Police are investigating two performances at last weekend’s Glastonbury Festival.
Punk duo Bob Vylan, whose performance was live-streamed, chanted: “Death, death, to the IDF” (Israeli Defense Forces).
Irish rap trio Kneecap followed onstage, but their performance was not officially streamed.
One member has recently been charged with a terrorism-related offence for waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert.
Glastonbury
Glastonbury is Britain’s biggest music festival. It’s held on a farm in south-west England.
The BBC live-streams most performances and uploads them to its streaming service iPlayer.
Ahead of this year’s festival, the BBC said it would not stream Kneecap’s performance, citing editorial guidelines, but said it would be on iPlayer.
Set one
Punk duo Bob Vylan began their performance at 2.30pm on Saturday (local time).
During their performance, lead vocalist Bobby Vylan (a stage name) led a chant of “death, death to the IDF”.
He said the UK and the U.S. were “complicit in war crimes and genocide happening [in Gaza] to the Palestinian people.”
The set was being broadcast live by the BBC. It has not been uploaded to iPlayer.
Set two
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Kneecap was scheduled to perform next, at 4pm.
The BBC did not stream the performance.
Attendee Helen Wilson streamed it on her personal TikTok, which was liked nearly two million times.
During the performance, Kneecap led chants of “F**k [UK PM] Keir Starmer,“ and “free, free Palestine”.
The BBC said it had uploaded an “edited” version of the performance to iPlayer.
Reaction
The BBC said Bob Vylan’s chant was “deeply offensive”.
Festival organisers said in a statement: “Their chants very much crossed a line... there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”
Starmer reiterated that he had not wanted Kneecap to perform, and called Vylan’s chant “appalling hate speech”.
The Israeli embassy in the UK said the chant “raises serious concerns about the normalisation of extremist language”.
Speaking on TV on Sunday morning (local time), UK Health Minister Wes Streeting said Bob Vylan’s comments were “appalling”.
He added: “I’d also say to the Israeli embassy, get your own house in order in terms of the conduct of your own citizens and the settlers in the West Bank.”
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, part of what the UN considers the Occupied Palestinian Territory, are illegal under international law. They are legal under Israel’s law.
Israeli settler violence against Palestinians has increased since Hamas’ attack on Israel.
