Massive Attack have threatened legal action against an Israeli influencer who accused them of “incitement” relating to them displaying footage of late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on a video screen during a concert.
Sinwar was the Hamas Political Bureau chairman and was killed last year by Israeli troops in Gaza. He was a chief architect of the attack on October 7, 2023 that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage.
Zionist influencer and author Hen Mazzig shared an 11-second clip of a Massive Attack live show, which showed footage of Sinwar. The post accused the Bristol band of encouraging their fans to “sympathise with Hamas.”
“Why is the self proclaimed ‘pro peace’ band @MassiveAttackUK screening footage of Yahya Sinwar during their concert?” Mazzig wrote. “Sinwar masterminded the slaughter of innocents at a music festival, yet they’re celebrating him at a similar event.
“If you’re booking the UK’s largest arena, you should care a lot more about the message you’re spreading. Encouraging 23,000+ people to sympathize with Hamas is more than irresponsible — it’s incitement.”
In response, Massive Attack said on X/Twitter that they viewed the tweet as “defamatory” and have passed it to their lawyers. They told Mazzig that he must “must delete this post & issue an apology, or further action will follow.”
For obvious, ethical reasons relating to its owner, Massive Attack do not use ‘X’. However, no email contact is presented for the author of this post, which we consider defamatory, & has been passed to the band’s lawyers. @hearnimator must delete the original post & issue an… https://t.co/1TlKO3TBou
— Massive Attack (@MassiveAttackUK) June 9, 2025
The trip-hop veterans then posted a further statement to their social media channels. They emphasised that the footage of political leaders that they use in live shows is not intended as an endorsement and that anyone who says otherwise is engaging in “deliberate context removal.”
“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,” the statement began.
“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.”
The band went on: “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.”
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 delierate 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 defense of the Palestinian people are subjected to determined and spurious attempts to discredit us, as a deterrent to us from speaking out.
“These spurious attempts will always fail.”
The original post has since been deleted, but Mazzig is yet to further respond.
The band have been vocal supporters of Palestine for years, participating in a cultural boycott of Israel since 1999.
Their headline set at London’s LIDO Festival on Friday (June 6) saw them joined by actor and activist Khalid Abdalla and Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) in a show of solidarity with Palestine.
The Bristol trip-hop icons were beckoned on stage by a large swathe of fans waving Palestinian flags when Abdalla gave a lengthy and impassioned introductory speech calling for peace in the middle East and an immediate ceasefire alongside the deployment of aid to the people of Gaza.
“Make some noise if you want your favourite artists to stand up for Palestine,” he said towards the end of his speech. “Put your hand on your heart if you have wept over images of children, and mothers, and fathers, over last two years. And you know what? Make some noise – because it means you have a beating heart. That heart is the key to our future.”
“The Palestine Solidarity Movement is the civil rights movement of our time,” he concluded. “It is the anti-apartheid movement of our time. It is the anti-genocide movement of our time.”
Elsewhere, their set featured numerous tributes, with Robert Del Naja paying tribute to innocent children and journalists that have lost their lives in conflict. The band also showing footage of the devastation and of the imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti declaring that “security will be achieved by one way: by peace”.
They then displayed Nelson Mandela’s 2002 quote “what is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me”, honouring the call for peace and a two-state solution, before a Palestinian flag adorned the screen and calls of “Free Palestine” rang out.
This comes after Massive Attack played in Manchester’s Co-Op Live earlier this week when they spoke out against Barclays’ sponsorship of the venue – taking aim at their “profoundly unethical corporate identity” due to its investment in arms companies that supply Israel “in its genocidal onslaught of Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank”, as well as their “large-scale financing of new fossil fuel extraction”.
As the conflict escalates, Israel deny allegations of war crimes and genocide.
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