By Manus Lenihan
BBC CHIEFS ‘SHOULD FACE CHARGES’ OVER GLASTONBURY (Daily Mail, 30 June)
PM: NO EXCUSE FOR BBC HATE. He slams broadcast of gig rant (The Sun, 30 June)
Starmer: BBC must explain how anti-IDF ‘hate speech’ aired (The Independent, 29 June)
NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED ‘DEATH TO ISRAELIS’ CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY (Mail on Sunday, 29 June)
WHY DID BBC NOT PULL PLUG ON VILE CHANTS? (Daily Express, 30 June)
“I said what I said.” (Bob Vylan, Instagram, 29 June)
These headlines come at a time when the misnamed Israel “Defence” Forces (IDF) have shot dead 600 starving civilians seeking food at aid hubs. On 30 June, the IDF bombed a café used by journalists, which joins the countless schools, hospitals and refugee camps destroyed over the past two years.
Meanwhile, punk duo Bob Vylan are under intense criticism and a police investigation after chanting ‘death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury. Now there is a rabid demand for censorship coming from those same tabloids which spent the last ten years warning that “wokeness” was a danger to free speech.
Increasing repression
Of course, we saw this whole drama unfold before with the rap group Kneecap. After they spoke up for Palestinian lives at Coachella, British anti-terror police trawled through gig footage and contrived terrorism charges out of on-stage, in-character banter, which has been since disavowed.
The establishment pretends to believe that Kneecap and Bob Vylan are advocating anti-Semitism and terrorism. But with their fake outrage and their deliberate obtuseness they walk right into the trap set by these artists. A drama like this shows the whole world how little Keir Starmer cares about Gaza, and how much he cares about shutting up critics of the genocide.
A real terror organisation
Obviously, the chant of ‘death to the IDF’ was not a call for violence against Israeli or Jewish civilians. It was directed against an armed force which everyone knows is up to its neck in the blood of children.
There is no terrorist organisation on Earth that kills civilians on the scale of the IDF. A hundred thousand deaths in Gaza is now on the conservative end of the estimates. Yet if Kneecap had said ‘Up the IDF’, or if Bob Vylan had said ‘Death to the Qassam Brigades’, there would be no media or police campaign against them.
On the right side of history
But what is happening in Gaza is so extreme that the anger cannot be contained. It leaks through the seams at visible places, such as a live BBC broadcast of Glastonbury. Artists like Bob Vylan and so many others who speak up are channeling what millions of people feel. They express our disgust at those who pull the triggers, give the orders, supply the bombs, and cook up the contemptible excuses.
It would be wrong to assume that these artists have now ‘gone too far’ and will lose public sympathy. It’s the establishment who are going too far. We can see how, instead of protecting civilian lives in Palestine, the establishment is most concerned about shielding Israel’s military from the intense hostility its actions have generated.
Governments in Europe and North America defend, trade with, and arm Israel. Britain is selling fighter jet components to the IDF right now. Without this bottomless, unconditional support, especially from the US, Israel would have to mind its manners, and the genocide and the spiralling wars in the region would be impossible. It’s capitalist world leaders like Keir Starmer, not Kneecap or Bob Vylan, who are supporting terrorism.
