I woke up yesterday morning to the local radio morning show on the CBC, just before 9 a.m. When the host announced the third top Canadian song of the year – counting back from 100 – was  Stick of Gum by Nemahsis.  The host gaily told us we had to wait till the morning show  on New Year’s Eve for the reveal of the number one Canadian song.  Suddenly he said Nemahsis –Nema Hasan–a Canadian-Palestinian, born and raised in Milton, Ont. suffered discrimination and career limiting setbacks because she was critical of Israel.  I was amazed that the CBC would even allow that scripted explanation just prior to the two-minute song clip. 

Nema Hasan  was dropped by her label in Oct. 2023 – three days after 7 Oct — when she posted about “the occupation of my homeland.”  Hasan said, “My label just dropped me, a Palestinian artist, for being pro-Palestine.” She refused to “cool down” her support for Palestine in 2024.  The record label company stung her when they said they knew where her loyalty lay.  Hasan noted, “I was fully ostracized … I didn’t think there was going to be a future in music.”  All of this on the edge of the launch of her debut album, Verbathim;  she was worried it could be shelved indefinitely and her single, “Stick of Gum”,  wouldn’t be played. 

What did Hasan do wrong? Absolutely nothing: Still, Hasan is acutely aware of what people think about her, and about her place in the culture, too. She says the way she is treated is part of a continuum. “… it’s happened in my life many times. It’s my reality.” She admits to “the unfavorable odds of a Brown, Muslim, Palestinian hijabi becoming a pop star in the West in 2024…. I’m just thankful I’m still making music. But I don’t want to be treated like an exception. I don’t want people to be like, ‘Oh, she’s so good for a Muslim girl. She’s so pretty for a hijabi.’ I don’t want to be the first. I want to be one of the best.”  Just being Muslim after 7 October has made her persona non grata in many record studios and with record labels.  

Not only did she lose the label, but also no distributor would take her on in the wake of 7 Oct. She found a distributor finally, after many others had refused.  Hasan said,

“There was finally one distribution label that was in Toronto that was like, ‘We’re edgy. We work with a lot of edgy artists,'” she recalls. “I was like, ‘OK, I don’t really think being Palestinian is edgy, but … let’s do it.’”

In late April 2024, she flew to Los Angeles to sign the distribution deal – and suddenly that fell through. She told her team, “May 23, we’re releasing the first song independently. We’re going independent. Fully. No publishing, no distribution, no label. We’re doing it.'”  Twenty years ago that was impossible, nor could one distribute, let alone make a quality video without experts.  

Watch Nemahsis’ official music video Stick of Gum here

She also produced a music video released to accompany her single. The video was shot in Jericho, in the West Bank where she, her sister and mother visited her relatives, focusing on her grandmother, shortly after Israel’s attacks on Gaza.  Friends, her grandmother, and townsfolk feature in the video. As Hasan notes, “Even with the dangerous moments that were happening – bombs being sent over, or kids being shot in the street, it was like was Experiencing that with them.  My life was no better than theirs.”  Her relatives withstood Israeli military attacks and Jewish settler attacks.  The video’s aim was to show her family and other Palestinians “as they live – a counter to the dehumanization of Islamophobia and of genocide.”

But the music industry, clearly as slavish to Israel as the book industry, as the media, as the newspapers, as the schools, the libraries, as the university administrators, as the Canadian Medical Association, as almost every institution or publicly funded  organization – decided early on to side with Israel and soft pedal or deny the genocide. 

Imagine If this were happening to a Jews, people would call it what it clearly is: antisemitism.  And we would hear about it. But when it happens to a Palestinian or a Muslim, it’s almost ignored.  Her career was left in tatters, almost ruined, as has happened to hundreds of other casualties of the cultural war against the Palestinians.  (Not to the mention the actual war that has killed over 45,000 Gazans.) Or worse, it is of no consequence because too many Canadians, led by a semi-comatose media, deny the genocide – and deny that Palestinians count.

Image at the top:  “After years of being buried under dust, sand and insulation materials, Palestinian authorities have unveiled one of the world’s largest mosaic panels, located in the occupied West Bank city of Jericho. The mosaic was restored as part of a $12m five-year project funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in partnership with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities”. Photo taken in 2021, by Al Jazeera.

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Nota bene:

Note on the death of former President Jimmy Carter: His was the first book I read which let loose the concept in the public’s mind about Israeli Apartheid. Carter’s 2009 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, caused many in the “official” Jewish community to denounce him, wrongly of course, as an antisemite. A funny incident that I can thank Carter for: in 1980 I had to go to Philadelphia for a medical issue. I didn’t realise how much I’d stand out in my fake fur coat and boots that winter. On a city bus I boarded, the driver put his hand over the fare box and asked me if I was Canadian. I said yes. He said the American people want to thank me for what my embassy did to spirit the six Americans diplomats safely out of Iran — so the ride was free. I got several more free rides, including one from a taxi driver.