Resurrecting "Hind's Hall"

On the day the Israeli military invaded Rafah, Macklemore released a protest song in defense of human rights and freedom of expression

On May 7, 2024, an Israeli tank intentionally crushed the “I love Gaza” sign near the Egyptian-Gaza border crossing as the military expanded its assault of the city of Rafah. Israel’s attack on Rafah began the day before with aerial assaults and warnings to civilians to flee. That same day chart-topping, anti-racist American rapper, Macklemore released the song and music video, “Hind’s Hall,” condemning the dehumanization of Palestinians. The song also defiantly defends the college students’ protests against U.S. policies supporting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, a campaign that, according to the Euro-med Monitor, has killed more than 38,000 civilians including nearly 16,000 children.

The “I love Gaza” sign before it was crushed by an Israeli tank during the Rafah offensive.

“Hind’s Hall” amplifies the protest movement against the killings being carried out in Gaza and stands up against efforts of the powerful to assassinate the character of student activists and their faculty supporters. In the song the rapper highlights the ethical double standard of political leaders who insist the disruptions caused by student protests on college campuses make them condemnable but who support the Israeli government’s onslaught on Gaza.

“If students in tents posted on the lawn

Occupyin’ the quad is really against the law

And a reason to call in the police and their squad

Where does genocide land in your definition, huh?

Destroyin’ every college in Gaza in every mosque

Pushin’ everyone into Rafah and droppin’ bombs.”

The song’s name pays homage to Columbia University students who took over and occupied Hamilton Hall¹ on April 30, 2024 and Hind Rajab, the child the students renamed the hall after. Hind was five-years-old when she was killed, in Gaza, by U.S.-made artillery shells fired by the Israeli military. Before being fired upon the child called emergency services and pleaded for them to save her as she was trapped in a black Kia with the dead bodies of her uncle, aunt, and three cousins.

Palestinian girl Hind Rajab poses for a photograph in this undated handout picture obtained by Reuters on February 10, 2024 Source.

“You can ban TikTok, take us out the algorithm,” raps Macklemore, “but it's too late, we've seen the truth, we bear witness / Seen the rubble, the buildings, the mothers and the children / and all the men that you murdered, and then we see how you spin it.”

Macklemore challenges listeners to embrace the most elementary moral concern in evaluating the imposition of hunger, injury, displacement, and death upon the civilian population of Gaza. He also invites us to imagine ourselves into the position of civilian Palestinians, to consider the importance of knowing that someone would refuse to quietly and passively oversee our foreseeable execution.

“What you willin' to risk? What you willin' to give?

What if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids?

If the West was pretendin' that you didn't exist

You'd want the world to stand up and the students finally did….”

The final line spotlights U.S. student protests sweeping college campuses around the nation. On April 17, 2024, students at Columbia University erected what they called the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the school’s south lawn. On that same day, leaders of the university, including president Nemat Shafik, were called to testify before a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism. The next day Shafik requested New York City police forcibly clear the encampment, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 protestors. The chief of patrol, John Chell, said the arrested students “were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.” Students defiantly reestablished their encampment on the school’s west lawn the following morning.

Following Columbia University students’ efforts, more than 100 Gaza solidarity encampments have been established at colleges and universities around the country. Protestors’ demands have included transparency in their schools’ investments and, citing the precedent of the 1980s’ divestment campaign against apartheid South Africa, divestment from companies tied to the Israeli military and government. At least seven institutions have come to agreements with students to either consider, vote on, or pursue divestment.² Such concessions have not come without costs. Since April 18, more than 2,700 people participating in college campus protests have been arrested on at least 59 different campuses.

New York Times’ map identifying Gaza solidarity encampments where arrests have been made. Source.

In “Hind’s Hall,” Macklemore, who previously condemned militants’ killing and abduction of innocent Israelis on October 7th, leaves no questions about the political implications of President Joe Biden’s unyielding support for the Israeli military and leadership.

“The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all

And fuck no, I'm not voting for you in the fall.”

The rapper expresses a sentiment that may presage electoral doom for Biden in light of the president’s ad hominem attacks on college protestors, his unflinching support for the Israeli military campaign, and the more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes cast by Michigan Democratic primary voters in February 2024.

A man in the city of Rafah expresses his thanks to student protestors on April 27, 2024

The Weight of Silence

I remember being surprised when Macklemore took the stage during the first mass mobilization against Israel’s war on Gaza in Washington DC, on November 4, 2023. There was no prior fanfare. Just a human being with poetry and a conscience. “I didn’t expect to be on a microphone,” explained the artist who was attending the protest with his eight-year-old daughter. “There are thousands of people here that are more qualified to speak on the issue of a free Palestine then myself, but I will say this…” Here Macklemore paused for just a moment as he stood empty handed at the podium before no fewer than 250,000 people, and then launched into what seemed to be an extemporaneous poem:

“They told me to be quiet. They told me to do my research, to go back, that it’s too complex to say something, right? To be silent in this moment. In the last three weeks, I’ve gone back and I’ve done some research. And I am teachable. I don’t know enough. But I know enough that this is a genocide.

“And we are scared, and we are watching it unfold. We have been taught to just be complicit, to protect our careers, to protect our interests. And I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m not afraid to speak the truth.”

Macklemore’s speech reflected three crucial virtues required of participants in a democratic society: the humility to admit that we don’t have everything figured out, the intellectual responsibility of examining matters of importance to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and the courage to advocate for the conclusions we believe are right despite threats from those who wish to silence us.

The release of “Hind’s Hall” exemplifies Macklemore’s commitment to personal integrity and the courage to speak. Appropriately, the video directly honors democracy’s quintessential virtue of courage by showing a protestor sign that reads, “Your silence will not protect you.”

Screen shot from “Hind’s Hall” featuring the quote, “Your silence will not protect you.”

The black lesbian feminist writer, Audre Lorde, made the statement in a 1977 paper in which she reflected on the deepened awareness of her own mortality amidst a battle with breast cancer. Viewing her life in that “merciless light” of existential reflection, her greatest feelings of regret were directed at her “silences.”

“I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”

Lorde insisted on the existential necessity of marginalized women to give voice to their experiences and needs. In doing so, she explained, bridges of vital commonality would be built between differences. The effort to break the dehumanizing and potentially lethal silence begins with deciding to end subservience to fear.

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

President Joe Biden is ensuring that opponents of Israel’s war have the opportunity to practice their parrhesia—bold free expression—by creating a speech-chilling atmosphere. One day after Macklemore released “Hind’s Hall,” President Biden sweepingly denounced college protesters for alleged “antisemitic” behavior and slogans and reaffirmed his “iron clad” commitment to supporting the Israeli government. Biden’s denunciation of college encampments occurred on the same day the Israeli military initiated the invasion of the city of Rafah.

Rafah is one Gaza’s last remaining arteries sustaining Palestinian life with food and healthcare. The city functions as the main hub for humanitarian aid, given its proximity to Egypt, and has some of the last remaining medical facilities. The people of Rafah have been ordered to leave without any clear indication of where they might go to be safe or have their most basic human needs met. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)’s executive director, Catherine Russell, “Nearly all of the some 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities.”

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To insist that an already sick, injured, and many times displaced population vacate Rafah is to sign the death warrant for thousands of innocents. As Russell explained, “There is no where safe to go in Gaza.” According to Doctors Without Borders, Israel's military offensive in Rafah “will have disastrous effects for over a million people.” The organization contends that “an immediate and sustained ceasefire” is necessary “to spare the lives of civilians and to allow enough desperately needed aid to enter the enclave.” World Food Programme executive director Cindy Mccain has said that the north of Gaza is now in a “full-blown famine.” Israel’s invasion of Rafah will only slow the delivery of vital humanitarian aid needed in the north.

During his May 7th remarks, made during the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony, Biden made no remarks about the Rafah invasion. Though he criticized anti-war protestors he failed to condemn the violence endured by college students at the hands of counter-protestors at UCLA where 25 students were hospitalized.

Left out of Biden’s speech was an acknowledgment that encampments have explicitly facilitated education on the realities and problem of antisemitism nor did he recognize the participation of Jewish students and scholars in the encampments. One such Jewish scholar, Dartmouth history professor, Annelise Orleck, joined other faculty to supervise law enforcement’s interaction with college protestors at her college. Orleck, the 65-year-old former chair of Jewish studies, was subject to a forceful arrest following a confrontation with police.

In the face of president Biden’s omissions and ominous characterizations, hundreds of Jewish students have pushed against the cultural silencing of their voices. In the letter, students express their support for pro-Palestine campus protests and condemn the mischaracterization of campus protests as essentially antisemitic. The letter reads:

“The narrative that the Gaza solidarity encampments are inherently antisemitic is part of a decades long effort to blur the lines between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. It is a narrative that ignores the large populations of Jewish students participating and helping to lead the encampments as a true expression of our Jewish values. The beautiful interfaith solidarity by Jewish students observing Passover seders and Shabbat at encampments across the country show that the rich Jewish tradition of justice is on full display inside the encampments. The denial of Jewish participation in this movement is not only incorrect, but it is an insidious attempt to justify unfounded claims of antisemitism.”

The statement builds on ideas presented in an April 10, 2024 open letter written by Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard. The letter, addressed to the Columbia University president, called for a robust defense of academic freedom and a rejection of the weaponization of antisemitism by bad faith actors. The 23 faculty members stated that antisemitism is a “grave concern” that ought to be placed alongside equally dehumanizing ideologies including “racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate.” Yet equating antisemitism, defined by the Jerusalem Declaration as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” with “pro-Palestinian expression” or criticism of the social-political doctrine of Zionism is not only intellectually dishonest it “erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state.”

“Hind’s Hall” resounds the critiques of Jewish students and scholars who object to the conflation of criticism of the nation state of Israel and its policies with antisemitism and simultaneously acknowledges the leading role of Jewish advocates for peace from organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace to leading peace activist, Medea Benjamin, pioneering gender studies’ theorist, Judith Butler, and the signers of the previously mentioned letters.

“We see the lies in ’em

Claimin’ it's antisemitic to be anti-Zionist

I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin' in

Solidarity and screamin' ‘Free Palestine’ with them.”

Jewish peace activists demonstrate for a cease fire in Washington D.C., October 18, 2023. Source.

Given Lorde’s emphasis on intersectional analyses of oppression—namely the ways in which oppression is not reducible to a single category of experience, but is shaped by various aspects of our social identity including our ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, and economic class—it’s all the more relevant that “Hind’s Hall” identifies “white supremacy” as a contributor to the moral callousness directed toward Palestinians. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” Biden said on October 25, 2023. “I'm sure innocents have been killed, and it's the price of waging a war.” Macklemore responds to Biden in “Hind’s Hall,” when he says,

“Who gets the right to defend and who gets the right of resistance

Has always been about dollars and the color of your pigment,

But White supremacy is finally on blast

Screamin' ‘Free Palestine’ ‘til they're home at last.”

Holding the Artists Accountable

Great art goes beyond merely narrating or reflecting the world as it is. Great art seeks to participate in shaping the structure of culture and society; it creatively and critically engages with the ideas, assumptions, and values that shape our feelings, thoughts, choices, and politics. Thus we can say that great art is inescapably political in the sense of being concerned with and involved in shaping society. That those in power frequently insist that artists—or athletes, or anyone else not among their ranks—ought not stray from “entertainment” into politics is more an expression of their desire than an accurate description of reality or ideals fitting for a free, open, and democratic society.

In his essay, “The Goal” (1926),³ 20th century dissident Russian novelist, Yevgeny Zamyatin, criticized artists who had lost sight of the revolutionary vision of a radically free society and had, instead, allowed themselves to become functionaries of the state. “The Revolution does not need dogs who ‘sit up’ in expectation of a handout or because they fear the whip…. It needs writers who fear nothing….” Toward the end of the essay Zamyatin challenges his readers to appreciate the true goal of art:

“The purpose of art, including literature, is not to reflect life but to organize it, to build it….

“The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony…. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.”

Macklemore’s song exemplifies’ Zamyatin’s artistic ideal: the listener is moved to consider matters of intrinsic importance: the dignity and worth of person and the inviolable right of free expression. He also joins Zamyatin in demanding more from artists.

In addition to addressing the current moral catastrophe in Gaza Macklemore calls out the music industry’s lack of creative courage, ethical insight, and vision. Highlighting the hollowness of commercially successful rap-feuds, Macklemore asks, “What happened to the artist? What d’you got to say? / If I was on a label, you could drop me today / I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake.”

Macklemore reminds us that it’s not enough to criticize the lobbyists and the politicians; the artists must also be held accountable. “You can pay off Meta,” the Grammy-winning artist observes, “you can't pay off me.” As if to put an exclamation point on the song, Macklemore announced that the proceeds generated from streaming “Hind’s Hall” will go to the Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA.⁴

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1. Zamyatin, “The Goal,” in A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ed and trans. Mirra Ginsburg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

2. Brown University and Occidental College have agreed to hold a vote on divestment. Northwestern University agreed to reestablish an advisory committee on university investments and other commitments. Rutgers University agreed to explore the creation of an Arab cultural center and consider students’ demands for divestment. The University of Minnesota agreed to consider establishing affiliations with Palestinian universities and publicly disclose the school’s investments in publicly traded businesses working with or based in Israel. Middlebury College agreed to agreed to explore codifying an investment strategy opposed to investing in armaments. California State University, Sacramento, agreed to ensure its investments are not connected to violations of fundamental human rights. The university also affirmed “Student protests and political action” as the “cornerstones of higher education and democracy….” Meanwhile Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the alma mater of killed Palestinian rights activist, Rachel Corrie, agreed to pursue divestment from companies profiting from human rights violations in Palestinian territories.

3. Columbia students first took over Hamilton Hall on April 30, 1968, renaming the building “Nat Turner Hall at Malcolm X University,” in protest of the university's relationship with the military and its incursions into a public park in Harlem. Protestors on Columbia University’s campus occupied Hamilton Hall, renaming it “Hind’s Hall,” most of the day of April 30 until a sizeable police force was called in to remove students, resulting in the arrests of 46 people.

4. As reported by NPR on April 28, 2024: “An independent review now says Israel has not provided evidence to support its accusation that a significant number of employees of a U.N. relief agency in the Gaza strip are members of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel last October. That accusation led to a loss of vital international funding for UNRWA, officially named the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, at a time when Gaza is on the brink of famine.”