Why Americana UK is “banging on” about Palestine all the time

And why we’re not intending to stop any time soon.

Over the previous weekend, one of our writers forwarded me an email around keeping up the pressure on the government to immediately implement a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel, and asked: “Can’t we just wear our heart on our sleeves and promote, encourage these actions on the site? Just feckin’ mental what’s going on.” Those of you who are regular readers will know that we have touched on the issue a number of times – note Keith Hargreaves’ recent Shed column – and offer a weekly reminder to support the cause. However, we do get some pushback for it, most recently for apparently “banging on“, so I wanted to spend a few minutes explaining why we are still talking about Palestine on a music website.

Firstly, we know what AUK readers are like broadly speaking from our annual poll, from the comments and feedback we get throughout the year and from the fact that, well, in my admittedly unscientific experience, people who enjoy Americana music (and this is admittedly different to the Daily Mail reading parts of the mainstream so-called “country” crowd) tend to be sensible and just generally nice human beings. And this isn’t a party-political issue as more people from across the spectrum add their voices to those appalled at developments over the last 18 months, though not enough, of course, for anyone in government to do something about it. So we have an engaged audience and a platform, and as so many people have noted – including, of course, the UK’s Gary Lineker recently – silence does very much feel like complicity. Some of the best music journalism over the years has taken a stand on politics – we’re thinking Rolling Stone in particular, but there’s a broader swathe of publications such as NME, Pitchfork and, at the other end of things, Mixmag, which have carried progressive political content in recent times. As we have noted before on these pages, americana’s roots in the likes of Hank Williams, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash have been around standing with people who don’t have a voice.

And let’s be clear: the people of Palestine are being erased in front of our eyes. I have lived 52 years on this planet, and my own view is that there has never been anything like this in my lifetime – a genocide not just live-streamed but where the perpetrators walk you through what they’re doing step by step without the slightest bit of shame. Watching night after night pictures of children literally being bombed to death or burned alive, people being killed while queuing for food, emergency workers being killed for doing their jobs – how many of us have lost count of the number of times we have raged in grief with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. Of course, there are many bad things happening the world over, but none to this extent where we as a country are supporting and funding the ongoing massacre. (As a website which references two countries in its title, we recognise the malignant influence both have had on the region over the last century). And this is the thing – unlike, say what’s happening in, for instance, Sudan at the moment, this is something we can do something about – recognise Palestine now, stop all arms sales, stop trading with Israel and put proper sanctions on the government – you know, what we did with South Africa (whose apartheid regime incidentally were notably close to the Israeli government), what both Bush Sr and Reagan did back in the 1980s with Israel, and what we are doing right now with Russia.

To anyone who says, “Er… October 7th“, you would have to be functionally illiterate or wilfully blind in terms of any understanding of modern history to think that this started on that date. You do not have to approve of Hamas’ actions on that date, well documented as involving war crimes by Amnesty, to understand that this didn’t start in October 2023 – and it’s as well to think of what the British reaction might be had we had occupying forces present since the 1940s. Yes, Hamas should release all the hostages, and Israel should release the hundreds of children incarcerated in their prisons, some for years. There are myths and untruths around the Israelis having “no partner for peace“, which are too numerous to go into here, but I can recommend this page on the Decolonize Palestine website if you want to explore them in more detail.

We are not a monolithic group of writers here on AUK, and accordingly, I can’t speak for every one of us – but what I can say is that there is agreement that, as a website, our progressive outlook is at the core of our identity. The late John Pilger many years ago said that “Palestine is still the issue“, and this has sadly never been more true. It’s the great moral issue of our times, and as the imagined video illustrates below, individuals, organisations, and governments will be remembered for where they stood on it. This is where we stand, firstly, of course, with the Palestinians, but also with the brave activists, many of them Jewish, both within Israel and around the world, and we’ll continue to speak up about it. We urge artists within the Americana community with an audience who, with notable exceptions, have remained largely silent, to speak up more. If you are one of the few readers who this irks, well, hey – it’s still an overall very small part of our content, but if it really causes you that much grief, as sad as we are to lose any readers, other Americana sites are available.

Please support the political campaign for recognising a Palestinian state and much-needed charities such as Medical Aid for Palestinians. And if you are based in the UK, there are petitions to stop arming Israel by Oxfam and Greenpeace you can add your name to. Solidarity to everyone in the battle for a fairer world. Free Palestine.

A quick note – the above video has bizarrely been tagged as “white genocide conspiracy theory” by YouTube when it’s clearly nothing to do with this.