Mustafa has shared a new song, “Gaza Is Calling,” with net proceeds benefitting the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Watch the video, directed by the filmmaker and Succession actor Hiam Abbas, below.

Mustafa, who is Sudanese Canadian, wrote “Gaza Is Calling” in 2020, but chose to release it as a benefit single in light of Israel’s latest assaults on Palestine. Palestinian American model Bella Hadid and Gazan rapper MC Abdul feature in the video, which includes footage shot in Jenin last month.

Mustafa said in a press release:

“Gaza Is Calling” is about my first experience with heartbreak in friendship. I was 11 when I met this boy from Gaza. We were inseparable. With him I shared one of the deepest loves I’ve ever known, he grew up alongside me in a housing project in Toronto. And not even this love was a match for the violence we were up against; the one in our new home, the one that followed him from Gaza like a cold wind. In the end it was all the bloodshed between us that didn’t allow us to see each other without tears appearing, and one of the last notes he sent to me was about how we would continue on in another life.

The string sample is the Arabian nostalgia that we share, the Auto-Tuned Arabic I sing is the balance we tried to reach being boys of cultural empires in a small hood, and the Oud is the instrument of our homelands, Sudan and Palestine.

Speaking about the video, Mustafa added:

I reached out to Bella in 2022 about the “Gaza Is Calling” short film. I wrote a story about a grief that meets you on whatever land you escape to. In it we follow Bella Hadid and MC Abdul of Gaza as they journey through their grievances. A parallel story of Israa Ahmed and her younger brother plays out. Israa and her brother engage in the ruins and danger of a refugee camp in Palestine as Bella and Abdul engage with memorabilia and guilt in the Western world. Hiam Abbas directs. Israa and her brother are still in this camp in Jenin, Palestine, today. The hope is that this serves as a stark reminder that every path is ours, every child is ours, and every war is ours to answer for and speak against.

Early this year, Mustafa co-organized a benefit show to send aid to Gaza and Sudan. Read Madison Bloom’s feature on the event, “Mustafa’s Benefit Concert for Gaza and Sudan Provided Solemn Solidarity Amid Ongoing Global Crises.”