An Open Letter to ARTBAT: Ahead of Your Show in Zouk Mikael, 26 September 2026
You have performed in Israel several times, most recently in Tel Aviv in 2023, the very year that saw an unprecedented escalation of Israel’s assault on Gaza, which only months after your visit developed into what has been documented before the world as a genocidal campaign.
And now, you are coming to Lebanon — a country whose South remains under ongoing Israeli ground occupation and attack, where homes, land, trees, and human lives continue to be systematically destroyed. Thousands have been killed in this aggression since October 2023. The latest wave of escalation alone, since the beginning of last March, has claimed more than 4,000 lives and wounded over 12,000 people, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, not to mention the thousands of homes and vital infrastructure wiped off the map in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the South, and the Bekaa.
As you prepare for your show, do you realize where you are coming?
You are stepping onto land where Israeli surveillance aircraft and drones still fly over people’s heads day and night. Land where people are still being buried beneath the rubble, while families count their dead every single day. Land whose airspace, sovereignty, and national security are violated openly, in full view of the world and without consequence.
So we ask you, as people whose rights and lives are directly at stake: what is your human position on the blood being spilled in the very place where you are coming to perform? Who do you stand with when the choice is between a people being annihilated and an occupying power that kills them?
Art cannot claim neutrality while ignoring the reality around it. And silence is not neutral when you stand on the victim’s land while saying nothing about the force attacking them.
Simply “showing up” in a country that is being bombed and occupied, after having performed in the heart of the occupying state, is not a neutral act. It is a position in itself.
And our people will understand it for what it is: complicity through silence.
We are waiting for a statement from you, not a song.