A moment of humanitarian relief

A concert benefiting Sudan and Gaza aid focuses on empathy, and raises $5.4 million.

- AUGUST BROWN

MAGGIE Rogers and Shawn Mendes perform at Saturday's Artists for Aid show.

RONALDO BOLANOS Los Angeles Times

If you're ever invited into a Palestinian home, you'll never leave without dessert.

"You're greeted with so many kinds of cookies and teas," said Bella Hadid, the Palestinian American model, activist and co-host of Saturday night's Artists For Aid benefit show at the Shrine Auditorium. "But also love, hugs, and compassion. Palestine is one of the most beautiful places in the world. My dad never taught me to hate anybody - it was always about love and understanding that everyone's history is exactly what it was."

That embodied the mood that Hadid and a sprawling cast of collaborators and musicians tried to cultivate at the third annual benefit show produced by the Canadian Sudanese artist Mustafa. Joined by co-host Pedro Pascal and a roster of musicians including surprise guest Chappell Roan, along with Shawn Mendes, Omar Apollo, Raphael Saadiq, Clairo and many others, they took a period of profound grief and fury about the intractability of the world's current crises and tried to refocus on immediate relief for children and medical care in war-ravaged Palestinian territories and Sudan.

"I always knew that an artist's power did not come from their musical knowledge," Mustafa said, introducing the night. "I always knew that an artist's power comes from the expansion of their empathy." The performers that night tried to use that moral connection to help fix what they could.