I Built an App for Songs My Son Refused to Hear

My son and I were driving when a Green Day song came on the radio.

He said: “Skip it, Dad. They’re boycotting Israel.”

That moment stayed with me longer than I expected.

My name is Itay. I’m Israeli, a father, and I’ve been living in the US for over a decade, working in tech. Music has always been part of who I am – not background noise, but something close to identity.

I want to be clear about where I stand, because it matters for what comes next. I have protested against Netanyahu’s governments. I believe his leadership has prioritized its own political survival over the country’s security and future – in a region that leaves very little margin for that kind of leadership. If these artists were directing their criticism at specific policies, at the people in power – I could respect that. I might even agree.

But that’s not what’s happening.

The boycott movement doesn’t target policies or actions. It targets a people. Its rhetoric makes no distinction between a law-abiding Israeli who believes in equal rights for all, and those who commit violence in the name of religion or land. It treats Zionism – the belief in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination – as the problem itself. That’s not political criticism. That’s something older and darker, dressed in the language of social justice.

Here’s the irony: the Israelis most likely to listen to Green Day, Lorde, or Roger Waters are the same Israelis who are open to the world – who travel, who engage, who are most receptive to outside voices. These artists are not boycotting Israeli policies. They’re boycotting their own most sympathetic audience

As someone for whom music goes somewhere deeper than just the ears, discovering that artists I’ve followed for years have written off people like me – some of them with surprising enthusiasm – is quietly painful. Not rage. Just a kind of loss.

So I built something.

ArtSiren is a free browser extension – no tracking, no personal data collected – that alerts you the moment a boycotting artist appears on your screen, on Ticketmaster, YouTube, Spotify, and dozens of other platforms. Before you buy the ticket. Before you press play. Before you support. 284 verified artists, every one sourced from mainstream press. No agenda – just information, so you can decide for yourself.

Because knowing shouldn’t require research.

artsiren.co