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A prominent Israeli rock band that lost one of its crew members during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks said a New York City venue recently canceled a scheduled concert after learning their group’s name means “The Jews.”
The band HaYehudim, which means “The Jews” in Hebrew, said in a statement to Fox News Digital that management at a venue called The Brooklyn Monarch “informed our local booking agent that the event is canceled due to the ‘currently political nature of our band’ and that the club owners prefer to refrain from hosting ‘politically charged events or acts.’”
“Obviously, we were very surprised because we’re not a political band or have any political agenda or controversy. Our message is of peace tolerance, and acceptance,” the band said. “Regarding the personal tragedy that hit our band members on October 7th, Guy Iluz, a member of our sound staff was kidnapped to Gaza and later murdered. Guy was a talented engineer and musician, a friend and part of the Hayehudim band family. We miss him tremendously. We have since rescheduled the New York show at a different venue and will perform as planned.”
Fox News Digital reached out to The Brooklyn Monarch for comment but did not hear back before publication.
The outlet quoted unverified posts on social media of a purported message from The Brooklyn Monarch citing the “political nature of the band’s name” when telling Hayehudim’s representative that, “we as an entertainment space in New York prefer to avoid politically charged events or actions.”
Sam Bettens of K’s Choice, Orit Shahaf and Tom Petrover of Hayehudim and Gert Bettens of K’s Choice perform on Dec. 16, 2019, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Guy Prives/Getty Images)
In a separate statement obtained by the Times of Israel, the band wrote, “HaYehudim bears its name with pride and always advocates for cultural freedom and the love of humanity. Precisely in this period, we will not give up and will proudly give the concert tour in the United States against all the antisemites.”
“In recent weeks, we have experienced serious manifestations of antisemitism in the heart of ‘American progress’ — New York City. It is chilling and painful to hear about cancellations of shows by a band that has been creating Israeli-Jewish rock for almost 30 years, due solely to the fact that they are Jewish,” the band added.
This is not the first time the band has faced adversity over its name. In 2015, they had a similar issue when they were scheduled to perform at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the band told the Jerusalem Post at the time.
“We were told we couldn’t call ourselves ‘The Jews’ and that we’d just get ourselves into a whole lot of trouble with it,” guitarist and singer Tom Petrover told the Post, “so we chose the initials I.U.D.M. It was the best thing we could come up with that sounded like our actual name.”
