Canadian poet and singer Mustafa releases poignant new song and video for Palestine, featuring Bella Hadid.
The song is an emotionally charged outlet of grief, with a harmony accentuating this sentiment. Helping to bridge its intensity, is American fashion model Bella Hadid, who acts in a maternal role as Gazan hip-hop artist MC Abdul‘s mother. Mustafa, who is of Sudanese heritage, vocalises part of the song in Arabic, a shared language between the two countries.
“I was 11 when I met this boy from Gaza,”, he said in a statement. “We were inseparable. With him I shared one of the deepest loves I’ve ever known, he grew up alongside me in a housing project in Toronto. And not even this love was a match for the violence we were up against; the one in our new home, the one that followed him from Gaza like a cold wind.”
Music video features real footage from Gaza
The video documents the lives of ordinary Gazans (who are mostly women and children) before footage of airstrikes and the bereaved appear to chronicle events that are forcibly a part of the Palestinian experience.
Mustafa explained that Hadid helped develop the concept for the music video which features real footage from Jenin refugee camp:
“I reached out to Bella in 2022 about the ‘Gaza Is Calling’ short film. I wrote a story about a grief that meets you on whatever land you escape to. In it we follow Bella Hadid and MC Abdul of Gaza as they journey through their grievances. A parallel story of Israa Ahmed and her younger brother plays out. Israa and her brother engage in the ruins and danger of a refugee camp in Palestine as Bella and Abdul engage with memorabilia and guilt in the Western world. Hiam Abbas directs. Israa and her brother are still in this camp in Jenin, Palestine today. The hope is that this serves as a stark reminder that every path is ours, every child is ours, and every war is ours to answer for and speak against.”
All proceeds from the song will be donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
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