The war in Gaza has also opened a cultural front, bringing the Palestinian issue to the fore. Over the past two years, artists, directors, actors and musicians around the world have carried it onto their stages, red carpets, festivals, songs and international cultural events.
A remarkable example of this transformation was American rapper Macklemore. His 2024 song “Hind’s Hall” expressed support for the pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia University while attracting attention to civilian deaths in Gaza. Earnings from the song were donated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Macklemore became one of the Western artists who brought the Gaza issue to the center of popular music.
Macklemore was not alone. In 2024, several musicians came together for charity albums and collective projects to support Palestine. "Merciless Accelerating Rhythms" was released as a 55-track project, while "Musicians for a Free Palestine" brought together more than 70 musicians. Some of these projects donated their earnings to Gazan people.
In 2024, many Palestinian directors and filmmakers published an open letter regarding the representation of Palestine in the Western film industry. Signed by prominent people including Elia Suleiman, Hany Abu-Assad and Farah Nabulsi, the letter suggested Palestinians’ right to tell their own stories.
At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, an open letter signed by 380 people from the cinema and culture industries criticized the industry’s silence on Gaza. Among them were Pedro Almodovar, Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem and Brian Cox. Messages of support for Palestine, therefore, also appeared on the festival's red carpet.
That same year, Gaza also had a notable presence at the Venice Film Festival. There were protests throughout the festival; filmmakers and artists expressed their support for Palestine. The use of Palestinian symbols by directors such as Yorgos Lanthimos showed that the protest in the film industry had reached the red carpet itself.
In 2025, more than 1,300 artists signed a declaration not to work with Israeli film institutions, including prominent names such as Olivia Colman, Ayo Edebiri, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed and Tilda Swinton.
Türkiye has organized plenty of events on this cultural front. In Istanbul, where hundreds of activities were carried out, the “On Record” program, of which I was personally one of the founding initiators, held a month-long series of events at the Rami Library, featuring photographs from Gaza, cartoons, panels, personal testimonies, media events and a range of workshops. Many prominent figures, including Kenize Murat, government officials, and ministers, visited and delivered one-minute messages on Palestine. These recordings subsequently received extensive attention on social media.
One of the significant battles on the cultural front was a documentary produced by Al-Jazeera Television. The documentary on Shifa Hospital generated considerable public attention. The documentary was also launched at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress Center in Istanbul, followed by a panel discussion focused on the film.
All these events point to an important change. The war in Gaza is no longer being discussed only at diplomatic tables, in parliaments and on the streets; it is also becoming one of the central topics of the cultural world.
The cultural front of the Gaza war is being fought through the lyrics of songs. Cinema and TV screens have become witnesses to the genocide; several events took the atrocities “on record”, while film festivals have turned into stages for political discussions. For some artists, the issue has become a fundamental question: whether art can remain silent in the face of such human tragedies.
Macklemore’s Hind’s Hall, the protests at Cannes and Venice, the fundraising campaigns involving hundreds of musicians, and the statements signed by thousands of artists – plenty of events around cultural activities are all fragments of the same picture: the struggle at the cultural front of the Gaza war.
Another point not to be missed is that the documentary "No Other Land" caused a major shock in Israel. Made by two Israeli directors, the documentary deals with how IDF soldiers and intelligence officers selected and destroyed buildings during the massacres and how civilians were killed. In the film, such atrocities are voiced directly by IDF officers and intelligence members. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, went so far as to effectively brand the filmmakers as traitors.
Alongside the buildings destroyed in Gaza, the world’s cultural memory is also being reshaped. The real question is: How will history remember what artists said, and what they chose not to say, during this period?
