“Silence is complicity”: A historic night of solidarity at Wembley’s Together for Palestine concert

Last night, over twelve thousand people turned London’s OVO Arena into a powerful display of Palestinian solidarity. The ‘Together for Palestine’ concert, organised by Brian Eno, has raised £1.5 million in a single night. All funds went to Choose Love, supporting Palestinian partners including the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Palestinian Medical Relief Society and Taawon’s orphan care and medical programmes in Gaza.

The four-hour show brought together sixty-nine artists across genres, from chart-toppers to Palestinian stars, paired with artistic direction from Malak Mattar, who made history as the first Palestinian to have a solo exhibition at Central Saint Martins earlier this year. The concert came the same week that the UN officially declared a genocide in Gaza, and the evening opened with none other than UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who received a standing ovation. 

Following that, comedian Guz Khan hosted as the arena was lit in the colours of the Palestinian flag: red, white, black and green. There were electric performances from PinkPantheress, James Blake and Jamie xx delivering crowd favourites, while Bastille’s stripped-back “Pompeii” barely left a dry eye in the house. Equally, Paloma Faith — who has shown unwavering solidarity with Palestine over the past twenty-three months — performed her new track ‘Dangerous World’, draped in a re-imagined keffiyeh dress. 

Palestinian stars such as Saint Levant and Elyanna delivered powerful and poignant performances, before journalists Mehdi Hassan and Yara Eid took to the stage to honour the two hundred and seventy journalists killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023. Together, they led a chant of the words, “You can’t bomb the truth away”. 

In a similar vein, Amelia Dimondelberg and Louis Theroux addressed the crowd as Theroux shared experiences from his West Bank trip (featured in BBC’s The Settlers), while Benedict Cumberbatch delivered a stirring speech. The celebrity support was massive — from pre-event endorsements by Billie Eilish, Penelope Cruz, Javier Barde and Malala Yousafzai to Eric Cantona’s call to suspend Israel from international football.

The evening also continued to prove fashion can be a tool of protest, with merchandise designed by Bella Freud, Sylwia Nazzal and Simone Rocha, to name a few. But the concert’s real success wasn’t just in the money raised. Rather, it was in creating a space where solidarity felt tangible. By filling one of London’s most prestigious venues with Palestinian flags and voices demanding justice, the evening made the power of art as a form of activism palpable.

In a week when international bodies have finally begun using the word ‘genocide’, Wembley became a place where that truth was honoured, where journalists’ sacrifices were remembered, and where thousands of voices united in refusing to stay silent. Florence Pugh and Riz Ahmed delivered a message that captured that very sentiment: “Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality, it is complicity. And empathy should not be this hard, and it should have never been this hard.”

Donate to the Together For Palestine Fund here.