Trip hop band Massive Attack have broken their silence after coming under fire for incorporating footage from a Hamas terror tunnel into a recent concert performance.
During their set at Manchester's Lido Festival, the band played the video as part of an anti-Israel montage titled “Open the doors to the merchants of death.”
The footage, originally released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 2023, shows former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his family attempting to hide in Gaza’s underground tunnels on October 10 - just days after Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead and 250 taken hostage.
Sinwar is widely regarded as the mastermind behind the assault.
— Massive Attack (@MassiveAttackUK) June 9, 2025
Taking to X in response to criticism, Massive Attack wrote: "Massive Attack categorically reject any suggestion that footage or reportage used as part of an artistic digital collage in our live show seeks to glorify or celebrate any featured subject.
"To isolate a single section of reportage from the artistic context within which it sits – a digital array that spans a wide variety of issues and themes (and explores how they are reported & presented via mainstream & social media) including war, insurgency, climate emergency, corporate tax avoidance, and the mineral exploitation of global south nations, and includes a multiplicity of highly controversial current and historical political figures – is tantamount to a wilful device to create conditions for misinterpretation, or distortion.
"In the specific case of the film loop that includes reportage of Yahya Sinwar, the entire sequence interplays with scenes from Jean Cocteau’s film Orpheus, creating both a placement and implicit tone of horrified lament; that an individual of power can take people down into hell.
"It would be bizarre (and perhaps revealing) that any observer of the live show films would solely home in on the Sinwar/IDF footage and completely overlook all other controversial figures featured in the reportage loops."
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Taking to X in response to criticism, Massive Attack wrote that criticism was a 'spurious attempt to discredit us, as a deterrent to us from speaking out'
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They continued: "Would 'x' observer suggest we sought to glorify Vladimir Putin, who appears in four loops? Or Donald Trump, who appears in several? Or J. Edgar Hoover? Or indeed the IDF soldiers who feature in the exact same location reportage as the Yahya Sinwar footage cited by various social media accounts?
"Unfortunately, the only reasonable conclusion is that this level of deliberate context removal, and such a leap of misinterpretation, has political motivations.
"In a highly charged atmosphere, public figures—including artists who consistently speak out against Israeli war crimes, apartheid, and human rights abuses, and in defence of the Palestinian people—are subjected to determined and spurious attempts to discredit us, as a deterrent to us from speaking out."
They finished by adding: "These spurious attempts will always fail."
During their set at Manchester's Lido Festival, the band played the video as part of an anti-Israel montage
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This comes after the inclusion of the clip during the concert sparked a wave of backlash online. One social media user wrote on X: “That is so disappointing. I try to separate the art from the artist but some things you can’t forget or forgive.”
Another added: “This is terrifying. They are indoctrinating and normalising terrorists and terrorism. I hope the @metpoliceuk look into this.”
Others were even more direct in their criticism. “They are disgusting pigs. Such a disappointment,” one user wrote, while another echoed: “Disgusting. To think I actually used to listen to them. Never again.”
A fifth commented: “Not even hiding it behind ‘social justice’—just blatantly praising the leader of the terrorist group.”
And a sixth shared: “I love their music but I have a hard time listening to it these days given their objectionable political takes… disappointing.” (sic)
Massive Attack have long been outspoken in their support for the boycott and censure of Israel.
Ahead of their performance in Manchester, the band issued a statement criticising the venue - the Co-Op Live - and its new sponsorship deal with Barclays.
They described the bank as “a commercial endeavour synonymous with the large-scale financing of new fossil fuel extraction, and billions of dollars of investments in arms companies that supply Israel in its genocidal onslaught of Gaza, and war crimes in the West Bank.”
Massive Attack have long been outspoken in their support for the boycott and censure of Israel
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The group further announced that “Co-Op Live ownership have agreed to our insistence that all physical and digital Barclays livery and logos be completely removed from the arena itself and our show page on the arena website, and that no show tickets – for sale or complimentary – will go to Barclays.”
More recently, Massive Attack voiced strong support for Belfast rap group Kneecap, who faced backlash after video footage surfaced of one member waving a Hezbollah flag on stage.
In defence, the band released a statement saying, “Kneecap are not the story…as a band that has spoken publicly for more than 30 years about the illegal occupation, apartheid system and killing with impunity of thousands of Palestinians, we are hyper aware of both the human cost of abject silence and the commercial implications of publicly expressing solidarity with an oppressed people.”
Hezbollah, a group proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK, has been widely condemned for its role in supporting the Assad regime during the Syrian civil war and the killing of civilians.
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