The Queen of Pop, Madonna took a moment during her third Celebration Tour date in London concert to make a lengthy statement about the Israel-Hamas war, calling it “heartbreaking.”
She lamented the deaths of children in the conflict as well as alleged hate crimes related to it, expanding on comments she had made about the war at earlier concerts.
According to the reports she said,
Nobody wants to see what’s happening. I turn on social media and I want to vomit. I see children being kidnapped, pulled off motorcycles; babies being decapitated, children at peace raves being shot and killed. What the f*** is going on in the world? How can human beings be so cruel to one another? It’s just getting worse. It frightens me.
Paraphrasing American writer James Baldwin, Madonna said, “The children of the world belong to all of us, each and every one of them. I don’t care where they’re from, what their headdress is, what the color of their skin is, what their religion is – the children belong to us. And we are responsible for them.”
She also referred to the killing this week of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume in Chicago – 71-year-old landlord Joseph Czuba because he was Palestinian Muslim. She called the killing “a hate crime”.
Israel’s siege and relentless bombing campaign in Gaza is pushing the blockaded Palestinian enclave towards a “human catastrophe” in the second week of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The conflict erupted on 7 October when Hamas launched a surprise assault on Israel and broke through its formidable barrier fence, shocking what is arguably the strongest and best-equipped military force in the Middle East.
Using drones, fighters destroyed key surveillance and communications towers along the border with Gaza, and under the cover of rockets overran an area of more than 70 square kilometers. The ensuing fighting sent shockwaves through Israel and raised the specter of a larger regional war.
Hamas, a self-declared Islamic resistance movement, said it launched the attack in response to what it called ongoing Israeli crimes targeting Palestinians and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
