As musicians, we are calling on The Great Escape to drop Barclays as a partner. Barclays is funding Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians through its financial ties with arms companies that sell weapons to Israel. 

UN human rights officials and genocide scholars have said that Israel’s military assault on Gaza is a “textbook case of genocide”. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last five months, with whole families being wiped out. Relentless bombings are causing more than 10 children per day to lose one or both of their legs. These bombings are bankrolled by Barclays, which invests over £1bn in – and provides financial services worth over £3bn to – companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel, used in its attacks on Palestinians.

A bank that is involved in Israel’s genocide has no place at The Great Escape, which is a fixture of the independent music scene and has a prized place in the industry. We refuse to let music be used to whitewash human rights violations. We cannot let our creative outputs become smokescreens behind which money is pumped into murdering Palestinians.

We draw inspiration from Artists Against Apartheid that helped end apartheid in South Africa. A Barclays boycott was a key part of ending apartheid in South Africa, after thousands of people closed their accounts with Barclays to pressure them to withdraw investments from South Africa.

Israel continues to defy international law, ignore the United Nations calls for a ceasefire and block aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, including by killing aid workers. We cannot be silent. We will not be complicit in The Great Escape being a branding opportunity for Barclays.

We insist that The Great Escape drops Barclays as a partner. There is no festival without the musicians – and as musicians, we are taking a stand against genocide. We call on The Great Escape to do the same.