Consortium News: 01-07-2025,
Israel, the U.K. government and the media are fomenting moral panic over words “glorifying violence” towards the IDF while the Israeli military inflicts carnage in Gaza and the region.
British punk-rapper band Bob Vylan at Full Force 2022 in Ferropolis, Germany. (Stefan Bollmann/ Wikimedia Commons)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed predictable outrage at the weekend that the BBC had inadvertently broadcast punk band Bob Vylan leading crowds at Glastonbury in a chant of “Death to the IDF” – the “Israel Defence Forces” that have been responsible for slaughtering many tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past 21 months.
He called the chant “appalling hate speech” — apparently unaware that there are far worse crimes than hating soldiers carrying out the mass slaughter of children. Those worse things, of course, include slaughtering children en masse.
The BBC apologised, calling the band’s comments “deeply offensive” – more offensive, apparently, than Israel bombing and starving the children of Gaza.
“But have you heard this one tho”? pic.twitter.com/7pNSRn0i6l
— ???? ????????? (@aldnmarki) June 30, 2025
Glastonbury’s organisers condemned the chant, saying there was no space for “hate speech or antisemitism” — apparently assuming, wrongly, that all Jews identify not just with the state of Israel but with an Israeli military widely accused by genocide experts of committing genocidal violence in Gaza.