Israel’s Rave Music Drowns Out the Sound of its Victims by Zenab Huriyah Ahmed

Writers often ask whether it is possible for music to be a soundtrack for peace, but it is rare for them to seriously consider whether financials even allow it. Israelis face this broader problem in psychedelic trance. Even if there was a serious grappling with a century of slaughter and erasure, rather than a deepening of denial through bomb shelter raves profiled in Rolling Stone, a whole cultural sector reinforcing blissful ignorance would need to unravel. Denial is built into so much of Israeli electronic dance music, and money and power has clearly latched onto it as a lifestyle choice.

It is the soundtrack for a new era of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and it is complicit in its tranquilizing of a public that must urgently mobilize to end it. Israeli electronica launders the reality of mass killing, managing the psyches of those whose lives are built through the violence of a racist system. It will be remembered for its fascistic utility like Wagnerian opera and Beethoven symphonies in Nazi Germany, and those who resist it will be remembered for their bravery and steadfast opposition to injustice.