Record executive Scooter Braun sent a passionate plea to the music industry, asking them in a social media post to lend their voices to the horrors that happened at the Nova music festival in Israel.
The music mogul sat with Rachel, the mother of a kidnapped boy named Hersh, in a powerful video posted Friday to Instagram.
“Her son is now 76 days being held in Gaza,” he said. “The last images she saw of him, he had his left arm blown off.”
Braun called out the artists and reporters that have not given this topic a platform.
“I find it insane that I’m the one standing here with her. Because of the nuance of the conflict they don’t want to talk about this,” he said. “This was a music festival, a peaceful music festival. They deserve to hear our voices right now as an industry and shame on us if we don’t do it.”
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Braun famously represented some of the top performers in the industry, including Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande and Kanye West.
“I want to be clear this is not what I do,” he said before he called out the silence of the music industry.
“I think every single one of us in our industry knows, if this was any other situation, any other country, we’d be losing our minds, speaking about how a festival is not an appropriate place for people to be shot in cold blood,” Braun said.
Rachel shared how she felt about the industry’s silence.
“Three-hundred sixty-four young people were killed at the Nova music festival and over 40 of them were taken hostage and are still being held,” she said, referring to the massacre that transpired Oct. 7.
Gaya Halifa (24), was murdered trying to escape the Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival on October 7. #Remember_Nova_Angles pic.twitter.com/KscTNCzQaQ
— raz_sauber (@raz_sauber) December 19, 2023
“A lot of those kids were coming from all over the world and I think that’s being lost in a larger picture of pain and confusion because it is a really complicated neighborhood that we live in. But I think the silence from the music industry has been so deafeningly palpable for us.”
She appealed to the artists to take a step forward, rather than sitting in silence out of fear of backlash.
“I hope you will be brave enough to use your platform. Maybe, what may surprise you is you’ll get more fans and you’ll get more credit in the world that you’re a part of,” Rachel said.
Braun stripped away the politics and addressed his own colleagues.
“I’m begging of my own industry to just post something, say something, ask for the hostages, come home, say that no music festival deserves this,” he said.
On the morning of October 7, Hamas launched a series of coordinated attacks targeting Israeli civilians.
At around 6.30am, rockets were spotted at the Nova music festival.
What followed was a massacre; the largest terror attack in Israel’s history. pic.twitter.com/K5WQKvgkpx
— LikeMind (@Lik3mind) December 17, 2023
“The survivors I met last night, they started naming many of you artists and asking me, why have you said nothing? These are our heroes. What if this happened somewhere else?'”
“This was ours. This was a music festival,” he continued. “I’m not asking for you to talk about the massacre. I’m not even asking you to talk about the conflict right now. This was ours.” (RELATED: ‘I’m Done’: Selena Gomez Responds To Backlash Over Her Stance On The Israel-Hamas War)