Ekko Astral have released a new song called “Holocaust Remembrance Day”. The song is a standalone single and proceeds from the sale of the song on Bandcamp will go to “GoFundMes for families fleeing an onslaught of Israeli military violence”. Speaking about the song lead singer Jael Holzman said,

This song reflects three experiences key to my life as an American Jew. The first verse is about a time I was asked by a police officer in the U.S. Capitol building if I was a Muslim because of my tichel. The third verse is about when Liam and I produced a podcast for our university’s Hillel about how Jewish students felt about Israel but were censored and disallowed from having any critical voices. And the cover is the site of a 1994 massacre of Palestinians during Ramadan at a holy site to both Jews and Muslims, the Cave of the Patriarchs. I visited this site during a monthlong trip to Israel in high school with a Jewish youth group. That trip also included military humvees, attempts at recruiting me and my fellow high school-aged Jews to the IDF, and lectures about how the Dome of the Rock was a reason to hold hate in our hearts for Arab Muslim people. 

Criticizing the Israeli state for the violence it perpetrates against the Palestinian people is not anti-Semitic. I say that as someone whose family has stayed in kibbutzim just like those targeted on Oct. 7. The truth is there is more than one kind of Jew, and questioning what people tell you is a central Jewish moral. But the city I live in, Washington DC, definitely doesn’t talk about it that way very often. I’ve been struck by the hypocrisy of some news outlets talking about detained reporters in Russia, but there has been no bleeding heart for all the journalists being carried out on stretchers dead in Gaza. Where was the Dana Bash CNN segment about the Al-Jazeera reporter who was shot dead by the IDF multiple years ago? We don’t see that anywhere.”

Ekko Astral will be touring the US this summer with Ted Leo, Lambrini Girls, and Tetchy on select dates. They released their album Pink Balloons earlier this year. Check out the song and dates below.