Shawn Mendes Urges Artists to Speak Out on Gaza

Shawn Mendes urged fellow artists to speak publicly about the violence in Gaza in a Thursday Instagram post, calling the situation a genocide and asking people to help Palestinians. He wrote that the killing must stop and said children and families in Palestine had suffered for too long.

Mendes said he had been educating himself about the conflict and wanted to understand how he could help. He acknowledged that speaking publicly could feel frightening, adding that he felt the need to act. He encouraged artists and others to use their voices, educate themselves, hold people in power accountable and donate.

In the post, Mendes also said he had donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Watermelon Pictures and the Woven Futures Fund. That list of donations was reported in one account of the post. Mendes’s message reached an audience of nearly 70 million Instagram followers, according to Creative Community for Peace.

Creative Community for Peace, a Jewish nonprofit, criticized Mendes’s description of events as genocide. The organization said it applauded his efforts to educate himself but considered the post irresponsible and said it reflected what it called a biased, one-sided...