Shawn Mendes Calls Gaza a ‘Genocide’ and Urges Artists to Speak Out

The 28-year-old Canadian pop star addressed “friends and fellow artists” in the Thursday post, saying he knew that speaking publicly “can feel scary.”

“I feel it now as I type this,” he wrote. “I also feel the need to do something to help. The more of us that use our voice, the closer we are to change.”

An Appeal to Fellow Artists

The message opened with “FREE PALESTINE” and stated: “There is a genocide happening before our eyes. The senseless killing in Gaza must stop.”

Mendes wrote that children and families in Palestine “have suffered for far too long,” and said he had been “working on educating myself” to understand how he could help. He told his roughly 68 million Instagram followers that he had donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Watermelon Pictures and the Woven Futures Fund.

The closing line in the original caption retained a typo: “Lets normalize speaking up and standing up for those suffering from oppression.”

Not His First Public Comment

The language was his most direct to date, but not his first public remark on the war. At a concert in Lisbon in August 2025, Mendes said events in Gaza were “absolutely breaking my heart,” while warning that turning pain “into hatred towards Jewish people as a whole is wrong.”

Some coverage on Thursday, including a Billboard report, described the Instagram post as his first statement on Gaza. That account is incorrect.

Artists and the Gaza War

Other performers have taken more public positions over the past year. Rapper Macklemore staged European “Free Palestine” dates after being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour, and later said nine American arenas refused to host his own benefit shows.

Billboard said artists including Olivia Rodrigo, Dua Lipa, Susan Sarandon and Mark Ruffalo have continued to call for an end to the killings in Gaza. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton this week visited Egypt’s side of the Rafah crossing and urged Israel to allow more aid into Gaza.

The Conflict Mendes Cited

Palestinian authorities say more than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Reuters. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect in October 2025.

Gaza health officials say at least 1,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since then, while Israel says four of its soldiers have been killed, Reuters reported on Thursday. A United Nations independent commission of inquiry said in late October that Israeli authorities had continued to commit “genocidal acts” in Gaza after the truce. Israel rejected the report as part of a “misinformation campaign.”