TEHRAN- The story of Osprey V does not begin in a studio or on a stage—it begins in the ruins, during blackouts, under the sound of drones, and in the shadows of war. As Gaza’s first and only English-speaking internationally recognized rock band, Osprey V has become both a witness and a voice for a people under siege. Their music, forged through trauma and resilience, now crosses borders as an urgent echo from a place the world has rarely listened to.

Osprey V is more than a band; it is a living testimony of destruction, a chronicle of survival, and a voice rising against what its members describe as a “new Holocaust.” Their journey traces back to 2003, when young cousins Raji and Mo’men first imagined forming a rock band in one of the most oppressed and overlooked places on earth. Gaza had no instruments, no teachers, no stages, no audience—and no peace. Yet the dream refused to die.

By 2010, the cousins were teaching themselves guitar online. Joined by their third cousin Sa’ed, they spent their teenage years practicing in a small room above their family’s electronics shop, often rehearsing through blackouts with broken equipment and bombs echoing in the distance. 

In 2015, they officially founded Osprey V.

What the name means

The osprey—a fierce bird of prey—thrives in the harshest terrains: resilient, solitary, and precise. Its ability to rise from devastation mirrors the band’s identity and their struggle for survival. The “V,” representing the number 5 in Latin, signifies the band’s five original members and symbolizes unity, identity, and defiance. In their early years, they even concealed their faces, allowing the message to speak louder than their names.

Osprey V’s formation was, in itself, an act of defiance. Led by Raji Al Jaru, who founded Gaza’s first music store and built more than 100 makeshift studios in a land where amplifiers are harder to find than almost anything else, the band emerged against every imaginable barrier.

“We had to suffer a lot to make this happen, but we made it happen,” Raji says, describing the struggle to create music in a land cut off from the world.

When Israel’s latest war on Gaza erupted in October, even the band’s fragile shelter collapsed.

“Literally in the war, the bombing was happening. We stopped a little bit, stopped the recording, then we paused and just continued. I had to record in a car because we didn’t have a place to record in. Ash was the director of our latest film, ‘Inaudible,’ which shows where I was in the car trying to catch some silence and record my vocals,” Raji recalls.

Music in exile

Raji is speaking now from Jordan, a refuge secured only by the tenuous grace of international connections and the dedicated advocacy of journalists and activists, whose reporting made it possible for the Jordanian government to “bring me out of the genocide three months ago.”

He is painfully aware of the fates of those left behind—his own family and the band’s bassist, Mo’men, who remains in Gaza—and of the extraordinary toll that displacement exacts.

“You have to take what you can within five to ten minutes. Every single time you leave, you have to pay at least 2,000 or 3,000 shekels for each departure,” Raji recounts, describing the trauma of leaving, the loss of possessions, and the experience of moving from “so-called safe places,” which often became scenes of fresh massacres.

In the midst of this chaos, Raji continued to make music. Even when internet access disappeared for 80 or 90 days, he and his friends resorted to hanging a phone from a rope to catch any signal, sending vocal stems to collaborators in Egypt and beyond.

“The only thing that saved my life was my music... it kept me going and kept me hanging,” he says. “I remember myself listening to my music every single day in the car in a hope that I might be able to come out alive and that my voice will be heard.”

Witness to genocide, voice of resistance

Osprey V calls itself “the voice of the voiceless.” Their music is testimony—but also resistance. As Raji says, “We are literally the last musical voice from Gaza... witnesses of this new 2023 Holocaust.”

Each song tells a story: of home lost, of dreams broken, of ordinary love interrupted by violence and exile. “Home is not the borders, it’s not the lines, it’s every broken dream, it’s every broken heart,” Raji sings, summing up a lifetime of forced migration and longing.

One song, “Lost and Insecure,” tells of a pair of Gaza lovers separated by the need to flee and the impossibility of return. Another, “Angels Kneel,” composed before and during the bombardment, interrogates what it means to hold onto humanity in the face of atrocity, drawing on icons from scripture to speak to a universal search for dignity and justice.

“I altered the lyrics in the beginning when the genocide started... These faces are going to haunt us every single day until the day we die because we did not give them justice after all the genocide and the crimes that were happening in Gaza,” Raji explains.

Art as resistance, rock as language

Why rock music, and why in English? For Raji, the choice is overtly political. Rock, he says, is a genre forged in the fires of resistance—the soundtrack to wars, to marginalization, to suffering.

“I’ve never seen any genre better than rock. Even rock stars and big bands before used this same genre in World War I and World War II, when they experienced pain,” he reflects.

Choosing English, the band sought not only to reach international audiences but to confront Western narratives about Gaza and Palestine: “It was so important to be the ambassadors of Gaza people... We are from Gaza, Gaza is from us. Even if we left Gaza, Gaza is still within us.”

But their art is under attack. The destruction of Gaza’s heritage—the bombing of ancient mosques, churches, and the few remaining theaters—are, the band insists, part of a “systematic attack towards culture.” Musicians have been killed for their art; their YouTube channel was deleted during the war; performances for the French Institute were cancelled when the war erupted.

Yet every attempt to erase their voice has only made them fight harder to amplify it.

Collaboration amid collapse

Osprey V is as much a movement as a band, sustained by an unconventional assemblage of artists and activists. Ash Moniz, a Canadian drummer and creative director who joined the band amid the chaos, became a pivotal advocate—connecting displaced musicians with resources, instruments, and international collaborators.

For Ash, the act of listening itself became a form of resistance.

“No matter how loud people in Gaza are screaming, people in the West aren’t listening. So I really began thinking about what it means to listen, and music provides a different way to listen. Maybe people can be heard differently,” Ash says.

His vision for Osprey V is expansive: “Every form of life in Gaza is a form of resistance, and art is such an important part. So many people I know have spent two years trying not to die—they want to actually live. Art is literally keeping people alive.”

Rock’s universality, Ash adds, makes it the ideal vehicle for Osprey V’s urgent message.

“People think rock is just a Western genre, but it’s actually not true. There’s rock all over the world and there’s something very alive about this genre of music,” he says.

From song to action

Osprey V aspires not only to raise awareness, but to spur practical change. Their music is used for campaign fundraising—one song, “Drops,” catalyzed efforts to dig water wells in Gaza. They have set up ways for international supporters to donate via small subscriptions, sustaining both the band and other artists in exile.

“Music could become an action on the ground, financially supporting people, and mentally—as a message that could really define it all,” Raji insists.

On the edge of oblivion

The cost of this journey is devastating. Raji recounts the loss of friends and collaborators—journalists like Ismail Abu Hatab and Saleh Jafarawi, artists murdered or disappeared, memories wiped in a heartbeat. Yet he refuses to be silenced.

“The only terrorist in the region is Israel. The only cancer we have is Israel. It has always been this way. We’re never going to have peace in this region unless we get rid of Israel or Zionism,” he says, refusing to bow to euphemism or to the language of those who wish to erase him.

His love for his homeland, and for the cultures and communities that survive there against all odds, is palpable: “I am 100 percent Gazan. My world revolves around Gaza. It will always revolve around Gaza.”

He takes pride in Gaza’s diversity, recalling how ancient churches and synagogues stood alongside mosques until they too were targeted for destruction.

Osprey V, he says, will never abandon Gaza—“even if we left Gaza, Gaza is still within us. My family is still in Gaza, my memory is still in Gaza.”

Listening, truly listening

In their film “Inaudible,” Osprey V asks the world not merely to hear, but to listen—to artists’ screams, to the hope and despair of a generation made refugees in their own land.

“Maybe even if people are hearing the screams over and over for years, they will hear a song and it touches them in a way they never knew before,” Ash says.

The band’s very existence is a daring refusal to disappear.

For those outside Gaza, Osprey V’s music is a summons: to remember, to bear witness, to act.

“Hope comes from Gaza,” Ash says. “Even in so many artists that I know around the world, a lot of people think, oh, what’s the point of making art during a genocide? But when you actually get to know people who are surviving the genocide, art is everything.”

The story continues

Osprey V is now scattered yet unbroken. Raji and Ash are in Jordan, while Sa’ed, another core member of the band is in Egypt, and Mo’men remains in Gaza—their families still divided by borders, bureaucracy, and siege.

Their story, like their music, moves—angry, aching, but utterly alive.

They do not forget those left behind: the children killed, the journalists silenced, the artists erased. For every bombed stage, for each silenced voice, they respond with songs—sometimes joyful, often desperate, always rooted in the ironclad will to survive and to bear witness.

“As long as our voices, and the voices of the unheard, echo somewhere in the world,” Raji says, “Gaza is not finished. Our story isn’t over. We are the voice of the voiceless, and we will keep singing.”

Photo: Left to right: Osprey V rock band members, Mo’men Al Jaru, Raji Al Jaru, and Sa’ed Al Jaru.