Kehlani Faces a Chorus of Censorship Over Gaza Stance
Kehlani’s public backing of a cease-fire in Gaza has already cost the singer's Slope Day at Cornell University and a Pride-month appearance at New York City’s SummerStage.
Before concert halls closed their doors and critics rushed to brand them a menace, Kehlani was doing what many socially conscious artists have always done: mixing political conscience into pop culture. Over the last eighteen months, the Bay-Area singer has marched, fund-raised, spoken, and, most provocatively, sung for Palestinian freedom. The pushback has been swift, yet the charges levelled against them, chiefly that they are antisemitic, fall apart under even cursory scrutiny. What follows is an unpacking of how pundits and administrators have flattened Kehlani’s stance, why “anti-genocide” speech is not hate speech, and how the current climate around Israel-Palestine encourages bad-faith readings of celebrity activism.
Kehlani’s public alignment with Palestinian liberation began long before the current campus uprisings. In June 2024, they posted safety tips for demonstrators and urged followers to support mutual-aid drives for Gaza. Months later, they released the single “Next 2 U,” performing in front of a Palestinian flag while wearing a keffiyeh-patterned suit and opening the video with the text “long live the intifada,” a line lifted from decades of Palestinian resistance slogans. A companion T-shirt manufactured in Ramallah directs proceeds to Operation Olive Branch, an aid collective. In November 2023, she joined over 1,000 musicians in signing the open “Musicians for Palestine” cease-fire letter. Their position has been consistent: condemn Israeli state violence, amplify Palestinian voices, and demand an end to the siege of Gaza.
The first institutional blow landed April 24, 2025, when Cornell University canceled Kehlani’s Slope Day headlining slot after pressure from donors and student groups. President Michael Kotlikoff claimed their presence would “inject division,” framing political speech as a security risk. Days later, the New York City Parks Department scrapped their free SummerStage Pride concert after Mayor Eric Adams flagged “security concerns,” though no specific threats were cited. Congressman Ritchie Torres applauded the cancellation, labeling Kehlani “antisemitic” without evidence beyond her criticism of Zionism. A similar pattern played out at Cornell: a campus GoFundMe raised money to replace an artist who had not “spread hateful messaging,” explicitly conflating Palestinian solidarity with Jew-hatred.
Kehlani has repeatedly clarified that their target is state policy, not Jewish identity. “I am not antisemitic, I am anti-genocide,” they said in an Instagram video after the Cornell fiasco. The distinction may feel semantic to detractors, but it is foundational to international human-rights law: criticizing a government is protected speech; inciting hatred of a people is not. The problem is that U.S. discourse—especially on college campuses—has embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition” of antisemitism, whose Israel-focused examples blur that line. Harvard’s recent settlement adopting IHRA language under federal pressure illustrates how quickly policy can turn political dissent into putative discrimination. Legal scholars and civil-rights groups from CAIR to FIRE warn that this elastic definition chills legitimate advocacy for Palestinian rights. When university presidents invoke “community safety,” they are often relying (knowingly or not) on that broadened standard to suppress speech.
Kehlani’s most quoted line—“Fuck Israel, Fuck Zionism”—is undeniably incendiary. But divorcing it from the broader video, in which they cite murdered Gaza journalists and implore fellow musicians to break their silence, replaces moral outrage with clickbait. The clip’s virality allowed critics to omit their accompanying statement that Jewish lives are not expendable and that antisemitism is abhorrent—sentiments cut from reposted snippets.
Media reports seldom mention that Kehlani is mixed Black, Native, and Filipino heritage and spent much of her adolescence homeless, experiences that inform their identification with stateless or displaced peoples. They also ignore their track record of supporting Jewish artists, performing at Jewish-led events, and publicly condemning synagogue vandalism in 2018. The backlash thus relies on erasure: erasing her context, their clarifications, and the content of their longer statements to cast a straightforward “enemy image.”
Since October 2023, the federal government has scrutinized universities for alleged antisemitism, threatening funding cuts and lawsuits. Administrators are incentivized to over-correct, canceling events to avoid litigation. At Cornell, donors labeled their video “hate speech” and mobilized within hours. Rather than engage in dialogue, the university folded. This environment rewards the loudest accuser, not the most fact-based claim.
First, Kehlani’s rhetoric, while fiery, targets a political ideology (Zionism) and a government (Israel), both fair game in democratic debate, the same way one might denounce U.S. foreign policy without hating Americans. Second, no credible watchdog has presented evidence that they have vilified Jews as Jews. Groups like StopAntisemitism cite her “intifada” slogan; historically, intifada refers to popular uprisings, not genocide. Linguists note the Arabic root n-t-f-d—“to shake off”—conveys resistance; only in partisan translation does it mean “kill Jews.” Third, their activism is overtly intersectional: they stood with Standing Rock water protectors in 2016, marched for Black Lives Matter in 2020, and raised funds for Maui fire relief in 2023. That pattern undercuts the notion that they selectively attack Jewish safety; she consistently sides with marginalized communities.
Kehlani’s case is not isolated. Actors Melissa Barrera and Rachel Zegler, rapper Noname, and Irish trio Kneecap have all lost gigs for similar statements about Gaza. The through-line is a zero-sum framing that equates Palestinian solidarity with Jewish endangerment, a framing institutionalized through IHRA-derived speech codes. Civil-liberties advocates worry that this sets a precedent where political litmus tests replace creative merit in booking decisions. PEN America blasted the SummerStage cancellation as “cowardly,” arguing that “free expression is a pillar of pluralistic societies.” If artists must pass ideological vetting to perform, cultural spaces shrink into echo chambers.
To move beyond demonization, the public must:
Separate identity from policy. Critiquing a nation-state does not negate the right of its citizens, including Jews worldwide, to safety and dignity.
Demand context. Viral clips should be weighed against full transcripts and the speaker’s broader record.
Challenge weaponized definitions. Definitions of antisemitism that collapse into anti-Palestinian censorship harm both Jewish and Palestinian advocates by distorting genuine bigotry and stifling debate.
Protect academic and artistic freedom. Universities and municipalities should uphold viewpoint diversity, not subcontract policy to the loudest interest group.
Kehlani is hardly the first artist to tether art to liberation politics, but the speed with which the support of Palestine has been rebranded as antisemitism reveals a chilling new orthodoxy. What actually says is stop bombing civilians, end apartheid, free the hostages of war, which aligns with mainstream human-rights discourse, not hate propaganda. The mislabeling thrives in an atmosphere where administrators fear donors, politicians court outrage clicks, and policy definitions conflate a colonial critique with ethno-religious hatred. Correcting the record is more than a matter of fairness to one singer. It is a defense of the principle that decrying state violence, any state’s violence, remains protected and is vital speech. Until audiences, institutions, and lawmakers redraw that line, expect more silenced concerts, more hollow campus festivals, and a cultural landscape poorer for its unwillingness to let artists speak freely.
Visit the Artists Against Apartheid website and sign the letter to help stop censorship of pro-Palestine voices.
We love Kehlani. This is one of the many reasons. She’s always been an activist 🩵🩵