Bob Vylan have issued another statement about their controversial performance at the Glastonbury Festival this weekend insisting that they, like Kneecap before them, are being used as a “distraction” from the real story about the conflict in Gaza.
“We are being targeted for speaking up”, they say about the backlash to their strongly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel on-stage statements, adding, “we are not the first, we will not be the last”.
During their performance on Saturday, broadcast by the BBC, the duo’s vocalist, who performs as Bobby Vylan, led the crowd in a chant of “Death Death To The IDF”, a reference to the Israel Defense Forces.
He then cited the common and often controversial refrain, “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be - will be - free”. Critics say the on-stage remarks were antisemitic and an incitement to violence, endangering the Jewish community, including Jewish people attending the festival this weekend.
As the backlash continues to mount, the punk duo are now subject to a criminal investigation over their on-stage comments, have been dropped by booking agency UTA and have had visas for a planned US tour revoked. Confirming the visas had been cancelled, US Deputy Secretary Of State Christopher Landau said on X, “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country”.
However, there has also been a backlash to the backlash, including from the Jewish artist that the duo were scheduled to support in the US later this year, the American-Canadian singer and rapper Grandson. “They blame artists and activists and not those who are responsible for the conditions we rage against”, he said, while confirming that Bob Vylan will still appear on his upcoming new album.
Criticism of Glastonbury’s organisers - for allowing the controversial on-stage remarks - and of the BBC - for broadcasting them, has also continued to mount. Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi in the UK, said in a statement, “the airing of vile Jew-hatred at Glastonbury, and the BBC’s belated and mishandled response, brings confidence in our national broadcaster’s ability to treat antisemitism seriously to a new low”.
Meanwhile Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told MPs in Parliament yesterday that she contacted BBC Director General Tim Davie shortly after Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set was broadcast. The BBC, she added “has rightly apologised” for failing to pull the plug on its broadcast of the punk duo as soon as they began the IDF chant, but “key outstanding questions remain”.
That includes, she said, “why the performance was broadcast live given concerns regarding other acts in the weeks preceding the festival; why the feed was not immediately cut when the chants of ‘death to the IDF’ began; and what due diligence was done prior to the decision to broadcast this particular act to the nation”.
She has demanded answers to those questions “without delay”, she added, promising to update Parliament as soon as the broadcaster has responded.
Turning to Glastonbury itself, Nandy said she has had “conversations with members of the Jewish community, including those who were present at Glastonbury”, and they have raised “a number of concerns about imagery and slogans that were on display at the festival over the weekend”.
Those concerns prompted some Jewish people in attendance at Glastonbury to “establish their own safe space at the festival”. The government, the minister added, takes these matters “incredibly seriously” and will be “reaching out to the festival organisers”.
“We strongly support freedom of expression”, Nandy concluded, but “we do not accept that incitement to violence, hate speech or antisemitism is art”. There is “a clear difference”, she added, “between speaking out for Palestine and antisemitism”.
Of course, key to this debate is when exactly speaking out about Palestine constitutes actual antisemitism or a genuine incitement to violence.
Supporters of Bob Vylan and Kneecap - whose Glastonbury performance is also being investigated by the police - would likely insist that both groups’ on-stage statements, while evocative and contentious, are not in fact encouraging their respective audiences to commit acts of violence. Nor are they targeting the Jewish community in the UK or every day citizens in Israel
Both group’s critics would obviously disagree. Or might argue that - even if neither group intends to incite violence or promote antisemitism - the nature of their statements can be easily interpreted that way, putting the Jewish community at risk whatever their actual intent. Though the supporters might argue that that’s the fault of other groups, in particular the Israeli government’s propaganda machine.
In his statement supporting his musical collaborators, Grandson said, “As a Jewish artist, I am deeply offended by the conflation of criticism against a military force known for their indiscriminate violence with antisemitism. The Israeli government has done more to exacerbate antisemitism this past two years than any statements by artists advocating for Palestinian freedom and solidarity”.
In his latest statement Bobby Vylan wrote, “we are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine. A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza”.
“The government doesn’t want us to ask why they remain silent in the face of this atrocity”, he went on. “To ask why they aren’t doing more to stop the killing or to feed the starving. The more time they talk about Bob Vylan, the less time they spend answering for their criminal inaction”.