Matisyahu tackles Oct. 7, antisemitism in new music video
Clip for song combines footage from Hamas onslaught, the Holocaust, Israel’s early days; shows singer at massacre sites and with hostage families
American Jewish hip-hop artist Matisyahu released on Friday a music video for his song “Ascent,” filmed in part at the site of the Supernova music festival and other communities ravaged by terrorists on October 7.
“Help me stand up to anti-semitism and share this video far and wide to show the world that we the Jewish people stand proud and that our light will not be put out,” wrote the singer in an X post announcing the clip.
The clip, produced by Adam Weinberg and directed by Yariv Horowitz, shows the singer at the site of massacres perpetrated by the Hamas terror group on October 7.
It also features footage from that day, including videos of the abductions of Noa Argamani and Shiri Bibas with her children Ariel, 4, and Kfir, then 8 months old.
The October 7 footage in the clip is interspersed with black-and-white videos from the Holocaust, World War II, and the early days of Zionism and the state of Israel. Some of the scenes show Matisyahu with relatives of hostages held in Gaza, for whom the artist also performed when visiting Israel in January.
“Our Star shines brighter than a swastika, and our candle still flickers,” raps Matisyahu in the song, set to a haunting, mid-tempo reggae beat.
“You’re still captive to the poison all around you, infected brain no one to blame but the Jew,” he sings to a proverbial antisemite, who responds, “Jew? are you insane? This is not new — they’ve been saying this for years crybabies with their fears.”
The song ends with Matisyahu quoting Psalm 126 — part of the “Song of Ascents,” for which his new song is named — in a Hasidic-accented Hebrew.
Matisyahu told American music publication Billboard that visiting Israel had “renewed [his] faith in humanity” after feeling hopeless following October 7. He said he wrote “Ascent” as a response to the antisemitic rhetoric of Kanye West and others.
The artist, born Matthew Paul Miller, has had several of his performances canceled after October 7 due to threats from pro-Palestinian protesters, which led David Draiman, the Jewish frontman of American heavy metal band Disturbed, to launch a crowdfunding campaign to support Matisyahu’s security detail.
On October 7, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and take over 250 hostages of all ages, while committing numerous atrocities and weaponizing sexual violence on a mass scale.
Vowing to dismantle the Palestinian terror group and return the hostages, Israel mounted an unprecedented offensive on the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 32,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.
