Nadia is a longtime fan of the singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, so she was excited to get tickets for her tour date at Portland’s Revolution Hall. But when she and her partner settled into their front row seats at the show on July 26, they didn’t expect they’d be walking out of the venue only a few songs in, when Spektor herself asked them to leave after Nadia calmly expressed support for Palestine. 

Spektor, who is Jewish and immigrated to the United States from Russia in the 1980s due in part to antisemitism in her home country, has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel. In the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, as the Israeli military began a siege on Gaza that has directly resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, Spektor implied people supporting Palestine were aligned with terrorists and rejected calls for a cease-fire. 

Nadia, who spoke to the Mercury on the condition that her last name be withheld out of fear of retribution, didn’t know about Spektor’s stance on Israel. But she was disturbed by what unfolded after a pro-Palestine protester briefly interrupted the artist a few songs into her set, apparently attempting to get onto the stage. The protester was quickly whisked away by security. A video of the incident shows the crowd became unsettled, largely in opposition to the protester and others speaking up in support of Palestine. Most of the audience reacted to the protester with hostility, and a few shouted statements in support of Israel. 

“You’re just yelling at a Jew,” Spektor said in response to the protester. “I thought this was different than the internet.” 

That comment triggered Nadia to speak up. 

“I didn’t stand up, I didn’t get heated. I said, ‘You’re right, it’s not the internet, and there’s a genocide happening.’ She locked in on me, and said, ‘You’re from the internet,’” Nadia told the Mercury. “I said, ‘No, I’m from real life, and children are starving right now.’” 

In response, Spektor asked her to leave. 

“I think you should go, because this is not the place for that conversation…I’m a real person who came here to play music,” she said. 

Nadia thought that was a “really intense response,” but she and her partner were already getting up to go, understanding this wasn’t a comfortable place for them. She said several people on the floor yelled at the couple as they exited the theater, and security guards met them to escort them out the door. 

More than a dozen others left the theater at that time, too, Nadia said. (The video shows Spektor telling the audience, “if anybody wants to walk out, this is your chance.”) After a few minutes of debriefing, Nadia said she tried to find a Revolution Hall staffer to ask about getting a refund, as she and her partner felt like they were “basically asked to leave for having a conscience.” They were told to reach out to the venue by email, and so far haven’t heard anything. 

The incident has been reported on by several national news and music outlets, including Stereogum and Rolling Stone, as well as Jewish publications. 

What was particularly troubling to Nadia is how the venue handled attendees who voiced support for Palestine versus those who spoke up for Israel. The latter group, she said, were not asked to leave the theater, even if they were disruptive. Nadia also said a security guard told her that the venue had expected something like this to happen at Spektor’s show, and were told to be prepared for it.

Revolution Hall didn’t respond to the Mercury’s request for comment. 

Nadia was surprised that so many attendees maintained strong support for Spektor and what she said about pro-Palestine audience members. In recent weeks, the crisis in Gaza has escalated even further, and there has been increased mainstream coverage of the severe famine currently impacting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Dozens of people, most of them children, have recently died from starvation due to a food shortage in Gaza, which experts say is the result of Israel blocking aid from entering the area. When aid has become available, it has sometimes been deadly for people to seek it, as food supply sites have been a frequent target for Israeli military attacks. 

All of this has appeared to lead to a wider understanding that the Palestinian people are under siege, and people have reacted accordingly (even President Donald Trump, long a strong ally to Israel, has acknowledged the grave hunger crisis taking place in Gaza). 

But none of that seemed to be on the minds of the audience at Spektor’s Portland show. And, as Nadia and her partner saw it, Spektor and the venue both participated in quashing dissenting voices, even when they were respectful and calm.

“We were very disappointed with how they handled it. We thought in Portland, Oregon, people might not get shut down when they had a moment of free speech,” Nadia’s partner, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Mercury. “There are so many other ways it could have gone down.” 

This isn’t the first time an artist performing in Portland has faced pushback for their stance on Gaza. Comedian Michael Rapaport, who has been significantly more vocal about his extreme, violent views against Palestinians, was the subject of protests ahead of his 2024 shows at Helium Comedy Club. At Spektor’s show, however, attendees report only a single person who appeared to show up with a plan to protest during the performance. The other people who left the show did so because they felt unwelcome after Spektor’s comments, or were explicitly asked to leave after voicing their disagreement. 

Nadia says the incident at Spektor’s show raises larger questions about how artists and venues should handle these moments of protest. 

“The most impactful thing to me was the inability to even engage with [what’s happening in Gaza] as a reality. It’s a fact that children are starving right now, and the response to that was for security to come out,” she said. “It was just like, wow. I’ve seen so many artists engaged in difficult conversations at shows with some nuance. But it was clear that [wasn’t going to happen]. If that’s your politics, you should not perform in spaces where people are going to have different opinions.”