Four ravers intimately embrace next to a speaker on a wooded dance floor, one of them sporting a red Palestinian scarf and a green headband inscribed with the Islamic declaration of faith as worn by Hamas terrorists.
The moment was captured in a photo at the Sustain Release Festival in September in New York, posted on Instagram by Alyce Currier, one of the four and, according to the festival website, its “artist coordinator.” Currier also DJs under the name Lychee and was previously a committee member of the now defunct royalty-sharing platform Aslice, launched by techno legend DVS1.
The photo at Sustain Release was taken just three weeks before the first anniversary of the deadliest attack against a music event in history. On October 7, 2023, heavily armed Hamas terrorists, donning the green headbands that have become their trademark, stormed the Supernova music festival in Israel’s South, murdering at least 364 people and kidnapping 38 of them to Gaza.
Numerous Nova survivors recounted witnessing rapes and sexual violence. Some victims were found with their underwear removed or their legs spread. Several attendees are still in captivity in Gaza, while many other survivors suffer from severe mental health issues, some even reportedly having taken their own lives.
Yet their fates find little resonance in an electronic music scene that is increasingly celebrating the Hamas-led attacks as legitimate resistance. Just a week after, on October 15, the New York club The End hosted a pro-Palestinian benefit party they called an “Intifada fundraver” which featured a video still of Hamas breaking through the border fence on its promo poster.
And in February 2024, New York activists launched the campaign “DJs Against Apartheid,” which calls the “armed resistance” of October 7 a “natural” and “inevitable” reaction, criticizing its “demonization.”
DJs Against Apartheid has so far been supported by over 3,000 DJs worldwide. In addition to Lychee, big names such as Objekt and Ogazón have signed its statement. The campaign was promoted on Instagram with a quote by one DJ which reads: “Glory to the martyrs, bless the Axis of Resistance” – in reference to Iran’s term for its anti-Israel alliance which includes Hamas and Hezbollah.
Such statements are, in theory, antithetical to the values of the electronic music scene. House and techno emerged in the 1980s and ’90s with a progressive, utopian outlook. Clubs strived to be spaces in which myriad identities could flourish; the music was often linked to black and queer emancipation. “You may be black, you may be white; you may be Jew or Gentile. It don’t make a difference in our house,” rang a famous line of Rhythm Control’s 1987 anthem “My House.”
Mourning Nova victims, however, has been a rarity within the scene over the past 15 months – and has even been met with resistance. When an exhibition, organized by the Nova team and other survivors and featuring burned-out cars and bullet-ridden porta-loos from the site, opened in New York in June, it was met with a counterdemonstration featuring pyrotechnics and “intifada” chants. One activist justified the protest on X by writing that Nova was a “rave next to a concentration camp.”
In October, pro-Palestinian DJs in Berlin launched a social media campaign against a memorial event at the club About Blank to mark the first anniversary of the attack. Lara Golz, who performs under the name Golden Medusa and was a regular at the now defunct party series Leisure System in Berghain, encouraged her followers on Instagram to pressure the influential online portal Resident Advisor into deleting the event listing.
“It’s disgusting that this platform won’t take down Zionist events like this,” Golz wrote on Instagram, adding vomit emojis. She accused the memorial event, which mentioned “numerous testimonies of rape and sexual abuse” in its description, of spreading “genocidal lies that have been debunked months ago.”
In another post showing masked, armed men flying by paraglider, highly reminiscent of Hamas’s attack on October 7, Golz wrote in capitals: “Resistance is the deepest form of love.”
Resident Advisor partly caved in to the campaign. In an email to the event organizers, seen by The Jerusalem Post, it requested that any mention of sexual violence be removed from the event’s description, as it could “trigger” some people, which the organizers refused.
“Our intention was to remember the innocent victims and hostages of Hamas’s attack, because they are almost completely ignored within the scene,” the DJ Phonatic, one of the event organizers, explained to the Post. “Instead, antisemitic, Islamist terror is being justified and even celebrated.”
“In line with our moderation process, our community team contacted the promoter directly, after we received multiple customer complaints regarding the event listing,” a representative for Resident Advisor told the Post. “As the event did not breach our policies, we shared the details of the complaints with the promoter, with a request to edit the copy, without obligation or enforcement. The event, which was held in October, remains on the platform in its original form, without edits made to the copy.”
Such incidents have left many Israeli artists feeling isolated.
“We were very naive to think that we are a part of something global as an Israeli electronic music scene,” Adi Shabat, a resident DJ at the internationally celebrated but now defunct Tel Aviv club The Block, said. “If what happened on October 7 would have happened anywhere else in the world, the global electronic music community, including in Israel, would have done whatever it could to help.”
Since the 1990s, Shabat has been a staple of the Israeli scene, founding and editing the Israeli DJ Mag and establishing the label and booking agency Spam. She considers herself a leftist and fierce critic of the Netanyahu government. And as the Israeli prime minister tried to push through a controversial justice reform last year, Shabat relocated to Thailand, she explained on the phone from Koh Samui – a break from the political situation in Israel, she said.
But Shabat feels that the anti-Israeli chorus within the global scene fails to differentiate. “A lot of my friends have problems getting gigs abroad now,” she said. “They are punishing Israeli artists because of the actions of the government, and that’s horrific. Jews are feeling the heat again – it’s become trendy.”
Yaron Trax, founder of The Block, lost his friend and former sound technician Matan Lior on October 7, who was murdered at Nova. His charred remains could only be positively identified weeks later. Over the years, Trax has brought some of the biggest international names in electronic dance music to Israel. But since October 7, they have been almost unanimously silent, he said.
“People are afraid to talk about Nova, even international DJs that used to play here on a regular basis,” Trax said. “They are terrified for their careers.”
Some Israeli artists are still accepted by the global scene, but only so long as they do not mention Nova or the hostages, he continued.
Trax is currently organizing a Block festival in the Negev. But booking artists remains a challenge, and this applies even to some Israeli acts who live abroad. “They are afraid they won’t get gigs elsewhere if people see they’re playing in Israel,” he said – because of pressure from the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
This makes many in the Israeli scene feel sad or disappointed, according to Trax. “Of course, I understand them, but I also understand the other side. Though in their shoes, I would rather come back to play in Israel and still be able to look at myself in the mirror.”
In recent years, BDS has focused not only on targeting Israelis but also non-Israelis perceived as being too “pro-Israel” or too critical of antisemitism. A campaign launched in March to boycott Berghain – often regarded as one of the best techno clubs in the world – in Berlin, a city seen as the capital of the global scene, has since received much media attention.
In January 2024, the club quietly canceled a label night with the French-Lebanese DJ Arabian Panther, internally citing his “communication” on social media. Berghain, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has not made its reasoning public. Arabian Panther, who typically dons a Palestinian scarf as a balaclava when performing, has claimed it was due to his “pro-Palestinian stance.”
But Groove, a Berlin-based online magazine for electronic music, pointed out that in saved story highlights on his Instagram page, seen by the Post, the DJ had shared posts in which accounts of rape on October 7 were branded as “false” and based on “anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia.” Arabian Panther, who also did not respond to a request for comment, denies all wrongdoing, but promptly deleted several Instagram stories following the cancellation.
Similar boycott campaigns have targeted the London club E1, whose director is an Israeli reservist, the streaming platform HÖR, run by Israelis in Berlin, and the About Blank club, also in the German capital, which campaigns against antisemitism and has taken a firm stance against BDS.
In another incident in Berlin, a booking request for a techno Purim party in March was rejected by the club Zenner with the words: “I find it quite incredible that you’re willing to celebrate a Jewish carnival with the current state of affairs.”
In a follow-up email from Zenner seen by the Post to the promoter, an Israeli who has been living in Berlin for 13 years, a Zenner representative wrote that the club is “not against Jewish events per se,” but only ones that “exclusively represent any faith group,” as that “does not fit our cultural concept of inclusivity.” Following backlash online after media reports, the club apologized and itself called the comments “antisemitic.”
SINCE OCTOBER 7, 2023, an increasing number of clubs and festivals have publicly distanced themselves from Zionism.
In April, Raum, a new queer club in Amsterdam which had not even opened its doors for the first time yet, shared a statement on Instagram saying: “In line with our values, we reject Zionism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, discrimination, or any form of fascism.” The post ended with a quote by Ghassan Kanafani, the late spokesman of the Palestinian terrorist organization PFLP.
A month earlier, the Portuguese festival Waking Life published a similar statement, writing on Instagram: “Zionism has no place on the dance floor.”
Maayan Nidam, an Israeli artist who has lived in Berlin since 2003, said that such comments leave her feeling increasingly excluded. The DJ and producer, a regular on the influential minimal label Perlon who also performs as The Waves, played at this year’s Waking Life. Discussions with the organizers of the festival ended in tears on all sides, she said.
“There is a complete ignorance of the situation, of definitions, where people try to change the meanings of words,” Nidam criticized. “I’ve been called Zionist as a slur.”
Before October 7, Nidam did not consider herself an Israeli artist. But after her European bookings partially dried up as promoters became reluctant to book Israelis, and the electronic music community remained mostly silent about the Nova massacre, Nidam now feels more Israeli than ever.
“It’s ironic. I now feel much more connected to Israeli artists, but also Lebanese and Palestinian ones,” she said. “Nobody else understands my pain. Nobody speaks about the hostages.”
But she is reluctant to post anything about Nova or Israel on social media, out of fear of backlash against both her and the promoters that still book her.
Even close friends, Nidam said, did not ask how she or her family were doing after October 7. Friends of her niece and nephew were murdered at Nova. She is also related to one of the six hostages – five of them Nova attendees – who were murdered by Hamas in a tunnel under Rafah in August, she said.
At some international festivals Nidam now bills herself as an artist from Germany, not Israel – “for security reasons,” she explained. “I have to hide being Israeli.” At a small jazz event with Israeli artists in New York this year, the crowd, including Nidam, was attacked with red paint. “They were calling, ‘Zionists can’t make jazz,’” Nidam said. “It was a hate crime.”
This climate has left many Israeli artists feeling intimidated. Several well-known DJs approached for comment for this article did not wish to speak out publicly, despite being privately critical of both what they perceive as growing antisemitism within the electronic music scene and the failure to adequately pay tribute to the Nova massacre.
Over a year after the attacks of October 7, this trend shows no sign of slowing, as the death count in Gaza has soared, leaving tens of thousands of Hamas combatants and civilians dead. In the eyes of many, the fate of Nova has been eclipsed. And some within the global electronic music scene tolerate, if not actively embrace, Islamist terrorism as a form of legitimate resistance.
On the first anniversary of the Nova massacre, Currier shared just one post on Instagram. It was an interview with a senior Hamas leader, who said: “The support fronts have taken a heroic stance in confronting the occupation and defending the Palestinian people.” Currier commented: “To the resistance everywhere.”