli NGOs, UN Special Rapporteurs, and scholars that Gaza is in fact a genocide. Global Citizen has been equally subdued, its last published article on Gaza (excluding one on polio vaccines) coming shortly after the Israeli invasion in 2023.
That article downplayed the Palestinian toll, while explicitly detailing Israeli casualties.
Since then, Global Citizen has studiously ignored the Gaza carnage, along with the estimated 902,000 Palestinians who were forcibly displaced (some call that an understatement) and the more than half a million trapped in famine. Its ignoring displacement numbers is somewhat ironic, given that in 2019 – well before the current Israeli assault – the same organisation highlighted a Norwegian article calling Gaza one of the world’s most neglected displacement crises.
Not surprisingly, one thing Global Citizen failed to mention is the ‘G’ word.
Music has long played a vital role in political advocacy. At Global Citizen, Nigerian singer Ayra Starr lent her voice to renewable power for Africa, where “some children have no access to light at (night)”, while actors Kristin Bell and Danai Gurira focused on the need to end sexual violence in war.
But the whole show seemed scripted when compared to Glastonbury (UK), where performers queued up (at some personal risk) to highlight the Palestinian plight. “We think about the fact that us as whiteys, we’re the f—ing colonisers, and that’s so disgusting”, lead singer Amy Taylor, from Melbourne band Amyl and the Sniffers, told an energised Glastonbury crowd.
Events like Glastonbury and Global Citizen matter because they draw attention from audiences who may not otherwise engage with politics, particularly young people.
“I know for a fact that when we unite, we make noise that leads to real change … governments and corporations listen, policies change, financial investments are made and progress happens,” Sydney’s own Hugh Jackman told the Global Citizen crowd.
A choreographed, self censoring vibe
But if the point is engaging young people around issues which truly resonate – and right now that’s Gaza – Glastonbury’s raw energy trumped Global Citizen’s choreographed, self-censoring vibe. An Economist-YouGov poll in the US last month showed well over half those aged 18-29 believe Israel is committing genocide: far more so than older Americans.
In the pantheon of activist events drawing worldwide attention, there are more Global Citizens downplaying Gaza than Glastonburys taking it on. Yet others were always going to try and square that ledger, such as Brian Eno, whose benefit concert this month saw more than 70 artists converge on Wembley Stadium (UK) including Richard Gere, Paul Weller, Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox and Portishead.
Dubbed Together for Palestine, Gaza was well and truly on the Wembley agenda.
The self-censorship of organisations like Global Citizen on Gaza should come as no real surprise. We’ve seen it happen here in Australia, where prominent institutions were pressured to curb or vary their Gaza coverage, helping manufacture a perspective from which the October 7 attacks occurred in a vacuum, and Israel has every right to “defend itself”.
Eno’s concert featured words from Ben Jamal, Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign: “I want you to look into the mirror and ask yourself ‘what did I do when Gaza was going through a genocide?’” For some, the answer is “very little”, and – as with self-censoring media personalities – the reason why lies in the threat to careers.
One cautionary tale is that of Melissa Barrera – a star of the horror film franchise Scream – who was fired from her role in the next instalment of that series for posting on social media about the horrors of Gaza. Then there’s left wing stalwart Susan Sarandon, who was dropped by her Hollywood agency after speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally.
Despite such pressures, those who stayed mum on Gaza during the Global Citizen event might do well to reflect on Jamal’s words. No amount of spin and omission will ultimately obscure the fact that this is genocide, and that they chose to ignore it.
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An Adelaide-based graduate in Media Studies, with a Masters in Social Policy, I was an editor who covered current affairs, local government and sports for various publications before deciding on a change-of-vocation in 2002.