{"id":24565,"date":"2025-06-29T13:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T13:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24565\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T13:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T13:17:12","slug":"glastonbury-appalled-by-bob-vylans-death-to-the-idf-chant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24565\/","title":{"rendered":"Glastonbury ‘Appalled’ by Bob Vylan’s ‘Death to the IDF’ Chant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGlastonbury<\/a> organizers have responded to controversy over punk duo Bob Vylan<\/a>\u2018s set on Saturday, during which singer Bobby Vylan led the crowd in several chants including \u201cdeath, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA statement shared on Sunday morning by Glastonbury Festival\u2019s official Instagram account as well as by organizer Emily Eavis reads: \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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe statement continues, \u201cHowever, we are appalled by the statements made from the West Holts stage by Bob Vylan yesterday. Their chants very much crossed a line and 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

\n\tBob Vylan played the West Holts stage on Saturday afternoon to a packed crowd, just ahead of Kneecap\u2019s anticipated set. While Kneecap\u2019s performance was not aired on the BBC after recent controversy over their political statements \u2014 leading to member Mo Chara recently being charged under the U.K.\u2019s Terrorism Act \u2014 Bob Vylan\u2019s set was shown live. In addition to the \u201cdeath to the IDF\u201d chant, Bob Vylan also led the crowd in chanting \u201cfree, free Palestine\u201d and \u201cfrom the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn response, the BBC called the comments made during the set \u201cdeeply offensive.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDuring this live stream on iPlayer, which reflected what was happening on stage, a warning was issued on screen about the very strong and discriminatory language,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cWe have no plans to make the performance available on demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKneecap also caused controversy with comments during their set, including chants of \u201cfuck Keir Starmer\u201d<\/a> and \u201cfree Palestine.\u201d Though Kneecap did not explicitly address the BBC\u2019s decision not to air their performance, looking out at all the Palestinian flags in the audience, Chara said: \u201cThe BBC editor is going to have some fucking job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Avon and Somerset police on Saturday said that they were looking into comments made during both Bob Vylan and Kneecap\u2019s sets. \u201cVideo evidence will be assessed by officers to determine whether any offenses may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe U.K. government also condemned Bob Vylan\u2019s comments, telling the BBC: \u201cThe culture secretary has spoken to the BBC director general to seek an urgent explanation about what due diligence it carried out ahead of the Bob Vylan performance, and welcomes the decision not to re-broadcast it on BBC iPlayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRepresentatives for Bob Vylan did not immediately respond to Variety\u2018s request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tSee the full statement below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Glastonbury organizers have responded to controversy over punk duo Bob Vylan\u2018s set on Saturday, during which singer Bobby…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[22061,171,2103,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-24565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bob-vylan","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-glastonbury","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114766849364314927","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24565","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=24565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}