Read Orphaned Land’s open letter to Bob Vylan and Kneecap

Kobi Farhi, from Israeli Metal Band Orphaned Land has posted an open letter to Bob Vylan and Kneecap on his Facebook Page and Instagram. 

The band are known for using their music to promote peace and unity, shunning calls for artistic boycotts and collaborating with artists who may be considered “enemies” by their respective leaders, including taking Palestinian band Khalas out on their 2013 European Tour and sharing their Metal Hammer Golden God Award with them.

The statement reads as follows:

Since the war began, I’ve mostly stayed away from social media. It’s toxic, polarised, and ultimately, meaningless. Billions of words are thrown into the void, but nothing changes. No minds are opened. No lives are saved.

But after what I saw at Glastonbury Festival, historically a place of peace and love, I wanted to say something. Not about the conflict, but about us as musicians and what we can do about it. Musicians are my peers, people with big hearts and good intentions. But sometimes, good intentions go wrong.

I’ve seen artists, activists, and outsiders take bold, divisive stances, many without ever walking this land. Pro-Palestinian, Pro-Israeli, Pro-Israeli Arabs, Pro-Palestinian Jews, everyone shouting, few listening. I get the instinct. The urge to speak up, to do something. But being blindly one-sided won’t bring peace. It only fuels the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer.

Worse, some seem to exploit the pain by turning it into theatre. Provocation gets you clicks, headlines, streams. But those performances don’t end suffering. They deepen it. They weaken the voices of the moderates, the bridge-builders, the pragmatists who might one day lead us out of this darkness.

Your actions will do nothing other than foster eternal hate. There are millions of Israelis and Palestinians living on these lands, and the only way to work this out would be to learn, to overcome, to understand that we have the ability to grow and live together.

I was born into this conflict in 1975. I’ve lived through every chapter, watched my father fight, heard the stories of pain from my Palestinian brothers, run to bomb shelters with my kids, receive hate from my own people for showing love to “the enemy,” cried for lost friends, and written songs of hope for over three decades. I know this pain. I know this land.

With Orphaned Land, we’ve chosen dialogue over division. We’ve toured with Arab and Muslim bands, lived on a bus with a Palestinian band across Europe, shared awards and stages, and built bridges – tiny, fragile, but real. This is not a PR stunt. It’s our life’s work. It’s peace in practice.

And yet, you likely haven’t heard of it. Because hate goes viral. Hatred trends. But love? Love takes time. It’s quieter. It’s harder. But it’s the only way.

This war has gone on for a hundred years, and by now it should be clear that being aggressively one-sided doesn’t make you on the “right side of history”, it just makes peace harder. 

Yitzchak Rabin – the former head of the IDF – and Yasser Arafat – the leader of what started as a terror organisation – lay down their arms and shook hands because of dialogue, to make the dream of peace a reality. It was extremism that killed that dream.

It’s time to dream again. 

Peace won’t be perfect. It won’t satisfy everyone. It won’t come with slogans or an increase in streams. But it will give our children a future. 

Love,

Kobi Farhi

Photos of me in a keffiyeh, just two of many. I’ve worn it since 1994, long before it became a symbol of trend.