Celebrities Boycott Israel Over Gaza

Global Artists Step Up Pressure on Israel Amid Gaza Crisis

With Western governments hesitant to impose major economic sanctions, musicians, actors, and writers are turning to public pressure to push for action.

“There is absolutely no doubt that globally, we’re at a tipping point,” British actor Khalid Abdalla, known for The Kite Runner and The Crown, told AFP after signing a petition calling for a boycott of certain Israeli cinema institutions.

The petition, led by Film Workers for Palestine, has drawn thousands of supporters, including Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix, who have vowed to cut ties with any Israeli organizations “implicated in genocide.”

“The wave is happening now, and it’s spreading across all spheres—not just the film industry,” Abdalla added in a Friday interview.

The growing movement was on display at this week’s Emmy Awards, where winners such as Javier Bardem and Hacks actor Hannah Einbinder spoke out about Gaza, echoing similar statements made at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month.

British trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack announced on Thursday that they were joining a music collective called No Music for Genocide, aimed at blocking the streaming of artists’ songs in Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel is facing potential boycotts at the Eurovision Song Contest, and authors and politicians, including Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, are pushing to exclude the country from sports events. Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov recently declared in Britain that he would no longer perform in his homeland.

Experts see parallels with past boycott movements. “We are seeing a situation comparable to the anti-apartheid boycotts of South Africa,” said Hakan Thorn, a Swedish sociologist at the University of Gothenburg who has studied South Africa’s boycott movement. “The spring of this year, after the world saw images of famine in Gaza, marked a clear shift.”

Concerns Over Anti-Semitism

The South African boycott of the 1960s and ’70s began after police massacred black protesters in Sharpeville and eventually included artists and sports teams refusing to engage with the regime. Public figures today have been cautious in speaking out about Gaza. Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed more than 65,000 people, mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Thorn notes that fears of being labeled antisemitic have complicated efforts to mobilize against Israel. “The Holocaust’s history and criticisms that pro-Palestinian activism is antisemitic have been serious obstacles,” he said.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, now 20 years old, targets Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territory. The Israeli government frequently calls BDS supporters antisemitic, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labeling critics as “Hamas sympathizers.”

David Feldman, head of the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck College, said this rhetoric has blurred the lines of what constitutes antisemitism. “Any eruption of antisemitism is concerning, but equating the boycott movement with antisemitism misses the point,” he told AFP. “It is a form of protest against Israel’s destruction of Gaza.”

Lessons from History

While the anti-apartheid movement inspires today’s activists, history offers a cautionary tale. The boycott of South Africa took decades to achieve results, showing the limits of international pressure alone. “By the early 1970s, boycott was the defining principle of the global anti-apartheid movement, but it wasn’t enough on its own,” Feldman said. The decisive factor came from economic pressure and international isolation.

Inside Israel, artists remain divided. Acclaimed screenwriter Hagai Levi, creator of Scenes from a Marriage and The Affair, told AFP that “90 percent of people in the artistic community” oppose the war. “They’re struggling, and boycotting them is actually weakening them.”