From its inception, Glastonbury Festival has styled itself as a celebration of peace, unity, and human creativity – a joyous meeting place where all are welcome, all are respected, and all are uplifted. Except, of course, for one group. You guessed it.
During a performance by the punk duo Bob Vylan, thousands of festivalgoers joined in a chant of “Death, death to the IDF”. They erupted in cheers when the group declared “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, inshallah, it will be free.” Avon and Somerset Police are now “assessing” video evidence. They are right to do so.
But the real issue goes far beyond whether Bob Vylan can be prosecuted. The deeper question is: what has happened to British society that such a spectacle – a crowd baying for the destruction of the Israeli military and, by extension, the Jewish state – can unfold at a supposedly inclusive cultural festival?
This did not happen in a vacuum. It is the culmination of decades of anti-Israel incitement – a narrative painting the Jewish state as uniquely malevolent, supercharged over the past 20 months.
The BBC has played no small role in this moral decay. It has frequently failed to uphold even basic journalistic standards in its Israel coverage and has employed staff who openly support Hamas or have made antisemitic remarks.
That institutional failure continued at Glastonbury. The slogan calling for the death of the Israel Defence Forces was broadcast live by the BBC as part of its festival coverage. This was no accident. Editors knew exactly what was being said. They issued a mealy-mouthed trigger warning – describing chants for death as merely “discriminatory” and containing “strong language,” as though the problem were the duo’s expletives – and then carried on broadcasting the spectacle, all funded by mandatory licence fees.
This is the fog of moral confusion we now inhabit: when “Death to the IDF” and “From the river to the sea” – slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel – are not treated as incitement but aired as entertainment.
To complete this spectacle, Palestine Action – a group expected soon to be proscribed under UK terrorism legislation – was also given a platform at the festival. Glastonbury claims to be a festival of love. It has become a stage for hate.
Ofcom must initiate an urgent review into how the BBC allowed violent messaging to be aired under the guise of cultural coverage. BBC management must be held accountable. Festivals or venues giving airtime to groups like Palestine Action or Bob Vylan should lose public funding and sponsorship.
A government spokesperson confirmed that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had raised the matter with the BBC, saying: “We strongly condemn the threatening comments made by Bob Vylan at Glastonbury.
"The Culture Secretary has spoken to the BBC Director General to seek an urgent explanation about what due diligence was carried out ahead of the performance, and welcomes the decision not to re-broadcast it on BBC iPlayer.”
Not everyone in government, however, seems to grasp the gravity of the situation. Health Secretary Wes Streeting offered a masterclass in moral obfuscation. Yes, he condemned the chants as "appalling" and criticised both the BBC and Glastonbury.
But he then pivoted to what he claimed we really should be talking about this week in the context of Israel and Gaza – namely, a set of accusations against Israel, which he proceeded to list.
Irrespective of the accuracy of his accusations, this was not the moment. He went on to lash out at the Israeli Embassy, which had quite reasonably issued a statement condemning the incident, scolding it to “get your own house in order”.
He invoked the problem of violent settlers – who are indeed reprehensible – as though their existence somehow evens out a British crowd chanting for the eradication of the Jewish state.
This sort of equivocation is dangerous. It signals to the public that expressions of hatred can be waved away with a bit of both-sides finger-wagging. It betrays a deep incapacity among some in British politics to grasp that this is not, in the first instance, a problem for Israel. It is a problem for Britain’s Jewish community – overwhelmingly Zionist, and already under siege amid skyrocketing antisemitism.
If chants for the death of Jewish soldiers can now be passed off as virtue – and are welcomed at festivals and amplified by the state broadcaster – the damage is not only to Jewish safety but to the moral health of our society as a whole.
Instead of drawing clear lines about what is and isn’t acceptable in a liberal democracy, and focusing on the outrage that had just happened in the UK, Streeting chose to equivocate and distract. It was exactly the wrong message at exactly the wrong time.
