A visual story for a timeless piece of music
The video for the on-the-road-to-Christmas-nb-1 Palestinian single 'Lullaby', shared on Friday 12, was shot in Palestine by Palestinians and intends to offer a genuine vision of the land and its people.
It is aimed at raising profits for Choose Love’s Together For Palestine Fund supporting three Palestinian-led organisations: Taawon, Palestine Children's Relief Fund and Palestine Medical Relief Service.
The single is the result of a joint effort from a remarkable creative team, including Brian Eno, Nai Barghouti and the singer and music producer Lina Makoul.
Born in Ohio, United States, to Arab-Christian parents, the Palestinian-American singer-songwriter was later raised in Acre, Israel, studied in Haifa, then started in music in 2012, and rose to fame in a few years, now collaborating with the likes of Saint Levant. She is the one behind the song’s music video.
“I got a phone call from my very dear friend Nabil Elderkin, who was to creatively produce this music video asking me and my partner - the cinematographer Ashraf Dowani - to direct the video. We said yes right away,” Lina told me. Lina and Ashraf were actually preparing to shoot a music video for her latest song ‘Akka’, when she was contacted for ‘Lullaby’. But getting the chance to direct a music video for a song that wasn’t her felt like a calling.
“Especially when everything I do is already coming from a place of love for the homeland, for our people, and from the need to capture life the way I see it,” Lina said. “I knew the media is a double-edged sword: showing the atrocities Gazans and Palestinians are going through but also constantly portraying us as victims, so people around the world end up associating us only with rubble, victimhood, and pity. That’s just another layer of dehumanisation. So I wanted to show how stubborn we are,” she continued, “despite the sadness, grief, and fear, to show how beautiful we are when we interact with our land with our olive trees, our sea, our zaatar, our calamantina… our stubborn loyalty to life.”
She adds that when she works on music videos, she always starts from the psychology behind the lyrics, even if, this time, she did not write them or the music. “Then I go into camera movement through sound and production. Then come the colours I ‘hear’ the music in.” The short film was then filmed less in late November.
“Everything happened so fast. We had a tiny window of two days to prepare, cast, choose locations, build the crew, write the treatment and a shot-list, because I was booked for shows abroad, releasing a new song, and Ashraf had already committed to shooting a short film.” And it was really important to Lina to shoot all over Palestine.
“I’ve been touring a lot the past two years, and I realised so many people who’ve never been to occupied Palestine actually have no clue what it looks like because only the atrocities in Gaza make it to the news. You know, how for so many years the media trained our brains to associate Africa - the richest continent on this planet - with poverty and hunger? It feels like they're doing the same to Palestinians. I refused to contribute to this narrative where we’re not shown as a people being systematically separated from each other: geographically, psychologically, emotionally.”
The duo shot in Akka, Jerusalem, Deir Hanna, Lifta, and collaborated with filmmakers in Gaza. “Shoutout to Khaled Tuaima, Suhail Nassar, Nabil Al Hadhoud, and Mohamed Yaghi who executed the Gaza shoot in a single day, excellently,” Lina said.
A renewed traditional musical theme
The single includes participation of over 15 British and Palestinian artists. They said they came together to send this message of hope and solidarity to the place where the Christmas story originates. ‘Lullaby’ features vocals from Palestinian musicians Nai Barghouti and Lana Lubany, young Yemeni star Amena, and from the UK’s Brian Eno, Neneh Cherry and her daughter Mabel, Celeste, Dan Smith (from the band Bastille), Kieran Brunt (from Shards), Leigh-Anne, the London Community Gospel Choir, Nadine Shah, and more.
For Lana Lubany, it felt particularly important to work all together on this, “with these powerful voices, to keep the conversation going with what is happening in Gaza,” she told the media. For Eno, it was also about getting a song in Arabic, for Palestine, in the charts, number 1 or not, despite the current political climate in the UK.
‘Lullaby’ is indeed an adaptation of ‘Yamma Mweel El Hawa’, which means ‘Mama, sing to the wind’, a timeless Palestinian song about love, longing and resilience. It is still heard across the South West Asian region during weddings, street corners and even on TikTok feeds. It also speaks of the longing for homeland and freedom from occupation. This new version was thought as a “powerful and emotive reimagining of a traditional Palestinian lullaby”, according to the team.
To Eno, “after a year defined by unimaginable loss, grief and injustice, we want to end with an act of love for Palestine’s children.” ‘Lullaby’ thus reflects “their beauty, their longing and their hope,” he added.
The song includes some lyrics drawn from the work of celebrated Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish, based on an original concept from Es Devlin. This single is produced by Benji B, Kieran Brunt and Henri Davies, mixed by David Wrench and Valgeir Sidurðsson, and mastered by Matt Colton.
It was arranged and recomposed by Kieran Brunt and Nai Barghouti, with English lyrics written by Peter Gabriel. And the official single artwork was created by visionary Gazan painter Malak Mattar and inspired by her piece ‘Shelter’ with additional artwork by Cameron JL West.
“Every person who worked on the music did a phenomenal job eternalising Palestinian folklore,” Lina told me, “and using Palestinian art as a bridge for unspoken pain.”
Major fundraising effort
For this release, Together For Palestine have a bold aim: to reach Christmas nb#1 and raise urgent, life-saving funds for Gaza’s children and Palestinian affected by the ongoing bombardment and genocide.
“If we rally together and download it, we have a real shot at landing Christmas nb#1 - and turning that moment into vital life-saving support for Gaza’s families,” Eno said.
For the London-based music sensation Mabel, it is intended to be “a traditional lullaby in tribute to the mothers and children of Gaza means the world. I hope you feel the strength in our voices.”
The team behind Together for Palestine already organised a game-changing fundraiser for Palestinians in the form of a cultural event hosted at the Arena Wembley, in London, on 17 September 2025, which saw over 150 cultural figures from across the globe participate and raised over £1 million.
According to Lina, T4P’s Wembley concert created a whole movement. “It shifted what “charity” events look like.
It made them dynamic, where people participate not from guilt but from actual participation. It changed how activism is perceived, reconnecting it with art the way it was before capitalism took over music.”
Asked if she expects the single to reach #1 for Christmas, she simply replied: “Hell yes.”
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Links:
Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G957oaAZwhc&t=486s
To order https://lnk.to/T4PLullabyInsta?channel=PR
https://togetherforpalestine.bandcamp.com/album/lullaby?channel=PR
