TEHRAN- In this Tehran Times exclusive, we present the voice of Antony Hequet—a French-American poet, composer, singer and multidisciplinary thinker whose work fuses music, myth, trauma and moral reflection into a profound cultural critique.

Born to a French father and an American mother of Lithuanian Jewish descent, Hequet grew into adulthood with the haunting legacies of World War II coursing through his family: a grandfather who fled anti-Semitic terror, an uncle who parachuted into France with the 101st Airborne on D-Day, and a father who survived the Nazi Mauthausen concentration camp. Such intimate narratives of resistance shaped his lifelong dedication to confronting oppression and cultivating empathy rather than indifference.

Today, Hequet’s artistic landscape is vast. He has created trans-medial operas such as “The Saga of Blue Wolf,” immersive installations under the banner of the Gyre Project, and creations including “Shadow Work” and “Ancestral Echoes”—works anchored in Blues, Soul and ritual performance that challenge cultural erasure and reclaim the spiritual survival of marginalized peoples. He argues art is not decorative but civilizational: memory encoded in sound, image and story, resilience made tangible.

Hequet’s recent essay — “A Global Mental Crisis and a Call for Empathy” — brings his creative and intellectual journey to bear on the Gaza conflict, mapping suffering, silence and propaganda across generations. Rejecting passive hope, he demands moral clarity, collective courage and the renewal of imaginative capacity to reverse empathy’s collapse.

In our interview, Hequet invites us to explore how trauma becomes transmission, how music embodies resistance, and how the absence of empathy may mark civilization’s tipping point. Join us as he challenges institutions and individuals alike to listen, feel and act.

The following is the text of the interview:

How did you come to focus on Gaza / Palestine in your recent work? What personal, philosophical, or moral journey led you there?

I am both French by my father and American by my mother. My mother’s parents were Jews who migrated to America from Lithuania. My grandfather deserted from the Red Army and fled to America. He lived and worked for several years in the USA before he could bring his wife and children to the USA. In the meantime, some members were burnt alive in synagogue by Nazis.

When his son, my uncle, turned 17 he enlisted in 101st Airborne, also known as the Screaming Eagles. He parachuted into France on D Day and several times after that to kill Nazi officers. He carried out his missions as a solo sniper.

My father was in the French resistance during WWII. He carried out a sabotage operation in a train yard during which he was photographed and later captured by the Nazis. They sent him to Mauthausen concentration camp. He was then only 20 years old. He survived because older political prisoners had organized an internal resistance network planning to escape; they took him under their protection.

These three very brave men set an example for me to follow. I was raised listening to their stories and when I was old enough to understand what they had to endure in order to fight oppression, I understood the true meaning and value of courage.

Now America and Israel have become the oppressors to the people of Palestine with the support of France and most of Europe. I cannot be an accomplice of the acts of violence and cruelty that are being carried out in my name, three times: once as a Jew, as second time as an American and a third time as a Frenchman. 

What sources, testimonies, or research shaped your understanding of the suffering and trauma in Gaza? Did you interact with any first-hand accounts?

I have not been in direct contact with people living in Gaza. My understanding of the suffering and trauma started a long time ago thru different source. A close friend was posted in Jerusalem and his job for many years was to monitor the expansion of the West Bank Barrier. He later quit his job for the NGO and created a movie production company which makes films about the expansion of the West Bank Barrier, the resulting mistreatment of the Palestinian people and the legal battles brought to the International Court of Justice. The most shocking revelation for me was the total disregard of Israel for International Law, the unconditional support of the United States in this regard, and ultimately the absence of any real International Law.

Because of this total absence of Law, the Palestinian people are left to suffer oppression and humiliation, day after day, year after year. 

You argue for empathy as more than emotion — as a political and spiritual act. How do you see that applying in the situation in Gaza when many voices are silenced or distorted?

As humans we are composite beings, aggregates resulting from millions of years of evolution. Our most primitive core, embodied in the Reptilian brain, is considered to be responsible for survival functions. The Limbic brain is associated with emotional regulation and social functions. The neocortex is the place where we process information: the source of language, cognition and reasoning. Propaganda uses fear and greed to trigger the primitive brain into a survival mode which shunts regulation and reasoning. Political and Spiritual development is a voluntary process of self-regulation, where empathy and reasoning counter balance impulsive behavior. Many Israelis, too many Jews and people from Western countries still react instinctively as if they were under attack. This inversion is a distortion of reality, the result of weakened Souls refusing to carry out a painful introspection, and projecting their own darkness onto others who are temporarily under their control.

What does truth‐seeking mean in the context of Gaza, where there are conflicting narratives, propaganda, censorship, and suppressed voices?

The truth is not sought it is revealed. The Media of the global West have been doing their damnedest to paint a narrative favorable to Israel. Simultaneously, censorship and repression are at work, arresting people in the UK for expressing their opinion, professors in the USA using their tenure, journalists being shot or having to quit their jobs… But the psychopaths who are orchestrating this dis-information are pushing the limits too far. In today’s world the Truth cannot be suppressed. The internet is full of videos where the atrocities being committed by the IDF and the most brutal Israeli settlers are in plain sight. Israeli soldiers are documenting their own cruelty and rejoicing about it in plain sight. Psychopathy creates its own demise. The justifications such as: “Israel has a right to defend itself”, are sounding more and more pathetic.

Art is repeatedly a theme in accounts of Gaza: destroyed galleries, artists using aid materials, reclaiming identity. What role does culture (poetry, art, music) play in healing, in resistance, in preserving memory?

As an American Blues and Soul singer, I can best answer this question by speaking of the role that music played in the resistance of Black American people to slavery and oppression. It is still difficult to imagine a world in which male slave owners raped their young female slaves to produce children which they sold into slavery; their very own offspring. In the face of this barbaric cruelty, black culture not only survived, but it thrived. Rich white American slave owners did their best to destroy the culture of black slaves, instinctively forbidding musical instruments. But they could not prevent them from singing as they worked in the fields and in chain gangs. Then they made a big mistake, by allowing them to meet on Congo Square in New Orleans on Sunday. from this where born the marching bands that started Jazz. Today, American Jazz, Blues and Soul music have become “The Music of America”, known and adopted worldwide. This music gave the Black people the resilience they needed to survive and later prosper. One almost completely ignored fact is that American Indians and to some extent, poor whites, such as “white trash” from the Appalachians, also largely contributed to the elaboration of these musical genres which later mutated into Rock’n Roll.

You connect the loss of empathy to the world’s silence on the situation in Palestine. Do you see this as a symptom of a deeper psychological or civilizational breakdown?

Civilization is based on the ability of individuals to expand their circle of care and empathy from the self, to the family, to the community, their country, the world. This expansion is what gives humanity power. Civilization is based on the power of creativity, the power of the Poetic Word. There is currently an attempt to hijack and destroy this power, perpetrated by a very small number of psychopathic individuals. Their deep-rooted fear and greed require infinite amounts of wealth and power in a failed attempt to compensate for their lack of connection with other humans.

This mental imbalance is promoted into the rest of humanity: “greed is good”, “be yourself”, dominate and subdue, rape pillage and plunder.

As long as this way of perceiving “success in life” prevails, we will have no peace.

You mention “trans-generational trauma” shaping the behavior of both victims and perpetrators. How does this concept help us understand the ongoing violence in Gaza?

The Jews of Europe underwent immense trauma at the hands of the Nazis, but also the Poles, the Russians as well as an active minority of French and other European people. The Jews, were not the only people to be victims of a holocaust. The Romani Holocaust took place at the same time but has not received the same attention. We the Jews, being clever people, managed to turn this disaster to our advantage: laws were made, vocabulary was created, movements were spawned, reparations were demanded and made.

By a strange twist of fate, this prevented the necessary introspection and healing to take place. 

Now the trauma endured by the Jews is being projected unto the Palestinian people who have nothing to do with it. The most pathetic part of this story, is that Palestine used to be a territory where people from varied cultures and faiths coexisted in peace and prosperity for centuries… This transfer of trauma is not only cruel and stupid, it is also leading to the possible self-destruction of Israel, and creating the menace of a worldwide conflict.

Do you see glimmers of a movement or awakening — among artists, mental health professionals, ordinary people — that give you hope in the face of what you describe?

There are voices emerging which attempt to bring some truth and clarity into the world conversation. Several very prominent and well-spoken US ex-militaries are making their voices heard. What is interesting, is that they do not stop at criticizing the stupidity and irresponsibility of the belligerent attitude adopted by current leadership, they also criticize the faulty values of America, Europe, and of the Global West.

Psychologists and Neuroscientists are also connecting the dots between societal collapse, the degradation of our values, and the functioning of the human mind.

Economists are questioning the premises of capitalism, eternal growth and the inevitable consequences: stealing resources and land, enslaving and destroying people, as well as the sources of life themselves.

More and more people are raising their voices to protest the actions of Israel, backed by America and Europe. Peaceful protest is a good sign but it will to be enough to change the outcome.

The thing is, I do not believe in hope… I believe in courage, I believe in speaking up with clarity, and I believe in taking decisive action in the face of madness and tyranny.

By the way, what about the poets and artists, what have we been doing… As a poet I am not doing my best by making social commentary. What the world is lacking the most is not insight but imagination. We are stuck because describing how and why we are failing does not trigger action, alone. The capacity to create a vision, to trigger the desire to enact that vision… Poetry and music are more than the language of the Soul, they provide food for the Soul, and our collective Soul is starving to death.