The Big Story
El Khat, an indie rock outfit led by Eyal El Wahab—a member of the Yemeni Jewish diaspora raised in Israel’s Jaffa and currently based in Berlin—has discovered the cost of cultivating a left-wing audience. Following higher-profile cases of artist cancellations related to boycott, divestment, and sanctions such as that of Jewish rapper Matisyahu and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the band members have seen their audience turn on them when activists learned that the Arab-appearing band is, in fact, Israeli and Jewish.
El Khat, with a so-called orientalist sound and bricolage aesthetic, blends traditional Yemeni rhythms with instruments fashioned from discarded detritus and has a wash of psychedelic rock influence, alongside a deliberately vague politics of resistance and anti-oppression and lyrics sung entirely in Arabic. The band has grown to be beloved by a left-wing, often pro-Palestinian listenership that, until recently, did not look too closely at the band’s Israeli origins or...
