Regina Spektor to Pro-Palestine Protesters at Her Concert: “You’re Just Yelling at a Jew”

Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor’s concert in Portland, Maine, was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters over the weekend, as some attendees in the audience shouted “free Palestine” chants during the middle of her show on Saturday.

“You’re just yelling at a Jew,” Spektor, who is Jewish and emigrated to New York from the Soviet Union as a child, is seen saying on a fan-captured video to a protester in the crowd at Revolution Hall after he started shouting “free fucking Palestine.” Other pro-Israel attendees in the audience were also shouting “Am Israel Chai,” which is Hebrew for “the people of Israel live.”

Spektor had voiced her support of Israel in the past, including just days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Nova Music Festival attack, where she wrote that “if you’ve devalued Jewish life so much that mourning murdered Jewish children at a festival, raped women, and the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust has offended you — leave.”

The incident at Spektor’s concert reflects the continued tension within the music community on how to address the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict. Groups like Kneecap and Bob Vylan have courted significant controversy for their pro-Palestine, anti-Israel messaging on the music festival circuit over the past several months.