Dua Lipa says that while as a music star, it’s likely “easier to be apolitical,” she feels compelled to speak out about the Israel-Hamas war and continue to call for a “humanitarian cease-fire.”
“I think there’s no kind of deep discussion about war and oppression. It just is something that we’ve seen happen time and time again,” the “Levitating” singer said in an interview with Rolling Stone published Tuesday.
“I feel like just being a musician and posting about something doesn’t make enough of a difference, but hopefully, just showing solidarity, which is sometimes all you feel like you can do, is important,” the 28-year-old songstress said.
“My existence is kind of political, the fact that I lived in London because my parents left from the war,” the performer, who was born to Albanian parents in England’s capital, said.
“I feel for people who have to leave their home. From my experience of being in Kosovo and understanding what war does, no one really wants to leave their home. They do it for protection, to save their family, to look after the people around them, that kind of thing, for a better life. So I feel close to it.”
“My feelings on displaced people [are] very real and raw, and it is a difficult subject to speak about because it’s so divisive,” Lipa said.
“I feel so bad for every Israeli life lost and what happened on Oct. 7,” she said of the terrorist attacks launched by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis. Lipa joined several other public figures in signing an open letter just weeks after the attacks that called on President Biden to “facilitate a cease-fire without delay.”
“At the moment, what we have to look at is how many lives have been lost in Gaza, and the innocent civilians, and the lives that are just being lost. There are just not enough world leaders that are taking a stand and speaking up about the humanitarian crisis that’s happening, the humanitarian cease-fire that has to happen,” Lipa said.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined three prerequisites for peace amid Israeli strikes and shelling that have killed thousands of Palestinians: the destruction of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza and the beginning of a deradicalization process of Palestinian society.
In 2021, Lipa denounced a New York Times ad from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s World Values Network that accused her and other celebrities of antisemitism and of “[vilifying] the Jewish State” over their support of the Palestinian people.
“I stand in solidarity with all oppressed people and reject all forms of racism,” she wrote on Instagram at the time.
Lipa told Rolling Stone that the accusations made her feel as if she was “put in danger.”
“I was put in a place where my core values were completely flipped on its head, and that really hurt because I feel like when I do want to speak about something, I hope that people will see it for what it is and that there is no malicious intent,” she said.
Lipa, who founded the editorial platform Service95, told the magazine that some critics might be taken aback by her choice to speak out about hot-button issues.
“I think it’s a thing of what people want from their pop stars,” the Grammy Award winner said.
“They don’t want you to be political. They don’t want you to be smart,” she said.
“Not that I’m trying to prove myself in that way, but there is so much more to me than just what I do.”