The latest UK lobby group is organising a ‘culture workers march’.
The German countertenor Andreas Scholl is troubled by it. He writes:
Open letter in response to the statement of “Classical music for Palestine”.
The devastation in Gaza is undeniable. The loss of life, the displacement of families, and the destruction of an entire region demand our grief and our outrage. As musicians, we cannot remain indifferent to human suffering. But the collective statement now circulating in our field suffers from a troubling blind spot: it denies Palestinians their own political agency.
The statement condemns Israel and Western governments in the strongest terms. Yet it never once mentions Hamas — the group that governs Gaza, that carried out the October 7th massacre, and that still holds Israeli civilians hostage while openly proclaiming its goal of eradicating Jews. By omitting Hamas, the statement frames Palestinians only as passive victims of outside powers. This is not solidarity. It is discrimination disguised as compassion.
To treat Palestinians as incapable of responsibility is to infantilize them. They are not merely objects of history, acted upon by Israel and the West; they are also subjects of history, with the power to make political choices — including the choice of leaders. Hamas did not emerge out of thin air. It was elected. Ignoring this fact strips Palestinians of dignity and denies them the same political accountability we demand of Israelis, Europeans, and Americans.
True solidarity means expecting more, not less. It means calling on Hamas to release hostages, to end its campaign of terror, and to abandon its genocidal rhetoric. Criticizing Hamas is not an attack on the Palestinian people. On the contrary, it is an affirmation that they deserve better leadership than one that trades their suffering for its own survival. Only when Palestinians are seen as political actors — not eternal victims — can genuine change and justice begin.
Yes, Israel’s response has been catastrophic, killing and displacing far more people than were murdered on October 7th. Netanyahu’s government deserves fierce condemnation for flattening Gaza into rubble. But to condemn only Israel while remaining silent on Hamas is to distort the truth. It reduces a complex and tragic conflict into a morality play of “oppressors” and “oppressed” that denies Palestinians the dignity of responsibility.
If our community wishes to take a stand, let it be one rooted in honesty. That means holding all sides accountable. Anything less is selective blindness, and it risks turning artists into mouthpieces for ideology rather than advocates for justice. To deny Palestinians their political agency is not solidarity — it is hypocrisy.
The post An artist’s response to Classical Music for Palestine appeared first on Slippedisc.
