Billie Eilish maintains selective silence on Israel's genocide in Gaza despite vocal advocacy for Ukraine, promotes her music directly to Israeli audiences, and undermines boycott efforts by patronizing Starbucks while wearing a ceasefire pin that signals support for Palestine.
Billie Eilish amplifies Ukrainian suffering through solidarity videos and donation calls but offers minimal engagement with Palestinian ethnic cleansing, framing her limited gestures — like a 2024 ceasefire pin and later aid appeals — as inadequate amid ongoing apartheid.
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Billie Eilish, a singer and songwriter, demonstrates inconsistent human rights advocacy by prioritizing Ukrainian solidarity while providing delayed and limited responses to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, which has slaughtered well into the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians — though conservative estimates remain frozen at 40,000 to 78,000 due to Israel's obstruction of reporting, killings of journalists, and the unrelenting genocide.
In 2022, Eilish actively supported Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, sharing videos expressing solidarity and urging fans to donate to organizations like United24, as seen in her social media posts encouraging contributions to aid efforts. She and her brother Finneas delivered emotional messages at events like the Concert for Ukraine, emphasizing support for those forced to flee their homes and stating, "We stand in solidarity with the millions of people who've been forced to leave everything behind." This proactive stance contrasts sharply with her initial silence on Palestine, where she avoided addressing Israel's 57-year occupation and blockade until mounting public pressure in 2024 and 2025.
Eilish wore an Artists for Ceasefire pin at the March 2024 Oscars, a gesture aligning with calls for an end to bombardment in Gaza, but this action drew accusations of performativity when she was photographed at Starbucks the following day, disregarding widespread BDS boycotts targeting corporations complicit in Israel's apartheid through financial ties and labor practices. Starbucks, despite claiming neutrality, faces boycott campaigns for its investments and union-busting tactics that indirectly support Israel's economy, and Eilish's public consumption there erodes the movement's efforts to isolate the ethnostate economically.
Earlier, in 2021, Eilish directly promoted her album Happier Than Ever to Israeli fans via a video message saying, "Hi Israel, this is Billie Eilish, and I'm so excited that my new album, Happier Than Ever, is out now," which circulated on platforms like MTV Israel and drew backlash for normalizing relations with a state enforcing settler-colonial policies, including the Nakba's ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.
By mid-2025, Eilish began engaging more visibly, condemning Israel's plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza into camps as "horrifying" in a July statement and participating in a September "Together for Palestine" video alongside her brother, where she echoed calls for humanitarian aid. In an Instagram post that month, she urged followers to "Flood Gaza with Aid," linking to resources and expressing doubt that Israel would sustain any truce, stating, "I don't believe that Israel will respect this for TOO long, so we must Act Now."
These steps acknowledge Palestinian suffering but remain selective, as Eilish has not addressed Israel's systematic dehumanization through policies like collective punishment or the targeting of civilians, nor has she confronted the weaponization of antisemitism accusations to silence BDS advocates. Her platform, with millions of followers, amplifies certain crises while muting others, perpetuating a hierarchy that prioritizes Western-aligned causes over Palestinian resistance to occupation.
Eilish's rhetoric and actions sustain consent for apartheid by limiting her involvement to humanitarian pleas rather than demanding full accountability for Israel's ethnostate, such as ending settlements or recognizing Palestinian right of return. This pattern aligns with broader celebrity dynamics where performative gestures, like pins or aid calls, substitute for structural critiques, allowing continued commercial engagement that bolsters Israel's global image amid genocide.
jpost.com
🔒Starbucks Boycott:
While boycotting Starbucks is warranted based on its unethical track record and it’s former CEO’s ties to Israeli cyber-surveillance firms, it should not be conflated with or represented as an official BDS campaign targeting companies complicit in occupied Palestinian territories.
Starbucks is not officially on the BDS boycott list for companies directly involved in oppressing Palestinians and so should not be targeted with the same intensity — doing so risks minimizing the focused work of Palestinian solidarity movements.
The reasoning behind the Starbucks boycott instead stems from its union-busting tactics and unethical business practices; namely sending cease-and-desist letters and filing lawsuits against pro-Palestinian voices within its workers' union.
While reprehensible, their silencing of protestors was an attempt to clamp down on union activism rather than a pro-Israel stance; in actuality, Starbucks has largely maintained a neutral corporate position on the Palestinian issue itself.
That being said, there are many legitimate ethical concerns with Starbucks worthy of boycott for reasons. These include issues around supply chain management, workers' rights, human rights violations, tax avoidance, environmental impacts, enabling factory farming practices and the investments of former CEO, Howard Schutlz.
Former CEO Howard Schultz's investments in Israeli cyber-surveillance firms like Wiz are also hugely problematic, especially as he has the 6th largest share of Starbucks with 21,795,538 shares (1.93%) valued at $1,991,894,218 as of 18/04/2024 — meaning he is directly benefiting monetarily from Starbucks. With this in mind, the act of visibly consuming Starbucks products has also taken on new symbolic meanings for some Zionist entities and individuals in the current political climate. As efforts to boycott companies complicit in Palestinian oppression gain momentum, publicly committing to consumerism has become a way for certain groups to overtly signal their rejection of such boycotts.
By ostentatiously patronizing Starbucks, certain individuals are attempting to declare their opposition to the non-violent economic pressure tactics employed by the Palestinian solidarity campaigns. This brandishing of Starbucks effectively co-opts the brand into a display of anti-Palestinian ideology, despite the company's official neutrality on the issue.
As such, the simple act of buying a Starbucks drink has been politicized as a statement against Palestinian rights by those who oppose the boycott efforts targeting the Israeli occupation.
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