Bob Vylan Is Not The Story, British Complicity In Palestinian Genocide Is

In the build-up to Glastonbury, all eyes were on Kneecap, them having become famous for raising awareness Israel’s genocide in Palestine at their sets, and with member Mo Chara’s ongoing terror lawsuit making headlines. Fearing they would pull out all the stops at the world’s biggest music festival, in an unprecedented move, the BBC cut short coverage of the festival’s West Holts stage only for the hour of Kneecap’s set. In a glorious moment of comeuppance, however, the act preceding Kneecap - hip-hop duo Bob Vylan said something far more radical than Kneecap would, leading chants of ‘death, death to the IDF,’ leaving the BBC and the entire British media reeling. 

The fact is that the British media would love us to spend our energy and words debating the merits of this chant and why it is or isn’t acceptable, while the IDF themselves carry out the most horrifying atrocity of my lifetime. While I was at Glastonbury, the IDF bombed a Gaza seafront cafe, killing 20 innocent civilians. On the same day as Bob Vylan’s set, 23 Palestinians were murdered, including three children. The preceding evening, Israel bombed tents and massacred 62 Palestinians. Testimonies also arose that weekend that Israeli soldiers have orders to fire on Palestinians waiting for aid. ‘We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away.’ This practice was compared by one soldier to the game ‘red light green light’ - made famous by Squid Game. To quote Kneecap from their electrifying set, ‘There’s no fucking hiding it, Israel are war criminals.’ And yet, I am expected to be appalled by a chant by a punk band at a music festival. 

You’ll struggle to find Keir Starmer condemning these actions by the IDF, but of course he condemns chanting at famously left-wing Glastonbury. Bob Vylan are no superstars, the likelihood is that very few would have been watching this set, so why blow it so out of proportion? This is a similarly out-of-proportion response to the actions of Palestine Action, now being a proscribed terrorist organisation on the same level as Al-Qaeda or ISIS for spray-painting a plane. This government’s attempts to curb public sentiment against Israel’s genocide are growing more and more pathetic and alarming. Kneecap explained these tactics during their set, the government seeks to make the pro-Palestine movement look fringe, this makes it easier to disregard. The truth is that their stage eventually had to be fenced off due to the sheer number of people who wanted to see Kneecap and show solidarity. Many I am sure were much like me in that they were not nearly as familiar with their music as with their brave political activism and revelled in them leading chants of ‘fuck Keir Starmer’, not to mention the fact that almost the whole crowd joined in with Bob Vylan’s chant. The reality is that a very small proportion of Brits - 13% - support the continued illegal sale of arms from Keir Starmer’s government to a genocidal state. 

I don’t recall any comparable outrage from the British media when Itamar Ben Gvir said that women and children should be killed in Gaza, nor when Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as ‘human animals.’ Where were the BBC headlines when Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said there were ‘no uninvolved civilians’ in Gaza. These are not obscure political figures, these are Israeli government ministers, and these are the people that Keir Starmer continues to send weapons to. But it’s Bob Vylan who we should be talking about and getting their US visas revoked. 

Keir Starmer and half of his cabinet, including foreign secretary David Lammy and leader of calls to proscribe Palestine Action, home secretary Yvette Cooper, receive money from pro-Israel lobbyists. The ‘donations’ from the lobbyists total more than £300,000, which is apparently the price it takes for them to so fervently support a genocide in Palestine. It is hard to imagine that an organisation fighting for any other cause than that of Palestine Action would have been so swiftly proscribed after committing a crime which has physically harmed literally nobody.  

Israel is the outpost of Western neocolonialism in the Middle East and, as much as we might be told otherwise, that remains the status quo in our politics, so the BBC and our government will do anything to make those who oppose Israel look ridiculous. But it won’t work, we all have phones, we can see what Israel is doing, and ignorance is a choice. Let’s not fall for the trap of obsessing over Bob Vylan’s chants and talk about the real story here.

Image: Flickr/uh_simon

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