‘Leve Palestina’: The 1970s song that became an antiwar anthem in Sweden

George Totari’s famous song was one of the first to bring Palestinian resistance music to the West. Leve Palestina, Totari’s 1979 song about Palestine, has gained new life since Israel’s brutal war on Gaza began on October 7 last year and has left more than 39,000 Palestinians dead – with many thousands more lost under the rubble and presumed dead – and nearly 90,000 wounded. On a grey, late October rainy day in Stockholm, protesters against the war gathered in the Swedish capital chanting the lyrics to Totari’s song from the 1970s, calling for an end to Israel’s bombing of Gaza: “Leve palestina och krossa sionismen. “In an age when most pop music is homogenous and almost apolitical, Leve Palestina is a source of inspiration,” says Jan Lindstrom, a PhD student at Lund University, one of Europe’s oldest universities. Totari’s inbox is full of messages from young people across the globe, “finding a home” in a band formed long before the internet and social media.