Mo Chara (Naoise O Caireallain), Moglai Bap (Liam Og O Hannaidh), Rich Peppiatt and DJ Provai of Kneecap attend the 2025 BAFTAs on February 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
The Irish rap trio Kneecap clarified on Monday that it does not support Hamas and Hezbollah, despite recently resurfaced footage showing the group glorifying the US- and UK-designated terrorist organizations at a concert last year.
Footage circulating on social media from a Kneecap concert in November 2024, at the Kentish Town Forum in London, showed one member of the group shouting at the audience “Free Palestine … up Hamas, up Hezbollah” before walking off stage. The Kneecap member had a Hezbollah flag draped over his shoulder as he made the remarks.
The concert took place a little over a year after the Hamas-led deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which terrorists murdered 1,200 people and took 251 hostages back to the Gaza Strip. The group members of Kneecap go by the stage names DJ Próvaí, Mo Chara, and Móglaí Bap.
It is illegal to express support for Hamas and Hezbollah, both Iran-backed Islamist terror groups, in the UK. Metropolitan Police said on Sunday that videos from the concert are being assessed by its counterterrorism unit “to determine whether any further police investigation may be required.”
Kneecap said in a released statement on Monday that “we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah.”
“We condemn all attacks on civilians, always. It is never okay. We know this more than anyone, given our nation’s history,” the group added, in a statement posted on social media. “They want you to believe words are more harmful than genocide. Establishment figures, desperate to silence us, have combed through hundreds of hours of footage and interviews, extracting a handful of words from months or years ago to manufacture moral hysteria.”
The Metropolitan Police counterterrorism unit is also assessing video from another Kneecap concert in London in November 2023, during which one member of Kneecap said: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP [Member of Parliament].”
Kneecap explained in its statement on Monday that it rejects “any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. Ever.” The group also apologized to the families of murdered British MPs Sir David Amess and Jo Cox, who were offended by the “kill your local MP” comment from 2023. The group said, “We send our heartfelt apologies, we never intended to cause you hurt.”
“An extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponized, as if it were a call to action,” the group claimed. “This distortion is not only absurd – it is a transparent effort to derail the real conversation.”
Kneecap then began to spew hateful and anti-Israel rhetoric by accusing the Jewish state of genocide, falsely claiming that 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “are currently being starved to death by Israel” and alleging that “children were being systematically executed” by Israel. The group has made similar anti-Israel comments many times in the past, including on social media.
“This is where real anger and outrage should be directed towards,” the group suggested. “Kneecap’s message has always been — and remains — one of love, inclusion, and hope. This is why our music resonates across generations, countries, classes, and cultures and has brought hundreds of thousands of people to our gigs. No smear campaign will change that.”
Footage from Kneecap’s 2023 and 2024 concerts resurfaced online last week and sparked controversy following the anti-Israel messaging that the group shared on stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California earlier this month. Since the Coachella incident, two major music festivals in Germany rescinded invitations to have Kneecap perform.
Other music festivals around the world are facing pressure from pro-Israel activists to pull the Irish group from its lineup of performers, and Kneecap was dropped from its US booking agency and lost its US work visa. The UK government, British politicians, and pro-Israel supporters around the world have also condemned the group’s hateful comments and actions, with some even calling for the trio to be prosecuted.
Kneecap responded to the criticism in its statement on Monday.
“Suddenly, days after calling out the US administration at Coachella to applause and solidarity, there is an avalanche of outrage and condemnation by the political classes of Britain,” the group said. “The real crimes are not in our performances; the real crimes are the silence and complicity of those in power. Shame on them.”
Along with the statement, Kneecap uploaded on social media a photo that showed a wall with a spray-painted message that said: “Thank you * Kneecap * for being the voice of the oppressed you [sic] music and activism will for all of history. [Love] From Gaza.” A heart was spray painted beside the message.