Regina Spektor Confronts ‘Free Palestine’ Heckler: ‘You’re Just Yelling at a Jew’

Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor confronted hecklers during a show in Portland, Maine, who were shouting “Free Palestine” at her, telling them: “You’re just yelling at a Jew.”

The group of hecklers insisted on the right to interrupt her concert at Portland’s Revolution Hall, saying that the situation of children of Gaza was dire.

Spektor wasn’t having it. “This is not the place for that conversation,” she said, according to the Hollywood Reporter, adding:

The only reason I even speak English is because I came here to escape this shit. I only speak English because I came from a country where people treated Jews as othered, and I’m being othered here, and it sucks. It’d be nice if one of my family’s generation didn’t have to go to a new country and learn a new language and just stay put. Have nice lives, you guys.

She then continued playing, to the applause of the rest of the audience, as the hecklers left.

Spektor, who was born in Russia, has spoken out in defense of Israel before, posting on Instagram in 2023 in the wake of the October 7th terror attack in Israel that people who objected to mourning the victims had “dehumanized Jewish people living in Israel to a point where you yourself have lost much humanity.”

She also criticized Björk for her support of the Palestinian cause after October 7, after an anti-Israel post by the Icelandic singer, whom Spektor said she had idolized when she had dreamed of her own music career.