{"id":6277,"date":"2025-06-30T11:31:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T09:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6277"},"modified":"2025-06-30T11:55:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T09:55:25","slug":"glastonbury-chant-israel-genocidal-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2025-06-30\/glastonbury-chant-israel-genocidal-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a Glastonbury chant the real problem, or Israel&#8217;s genocidal violence in Gaza?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subtitle\"><em><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6278\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/9f2133e0-54c1-11f0-b4be-8f7caf53b80c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"292\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/9f2133e0-54c1-11f0-b4be-8f7caf53b80c.jpg 520w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/9f2133e0-54c1-11f0-b4be-8f7caf53b80c-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/>Israel, Starmer&#8217;s government and the media are fomenting a moral panic about words &#8216;glorifying violence&#8217; towards the IDF, while glorifying the IDF&#8217;s all-too-real violence towards Palestinians<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cDeath to the IDF\u201d \u2013 the so-called \u201cIsrael Defence Forces\u201d that have been responsible for slaughtering many tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past 21 months.<\/p>\n<p>He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c33514nryy1o\" rel=\"\">called<\/a> the chant \u201cappalling hate speech\u201d \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC apologised, calling the band\u2019s comments \u201cdeeply offensive\u201d \u2013 more offensive, apparently, than Israel bombing and starving the children of Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>Glastonbury\u2019s organisers condemned the chant, saying there was no space for \u201chate speech or antisemitism\u201d \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<p>Police are investigating Bob Vylan, a musical duo, to see whether they have committed a criminal offence, or possibly a terrorist one. As far as we know, the same police are doing nothing to investigate some 10 British citizens known to have travelled abroad to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/4\/7\/uk-lawyers-accuse-10-britons-who-fought-for-israel-in-gaza-of-war-crimes\" rel=\"\">join the Israeli military<\/a>, the IDF, committing the Gaza genocide.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, the BBC\u2019s Victoria Derbyshire grilled Starmer\u2019s health secretary, Wes Streeting, on remarks from the Israeli embassy in London condemning what it termed \u201cthe normalisation of extremist language\u201d and the \u201cglorification of violence\u201d at Glastonbury.<\/p>\n<p>Unexpectedly, Streeting avoided jumping whole-heartedly on the media outrage band-wagon, led by the Mail on Sunday, whose <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Lou_obrien19\/status\/1939060394066162010\" rel=\"\">front page<\/a> demanded the arrest of the two band members for what the paper wrongly described as a chant demanding \u201cDeath to Israelis\u201d. The Mail, apparently, believes that all Israelis, presumably including the country\u2019s children, are currently serving in the Israeli military.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-media-max-width=\"560\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">&#8220;I&#8217;d say to the Israeli embassy, get your own house in order&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Health Secretary Wes Streeting responds to Israel&#8217;s claims on Glastonbury&#8217;s &#8220;glorification of violence&#8221;, saying &#8220;Israeli settler terrorists&#8221; carried out &#8220;unwanton acts of violence&#8221;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BBCLauraK?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#BBCLauraK<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/v2HwddQuYE\">https:\/\/t.co\/v2HwddQuYE<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DRoqBMrVM6\">pic.twitter.com\/DRoqBMrVM6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BBCPolitics\/status\/1939250975895622006?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 29, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nThere are four important points to make about the interview between Derbyshire and Streeting:<\/p>\n<p>1. The Israeli embassy in London, like the Israeli government it represents, has precisely no concerns about the \u201cglorification of violence\u201d when Israel is doing either the glorifying or the violence. Israel is currently celebrating its \u201csuccess\u201d in slaughtering and maiming hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, including huge numbers of children; attacks by its soldiers and state-backed Jewish settler militias on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank; its eradication of whole communities in Lebanon; and its bombing of residential tower blocks across Tehran, killing many hundreds.<\/p>\n<p>Violence has been Israel\u2019s signature policy for the past 21 months \u2013 and long before that. Israel has revelled in the carnage it has inflicted on populations across the region.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on social media, the Israeli embassy additionally <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/IsraelinUK\/status\/1939019339161563147\" rel=\"\">argued<\/a> of Bob Vylan\u2019s chant: \u201cWhen speech crosses into incitement, hatred, and advocacy of ethnic cleansing, it must be called out \u2013 especially when amplified by public figures on prominent platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yet public figures from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to British prime minister Keir Starmer have incited against the Palestinians, with Netanyahu comparing them to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aa.com.tr\/en\/middle-east\/south-africa-reminds-icj-of-netanyahus-amalek-rhetoric-to-invoke-genocide-against-palestinians\/3106313\" rel=\"\">Amalek<\/a>\u201d, a people the Israelites were commanded by God to exterminate, and Starmer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/5HQYfsUAf3s\" rel=\"\">terming<\/a> the wholesale starvation of the people of Gaza \u201cself-defence\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli officials from Netanyahu down have advocated the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And, even more seriously, Israel has not just threatened but repeatedly carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under its belligerent rule.<\/p>\n<p>2. It is beyond ridiculous for the BBC to echo the Israeli government in prioritising a harsh crackdown on words at Glastonbury &#8220;glorifying violence&#8221; towards Israeli soldiers ahead of the actual violence of genocide being committed by those Israel soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC has avoided criticising the Israeli government for its actual violence \u2013 its bombing and active starvation of Palestinian civilians \u2013 and the Starmer government for colluding in that violence, or what the International Court of Justice termed more than a year ago a \u201cplausible\u201d genocide by Israel.<\/p>\n<p>As a recent report by the Centre for Media Monitoring confirmed, the BBC has dramatically <a href=\"https:\/\/jonathancook.substack.com\/p\/why-bbc-editors-must-one-day-stand\" rel=\"\">skewed its language<\/a> to present Israel, the aggressor, in a more favourable light than the victim, the Palestinians of Gaza. The BBC\u2019s own whistleblowing journalists have warned that the state broadcaster has all but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropsitenews.com\/p\/bbc-civil-war-gaza-israel-biased-coverage\" rel=\"\">banned<\/a> the use of the word &#8220;genocide&#8221;, even by experts on the matter.<\/p>\n<p>By arming Israel, by organising spy flights over Gaza from RAF base Akrotiri on Cyprus, and by providing diplomatic cover, Starmer has effectively glorified Israel\u2019s slaughter of Palestinian children in the enclave. Bob Vylan\u2019s chants of \u201cDeath to the IDF\u201d have a far more dangerous counterpart in Starmer\u2019s recital of Israel\u2019s \u201cright to defend itself\u201d when that \u201cdefence\u201d involves Israel mercilessly starving Gaza\u2019s population of food, water and power.<\/p>\n<p>Bob Vylan are a punk band; Starmer is the British prime minister, the man who directs Britain\u2019s foreign policy and directs its army.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5HQYfsUAf3s?si=Jlkvkj19fplze0YW\" width=\"520\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>No one, least of all the BBC, has held Israeli or British officials accountable not just for glorifying violence but for actually carrying it out on an industrial scale for nearly two years.<\/p>\n<p>But the BBC is suddenly interested in holding to account two punk musicians for leading a chant \u2013 one that made a symbolic, hypothetical threat of violence \u2013 against an Israeli military carrying out the ultimate form of violence, an actual genocide. In a serious media, Israel\u2019s supposed \u201cconcerns\u201d about the glorification of violence and extremist language would be laughed off the stage rather than respectfully aired.<\/p>\n<p>3. Wes Streeting is being congratulated and condemned in equal measure on social media for refusing to be drawn into the Mail and BBC\u2019s confected outrage. \u201cI\u2019d say to the Israeli embassy, get your own house in order,\u201d he responded to Derbyshire. But hang on a minute. Streeting\u2019s resistance to Derbyshire\u2019s line of questioning was perhaps unexpected. But it also, let us not forget, serves the interests of both the Starmer and Israeli governments.<\/p>\n<p>Streeting\u2019s insistence that Israel \u201cget its house in order\u201d had, as he made clear, nothing to do with its 21-month slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Starmer is still defining the Gaza genocide as Israel\u2019s supposed \u201cright to defend itself\u201d. In responding to Derbyshire, Streeting expressed concern only at what he called violent \u201csettler attacks\u201d in the West Bank. He said the Israeli embassy needed to \u201cget your own house in order in terms of the conduct of your own citizens and the settlers in the West Bank\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This was intended purely as deflection, designed to serve Starmer and Israel, the West\u2019s key client state in the oil-rich Middle East. It benefits the UK government to make an issue of West Bank settler attacks \u2013 and present them as disorganised, random violence by individual extremists that the Israeli government is not responsible for but needs to get a firmer grip on.<\/p>\n<p>By highlighting problems in the West Bank, the Starmer government can avoid addressing the genocide in Gaza and the Israeli state\u2019s clear responsibility for that genocide. Which is precisely why in recent weeks Britain has made so much noise about imposing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/uk-and-partners-unite-to-sanction-ministers-inciting-west-bank-violence\" rel=\"\">feeble penalties<\/a> on a handful of extremist settlers and two fascist ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government that represent those settlers.<\/p>\n<p>Starmer and Streeting\u2019s prioritising of Israel\u2019s West Bank violence over Israel\u2019s Gaza violence is a switch and bait twice over.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the violence in the West Bank is not coming from settler extremists, even though they are the ones being punished by the UK. It is coming from the Israeli military, which has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2025\/06\/israels-destructive-west-bank-military-operation-fuels-mass-forced-displacement-of-palestinians\/\" rel=\"\">bulldozed<\/a> thousands of homes there over the past year, driving 40,000 Palestinians off their lands.<\/p>\n<p>Further, settler violence is not random. It is coordinated with Israeli field commanders, many of them settlers themselves, to uproot Palestinians so that Israel can move in Jewish settlers to colonise the land \u2013 or, in the words of successive Israeli governments, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrmea.org\/2016-june-july\/waging-peace-halper-on-judaization-de-arabization-in-israel-palestine.html\" rel=\"\">Judaise<\/a>\u201d it.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is new either. Israel has engineered and imposed a violent, apartheid system on Palestinians for decades to make life unbearable and encourage them to leave their homeland.<\/p>\n<p>Second, Glastonbury\u2019s anger-fuelled chant against the IDF was not primarily motivated by Israel\u2019s violent actions in the West Bank. It was against the Israeli military for committing a genocide in Gaza, which the British government has been supporting. Streeting\u2019s aim was to drag the debate on to safer territory for him and Starmer: that Britain needs to deal not with a genocide in Gaza but with a handful of violent loons in the West Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Even in criticising the Israeli government for not doing enough to tackle settler violence, Streeting is still operating within the confines of a public discourse dictated by Israel, which prefers any criticism to be directed at individuals not at the Israeli state behind those individuals.<\/p>\n<p>4. The BBC, the Starmer government and the Israel lobby are all delighted to play their part in this game of deflection and deception because these kinds of moral panics obscure the real issue: that all these parties are actively colluding in Israel&#8217;s genocide in Gaza. While the media and government can now have a long backwards and forwards about whether criticism of Israel&#8217;s genocidal army needs to be defined in law as a criminal offence or &#8220;terrorism&#8221;, Israel will get a free pass to continue with the real terrorism: a genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>Famously, the black civil rights fighter Malcolm X observed of the role of the media: \u201cThey have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that\u2019s power. \u2026 If you&#8217;re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.\u201d Sixty years on, nothing has changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel, Starmer&#8217;s government and the media are fomenting a moral panic about words &#8216;glorifying violence&#8217; towards the IDF, while glorifying the IDF&#8217;s all-too-real violence towards Palestinians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,33,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-6277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-gaza","10":"tag-israel-lobby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6277"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6285,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6277\/revisions\/6285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}