Farewell, Ziad Rahbani
(1956 – 2025)

Ziad Rahbani departs in a time of genocide, drawing the curtain on an entire chapter of dreams.

He departs as one who always sang outside the chorus of the defeated — one who never sought applause, nor chased after stardom. He was always there, behind his barricade on the revolutionary margins, where there is no place for falsehood or compromise. He was, and remains, ever-present: in homes, in streets, in cafés, in theaters, in schools, in factories. Wherever you turned, you found him before you: in a taxi, in the alleyways of the camps. His theater was a cry of rebellion, and his music a homeland for the lost, the oppressed, and the exiled.

We in the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, do not see Ziad Rahbani merely as a musician, writer, or actor. Comrade Ziad was the philosopher of the people and their true voice: a unique, unclassifiable presence that spoke to the pain of the people, mocked tyrants, and resisted with truth and beauty.

In a time of occupation, he wrote the Anthem of the Land; in a time of defeat, he sang for revolution and “the downtrodden,” and declared: “Victory is coming, and so is freedom.”  He always moved against the current of the times, rejecting the conventional and the stale, both in thought and in art, renewing himself with every work of creativity, every word, and every political stance, without ever losing his compass. Yet our consolation is that figures like Ziad Rahbani do not truly leave us. The art of this “astonishing” human being will remain a thorn in the throats of the killers, and a sweet melody in the soul of ordinary people.

Ziad Rahbani, dear comrade — you are among the rare few who lived and died standing tall.

To the great Fairouz, to the “defiant people,” to his comrades and loved ones, to Palestine and Lebanon… our deepest love and condolences.