Samir Eskanda

Samir Eskanda is a Palestinian-Irish artist, organizer, and human rights activist based in the UK.

Over the past decade, he has provided strategic guidance to many cultural solidarity initiatives worldwide, including from musicians, writers, filmmakers, and visual artists, among others. These initiatives have predominantly included a commitment to end complicity in Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid. His views on the intersection of culture and activism and why art should not be used to whitewash oppression and grave human rights violations have appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, Sky News, and others.

Samir has played a key role in many campaigns, covered by CNN, BBC, Rolling Stone, among other mainstream outlets, urging celebrities like Shakira and Lana del Rey to cancel performances in Tel Aviv. These campaigns have been pivotal in the current mainstreaming of the cultural boycott of Israel as a meaningful form of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.