Short answer: As of July 2026, Paul McCartney has a clear, documented record of engaging with Israel rather than boycotting it. He played a landmark 40,000-person concert in Tel Aviv in September 2008 (Israel's 60th anniversary), publicly refused to cancel despite explicit death threats, and was named a winner of Israel's Wolf Prize in Music in 2018 (which, unlike some who reject Israeli honors, he did not decline, though he did not attend the Jerusalem ceremony to collect it, citing scheduling). His consistent framing is pro-peace and two-state (he backed the joint Israeli-Palestinian OneVoice movement), so he is best described as friendly to Israel and openly defiant of the cultural boycott, while positioning himself as a peace advocate rather than a partisan. We have found no notable public statement from him on Israel since the October 7, 2023 attacks.
What Paul Mccartney has actually said and done
- September 25, 2008 (Tel Aviv concert): McCartney played his first-ever Israel concert, "Friendship First," to about 40,000 fans at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, marking Israel's 60th anniversary and coming 43 years after the Beatles were banned from the country, as documented by The Beatles Bible and reported by Haaretz.
- September 2008 (death threats, refusal to cancel): Ahead of the show, McCartney received death threats (the Islamist figure Omar Bakri warned he would not be safe) and calls from BDS groups to cancel. He refused, saying he had gotten explicit death threats but would not surrender and would perform anyway, as reported by Fox News and Marie Claire.
- September 25, 2008 (peace framing): McCartney framed the visit as a peace mission, telling reporters he wanted peace and a two-state solution, and met young Israelis and Palestinians from the OneVoice movement; he also visited a music school in Bethlehem, per Billboard and his own official site.
- 2009 (OneVoice board): McCartney officially joined the International Board of Advisors of the OneVoice Movement, the joint Israeli-Palestinian grassroots peace initiative, as announced on his official site.
- December 2013 (OneVoice fundraising): McCartney backed a OneVoice fundraising drive, saying donations would be doubled and stating that "Israelis and Palestinians deserve peace," as reported by The Jerusalem Post.
- February 2018 (Wolf Prize): McCartney was named a winner of Israel's prestigious Wolf Prize in Music (a roughly $100,000 award from the Israeli Wolf Foundation), per the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Forward.
- May 2018 (ceremony scheduling): McCartney said he could not attend the Wolf Prize ceremony in Jerusalem, citing scheduling reasons and, unlike some other honorees, not any political objection to Israel, as reported by The Times of Israel.
The Jewish and Israeli threads in McCartney's life
The 2008 concert was not McCartney's only connection to Jewish life and Israel. His first wife and closest collaborator, Linda Eastman McCartney (married in 1969, together until her death in 1998), came from a Jewish family: her father, Lee Eastman, was born Leopold Vail Epstein, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and her mother's family, the Lindners of Cleveland, were prominent in Reform Jewish philanthropy, as documented by the Jewish Women's Archive and The Forward in its "the Jewish Beatle" coverage. The Beatles' own manager, Brian Epstein, was Jewish, and the band was famously barred from Israel in 1965, a ban that McCartney's 2008 concert was widely seen as finally reversing (The Times of Israel).
His public posture on the conflict has stayed steadily even-handed and peace-oriented, a two-state message paired with support for the joint Israeli-Palestinian OneVoice movement, rather than a declaration of political loyalty to Israel. That is why anti-Israel boycott groups such as PACBI and the wider BDS movement have criticized him and list him as "complicit" (Electronic Intifada; BDS Movement). There is no evidence that he has ever joined or endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel.
The bottom line
The record supports a "yes, in practice" answer. McCartney broke a decades-old Beatles ban to perform in Israel for its 60th anniversary, refused to cancel under death threats and boycott pressure, won Israel's Wolf Prize in Music, and has personal Jewish family ties. At the same time, he consistently casts himself as a peace advocate seeking a two-state outcome rather than a one-sided partisan, so he is best presented as friendly to Israel and an opponent of the boycott, not as a political spokesman for it. We have found no notable public statement from him on Israel since the October 7, 2023 attacks.
Wear your own answer
McCartney answered the boycott crowd by showing up in Tel Aviv and playing anyway. You can make your own stand a little more visible. Whether you want to mark solidarity plainly or simply carry a bit of Israel with you, our Support Israel collection was built for exactly that, from Star of David pieces to bold I Stand With Israel designs. When public figures stay quiet, everyday people wearing their answer is its own kind of concert.
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Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
