This war began on October 7, 2023, with the massacre of 378 young people at the Nova music festival—artists and dreamers slaughtered for "the crime of being Jewish" and dancing under the desert sky. Now the cultural world has decided the victims were the problem.
The irony cuts like a rusty knife through silk. Right now, at The Edinburgh International Festival—the same festival founded in 1947 by Sir Rudolf Bing, an Austrian-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany—Jewish comedians are being cancelled for the revolutionary act of existing.
The Final Final Solution
(Video: Hadar Galron)
Bing's first invited artists were German; he envisioned "healing the wounds of war through art"—a gesture of reconciliation. He couldn't have imagined a more perverted scenario than cancelling Jews at his festival.
The cancellation epidemic spreads like digital wildfire
Philip Simon and Rachel Creeger, British Jewish artists, had their Edinburgh Fringe shows axed—not for political content, mind you, but because venues deemed their mere Jewish presence "incompatible with our stance against the current Israeli government."
Because nothing says "principled political stance" like punishing people for existing, right?
Israeli DJ Skazi was yanked from Belgium's Tomorrowland hours before performing due to "security considerations"—apparently, his Israeli passport posed a grave threat to electronic music. The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival banned Jewish-American cartoonist Miriam Libicki over her past IDF service, issuing an "accountability statement" declaring her presence created "public safety concerns" for those "directly affected by the ongoing genocide in Palestine."
Canada axed the Hamilton Jewish Film Festival after complaints that Israeli-produced films constitute "Zionist propaganda." Because clearly, Jewish filmmakers discussing their grandmother's challah recipe are secret agents of imperialism.
And in Edinburgh's Leith neighborhood—now proudly declared a "Zionist-Free Zone"—local organizers threaten to "take the fight from the streets into our workplaces." How wonderfully efficient: they've turned a Scottish neighborhood into a Jew-free district. The Nuremberg Laws would be so proud of this progressive rebranding.
The damning double standard: A masterclass in selective outrage
When did you last hear of an Iranian artist being boycotted? Despite Tehran executing musicians like Toomaj Salehi and banning women from singing solo, Iranian artists face zero cultural exclusion in the West. Chinese artists perform to standing ovations while their government commits actual genocide against Uyghurs. Russian artists faced limited sanctions after Ukraine's invasion—nothing approaching the systematic boycotts targeting Jews.
The selectivity is so brazen it's almost artistic. Artists from actual dictatorships get red carpet treatment while Jewish comedians performing mother-in-law jokes get security warnings.
The weaponization of culture: When art abandons its sacred mission
In Berlin's clubs, "anti-Zionist" has become code for "no Jews allowed." Thirty artists pulled out of Barcelona's Sónar festival over tenuous Israeli business connections while cheerfully ignoring Chinese surveillance technology or Iranian oil money funding other events.
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A pro-Palestinian demonstration in Berlin, Germany
(Photo: Adam Berry / Getty Images)
But here's what breaks my heart as an artist: our mission—like it or not—is to bridge and heal, to seek new perspectives, to go beyond "this" world to a zone of freedom and love. We exist to express what is suppressed. When art is weaponized, when culture becomes a tool of exclusion and hatred, what is left?
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This isn't Palestinian solidarity—it's making Jewish exclusion socially acceptable again. The radical Islamist social media machine has successfully convinced much of the West that Jewish participation in cultural life is violent, that Jewish presence requires special "security considerations." They've perverted art, transforming spaces meant for transcendence into battlegrounds for ancient prejudices.
The ultimate irony: A study in moral bankruptcy
Hamas leaders sip tea in Qatari mansions while Gaza's children starve in tunnels built with aid money that could have created a Mediterranean paradise. Yet somehow, this too becomes the Jews' fault.
The UN's recent French-Saudi "Two-State Conference" demands the "de-radicalization of Israeli education"—because teaching Jewish history apparently requires re-education camps. This while 31 U.S. states don't require Holocaust education, most Arab countries have historically excluded it from curricula, and some nations have recently removed Holocaust materials from schools.
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An excerpt from a Palestinian 7th-grade school textbook shows a masked youth aiming a slingshot at Israeli soldiers as part of a physics lesson explaining Newton’s second law of motion
Meanwhile, Palestinian textbooks continue to teach children that their life's sacred mission is killing Jews. Where's the cultural boycott over that curriculum?
A modest proposal: Consistency as revolutionary concept
Here's a radical idea that might just work: Let's apply the same standards to all countries. Execute musicians? Boycott. Ban women from singing? Boycott. Commit actual genocide? Boycott.
But that would require actual principles instead of fashionable prejudices, and we can't have that disrupting the moral theater.
The sleepwalk toward disaster
What's scary is that the Woke West is sleepwalking toward a reality where ancient hatred masquerades as human rights activism. In trying to create "safe spaces" free of Jewish influence, these moral crusaders have created the most dangerous spaces of all—venues where an entire people can be collectively punished for the crime of existing.
A light in the darkness to contrast this cowardice is Estonia's Freedom Festival, where I'll be performing "THE FINAL FINAL SOLUTION" on August 18. Here's what actual principles look like: Estonia's Freedom Festival celebrates both Jewish and Muslim voices together in the same program. The festival features performers from nearly ten countries, including Pakistan, Turkey, Georgia, Kuwait and Kyrgyzstan, alongside Jewish artists—imagine that, Jews and Muslims sharing the same stage with no moral panic or "security concerns!"
The tragedy isn't just that antisemitism has been rebranded as justice. It's how long before Europe realizes what it's become? How long before it's too late for all of us?
Because nothing says "never again" like making it happen again, with better PR this time.
First published: 19:44, 08.05.25