{"id":24492,"date":"2025-06-29T12:34:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T12:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24492\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T12:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T12:34:12","slug":"uk-police-reviewing-rappers-anti-israel-comments-at-glastonbury-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24492\/","title":{"rendered":"UK police reviewing rapper’s anti-Israel comments at Glastonbury Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON — British police said they were examining videos of a band that led chants of \u201cdeath to the IDF\u201d \u2014 Israel Defense Forces \u2014 at Saturday’s Glastonbury Festival.<\/a><\/p>\n

Rapper Bobby Vylan, of rap punk duo Bob Vylan, led crowds attending the festival in chants of \u201cfree, free Palestine\u201d and \u201cdeath, death to the IDF.”<\/p>\n

Avon and Somerset Police said video evidence would be assessed by officers \u201cto determine whether any offenses may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation.”<\/p>\n

The Israeli Embassy to the U.K. said on social media that it was \u201cdeeply disturbed by the inflammatory and hateful rhetoric expressed on stage at the Glastonbury Festival.”<\/p>\n

Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Sunday condemned the band’s actions as \u201cappalling.” He told Sky News that the BBC and festival organizers had to answer questions about how the comments were broadcast live to millions.<\/p>\n

The government said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has spoken to the BBC director general about Bob Vylan\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

The BBC said it issued a warning on screen about \u201cvery strong and discriminatory language\u201d during the live stream. <\/p>\n

Glastonbury is Britain’s biggest summer music festival and draws some 200,000 music fans each year to Worthy Farm in southwest England. Almost 4,000 acts perform on 120 stages.<\/p>\n

Festival organizers said on Instagram that Vylan’s chants \u201cvery much crossed a line.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the Festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith almost 4,000 performances at Glastonbury 2025, there will inevitably be artists and speakers appearing on our stages whose views we do not share, and a performer\u2019s presence here should never be seen as a tacit endorsement of their opinions and beliefs,” it said.<\/p>\n

Saturday’s festival lineup also included Irish-language rap group Kneecap<\/a>, which gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio.<\/p>\n

Liam \u00d3g \u00d3 hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag<\/a> at a concert in London in November. <\/p>\n

The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O\u2019Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August.<\/p>\n

The group has faced criticism for lyrics laden with expletives and drug references, and for political statements, especially since videos emerged allegedly showing the band shouting \u201cup Hamas, up Hezbollah\u201d and calling on people to kill lawmakers.<\/p>\n

On Saturday band members led the audience in chants of \u201cFree Palestine\u201d and \u201cFree Mo Chara.\u201d They also aimed an expletive-laden chant at U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has said he didn\u2019t think it was \u201cappropriate\u201d for Kneecap to play Glastonbury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON — British police said they were examining videos of a band that led chants of \u201cdeath to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22018,347,171,22016,57,22017,99,3466,22015,50,80,22014,2068,5343,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-24492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-22018","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-fairs-and-festivals","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-hip-hop-and-rap","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-language","16":"tag-music-videos","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-public-media","20":"tag-race-and-ethnicity","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114766680342669714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}