Antelias, Lebanon 1956 – Beirut, Lebanon 2025 I am yet to mourn the passing of the great Lebanese composer, lyricist, playwright, and political activist Ziad Rahbani (1956-2025). For another, I knew Ziad personally, after we met in Beirut in 1998….

I was about to begin my performance in Salisbury last Saturday 2nd November when I heard the shocking news of the arrest of Haim Bresheeth, a child of Holocaust survivors and the founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine. The…

Many of you might be rather surprised and disturbed by the difficulties we encountered in the organising of my concert in Bath last month. Without the dogged and determined efforts over several years of a local community group, Bath Friends…

Poetry: Refaat Alareer (1979-2023); Music: Reem Kelani Whilst I was in hospital over Christmas and New Year, I kept on reading aloud the last poem that Refaat Alareer wrote before he was assassinated by Israel in Gaza. The melody would…

If you support genocide, you have no right to complain about people disliking you for it. If you support genocide and you happen to be Jewish, you have no right to weaponise anti-Semitism against your critics. You bear responsibility for…

It’s no longer a “retaliatory attack”. It stopped being that before it had begun. It’s a genocide, no longer plausible nor probable. A genocide: pure and simple. For seven long months, the killing has been without relent. It’s no longer…