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British Band Denies Support for Yahya Sinwar After Showing Footage of Late Hamas Leader at UK Concert
Hamas leader and Oct. 7 pogrom mastermind Yahya Sinwar addressing a rally in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/braheem Abu Mustafa
The British trip-hop group Massive Attack released a statement on Monday in response to controversy surrounding a video montage it displayed at a recent concert in the United Kingdom that included footage of the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel
“Massive Attack categorically reject any suggestion that footage or reportage used as part of an artistic digital collage in our live show seeks to glorify or celebrate any featured subject,” the Bristol-based band — who are avid critics of Israel – said in a statement shared on social media. “To isolate a single section of reportage from the artistic context within which it sits – a digital array that spans a wide variety of issues and themes … – is tantamount to a willful device to create conditions for misinterpretation, or distortion.”
Massive Attack headlined LIDO Festival on Friday night at London’s Victoria Park and during their set, they showcased a video montage reportedly titled “Open the doors to the merchants of death.” It included real-life footage of Sinwar’s family members, including the late terrorist leader himself, walking through a Hamas terror tunnel underneath the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10, 2023.
Sinwar orchestrated the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack that took place three days earlier in southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were murdered and 251 others were taken as hostages back to Gaza. Sinwar was killed during an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in October 2024. The footage of Sinwar and his family members walking through the Hamas tunnel that Massive Attack showcased on Friday night was released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) last year.
Alex Gandler, deputy spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the band’s display of the footage was “just disgusting.”
“People have completely lost the plot,” he wrote in a post on X. “They are aligning themselves with the worst humans. not [sic] even hiding their hatred anymore.”
Massive Attack said in its statement on Monday that the film loop featuring footage of Sinwar “interplays with scenes from Jean Cocteau’s film ‘Orpheus,’ creating both a placement and implicit tone of horrified lament; that an individual of power can take people down into hell.”
“It would be bizarre (and perhaps revealing) that any observer of the live show films would solely home in on the Sinwar/IDF footage and completely overlook all other controversial figures featured in the reportage loops,” the group added. “Would ‘x’ observer suggest we sought to glorify Vladimir Putin, who appears in four loops? Or Donald Trump, who appears in several? Or J. Edgar Hoover? Or indeed the IDF soldiers who feature in the exact same location reportage as the Yahya Sinwar footage cited by various social media accounts? Unfortunately, the only reasonable conclusion is that this level of deliberate context removal, and such a leap of misinterpretation, has political motivations.”
Massive Attack concluded by claiming that artists who “consistently speak out against Israeli war crimes, apartheid, and human rights abuses, and in defense of the Palestinian people” face “determined and spurious attempts to discredit us, as a deterrent to us from speaking out.”
They stated: “These spurious attempts will always fail.”
Massive Attack has participated in a cultural boycott of Israel since 1999. During their show on Friday night, the group also displayed on the screen on stage a video message calling for the release of Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti. The secretary general of the Fatah movement in the West Bank was arrested by Israel in 2002 and is serving five life terms for the murder of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada.
The band showed footage of the arrested Palestinian political leader declaring that “security will be achieved by one way: by peace.” Massive Attack then displayed an alleged quote by Nelson Mandela from 2002. Barghouti’s lawyer at the time quoted Mandela as saying: “What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me.” Afterwards, an image of a massive Palestinian flag adorned the screen along with the message “Free Palestine.” Several Palestinian flags were also waved by audience members throughout the performance.
Massive Attack was also joined on stage during their set at the LIDO Festival by actor and activist Khalid Abdalla and American rapper Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def. Abdalla, who was introduced as a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, rallied the crowd to make some noise “if you want your favorite artists to stand up for Palestine.” He also claimed that the Palestine solidarity movement is “the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement [and] the anti-genocide movement of our time in which ‘never again’ means never again for anyone.” Abdalla was referencing the “Never Again” slogan that is commonly used to commemorate the Holocaust and as a pledge to ensure that similar atrocities will not happen again.
“Dance for freedom and a free, free Palestine,” Abdalla shouted at the audience who gathered at the Massive Attack performance on Friday night. He also reportedly called for an immediate ceasefire to end the Israel-Hamas war and the distribution of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, according to NME.
A day before their performance at the Lido Festival, Massive Attack played in Manchester’s Co-Op Live. Before their set, they released a statement condemning the arena’s new corporate sponsorship deal with Barclays, claiming it has a “profoundly unethical corporate identity” because of its alleged “billions of dollars of investments in arms companies that supply Israel in its genocidal onslaught of Gaza, and war crimes in the West Bank.”
The band said after its insistence, owners of Co-Op Live agreed to remove from the arena all physical and digital Barclays livery and logos and on Massive Attack’s show page on the arena website. The group also added that “no show tickets will go to Barclays.”
The post British Band Denies Support for Yahya Sinwar After Showing Footage of Late Hamas Leader at UK Concert first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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French Officials Replant Olive Trees to Honor Murdered Jew Ilan Halimi After Vandalized Memorial
A crowd gathers at the Jardin Ilan Halimi in Paris on Feb. 14, 2021, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Halimi’s kidnapping and murder. Photo: Reuters/Xose Bouzas/Hans Lucas
More than a month and a half after the olive tree planted to honor Ilan Halimi was vandalized and cut down, French authorities are continuing efforts to replant olive trees in memory of the young Jewish man who was brutally tortured to death in 2006.
On Tuesday, local officials unveiled a commemorative plaque in the garden of Paris City Hall and planted a new tree to honor Halimi’s memory.
“This tree is a symbol of life,” said Ariel Weil, mayor of Paris Centre. “Next year will mark the tragic 20th anniversary of Ilan Halimi’s murder.”
“At the time, he was barely a young man. At 23, full of passion and the energy of youth, he pursued the promise of love — but met a tragic death instead,” Weil continued. “With this tree, however, it is Ilan Halimi’s life that is being planted in our garden.”
Last week, the southern French town of Pollestres also planted a new olive tree in honor of Halimi, calling it “a symbol of peace and remembrance” and a stand against hatred and antisemitism.
“We aim to promote values against barbarism, racism, and antisemitism, and I must say that right now, there is a climate of hatred between communities,” said Jean-Charles Moriconi, the town’s mayor.
“I believe that to unite everyone, we need gestures like this — proof that when something is torn down or destroyed, it will be replanted,” he continued.
Last month, French authorities planted the first olive tree in Saint-Ouen, a northern suburb of Paris in the Île-de-France region, two weeks after Halimi’s previous memorial was vandalized.
Hervé Chevreau, mayor of the northern Paris suburb Épinay, announced that several olive trees will be replanted in Halimi’s memory, praising “a remarkable outpouring of solidarity” reflected in the donations.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — praised these gestures as a powerful symbol of “the deep roots of the Jewish people in the [French Republic], and in the history of France,” saying that “no one will be able to uproot them.”
Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Three weeks later, he was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.
In 2011, an olive tree was planted in Halimi’s memory. In August, the memorial was found felled — probably with a chainsaw — in Epinay-sur-Seine.
Halimi’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne.
Shortly after this latest attack, two 19-year-old Tunisian twin brothers, undocumented and with prior convictions for theft and violence, were arrested for allegedly vandalizing and cutting down Halimi’s memorial.
Both brothers appeared in criminal court and were remanded in custody pending their trial, scheduled for Oct. 22.
They will face trial on charges of “aggravated destruction of property” and “desecration of a monument dedicated to the memory of the dead on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion,” offenses that, according to prosecutors, carry a sentence of up to two years in prison.
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Israel Diverts Gaza Flotilla Ships, Says ‘Greta Thunberg Safe’
Sailing boats, part of the Global Sumud Flotilla aiming to reach Gaza and break Israel’s naval blockade, sail off Koufonisi islet, Greece, Sept. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stefanos Rapanis
Several vessels of the international flotilla heading to Gaza have been stopped and their passengers are being transferred to an Israeli port, the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate campaigner, and her friends are “safe and healthy,” the foreign ministry said in a post on X alongside a video that appeared to show Thunberg and several masked and armed Israeli military personnel.
The flotilla’s organizers said that Israeli military personnel intercepted and boarded the ships, which aim to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza — the Palestinian enclave that has been ruled by the terrorist group Hamas for nearly two decades — and deliver some aid there.
Some 20 vessels were seen approaching the flotilla earlier on Wednesday night, multiple people on board said, as passengers put on life vests and braced for a takeover.
“Multiple vessels … were illegally intercepted and boarded by Israeli Occupation Forces in international waters,” the organizers said in a statement. “We are diligently working to account for all participants and crew.”
It said that its communications were jammed before boarding began, which interfered with cameras that were providing live streams from various boats and communications between vessels.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, which consists of more than 40 civilian boats carrying about 500 parliamentarians, lawyers, and activists including Thunberg, is trying to break Israel‘s blockade despite repeated warnings from Israel to turn back.
It is about 70 nautical miles off the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, inside a zone that Israel is policing to stop any boats approaching.
A live video feed from one of the boats in the flotilla showed passengers in life vests sitting on deck.
It is not clear how many of the boats had been intercepted or stopped. Some passengers said their vessels continued to advance.
Organizers remained defiant, saying in the statement that the flotilla “will continue undeterred.”
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about intercepting the vessels.
Its foreign ministry earlier said the navy had warned the flotilla it was approaching an active combat zone and violating a lawful blockade, and asked them to change course.
The ministry said that it reiterated the offer to transfer any aid peacefully through safe channels to Gaza.
TRYING TO BREAK THE BLOCKADE
The flotilla is the latest sea-borne attempt to break Israel‘s blockade of Gaza.
The flotilla had been hoping to arrive in Gaza on Thursday morning if it was not intercepted.
This was the second time the flotilla was approached on Wednesday. Before dawn, the mission’s organizers said two Israeli “warships” had approached fast and encircled two of the flotilla’s boats. All navigation and communication devices went down in what one organizer on board described as a “cyber attack.”
A video post on the flotilla’s Instagram page showed the silhouette of what appeared to be a military vessel with a gun turret near the civilian boats.
Reuters confirmed that the video was filmed from the flotilla, but could not confirm the identity of the other vessel in the video or when the video was taken.
Last week members of the flotilla claimed the mission was attacked by drones, which reportedly dropped stun grenades and itching powder on the vessels, causing damage but no injuries.
Israel did not comment on that attack, but has said it will use any means to prevent the boats from reaching Gaza, arguing that its naval blockade is legal as it battles Hamas terrorists in the coastal enclave.
Italy and Spain deployed naval ships to help with any rescue or humanitarian needs but stopped following the flotilla once it got within 150 nautical miles (278 km) of Gaza for safety reasons. Turkish drones have also followed the boats.
Italy and Greece on Wednesday jointly called on Israel not to hurt the activists aboard and called on the flotilla to hand over its aid to the Catholic Church for indirect delivery to Gaza – a plea the flotilla has previously rejected.
Israeli officials have repeatedly denounced the mission as a stunt.
“This systematic refusal [to hand over the aid] demonstrates that the objective is not humanitarian, but provocative. They are not seeking to help, they are seeking an incident,” Jonathan Peled, the Israeli ambassador to Italy, said in a post on X.
PAST ATTEMPTS TO DELIVER AID
Israel has imposed a naval blockade on Gaza since Hamas took control of the coastal enclave in 2007 and there have been several previous attempts by activists to deliver aid by sea.
In 2010, nine activists were killed after Israeli soldiers boarded a flotilla of six ships manned by 700 pro-Palestinian activists from 50 countries.
In June this year, Israeli naval forces detained Thunberg and 11 crew members from a small ship organized by a pro-Palestinian group called the Freedom Flotilla Coalition as they approached Gaza.
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FBI Cuts Ties With Anti-Defamation League, FBI Director Says
FBI Director Kash Patel attends the signing of an executive order by US President Donald Trump on a deal that would divest TikTok’s US operations from ByteDance from its Chinese owner ByteDance, at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The FBI said on Wednesday it had cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish group that tracks antisemitism, after Republicans criticized the group for including slain activist Charlie Kirk’s organization in a glossary on extremism.
In a social media post, FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau “won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”
The ADL did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately clear what sort of ties the FBI had with the ADL.
Patel’s announcement followed criticism of the ADL by right-wing activists and leaders, including billionaire Elon Musk, over its inclusion of Kirk’s Turning Point USA in a “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” on its website. Kirk was assassinated on a college campus in September.
After that criticism, the ADL removed the entire glossary from its website. The glossary had said that Turning Point USA had a history of “bigoted statements,” a charge the group rejects.