‘Rot of the West': Jewish leader calls for pro-Palestine artist Bob Vylan's Glastonbury set to be met with ‘serious consequences'

Sky News AU

6 hours ago

Pro-Palestine artist Bob Vylan's Glastonbury set has marked a new level of 'rot' in the West, a Jewish leader has claimed.
Pro-Palestine artist Bob Vylan's Glastonbury set has marked a new level of 'rot' in the West, a Jewish leader has claimed.
British rapper Bobby Vylan - whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster - of punk duo Bob Vylan, led chants of 'death, death to the IDF' at the Glastonbury music festival over the weekend.
Executive Council of Australia Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said there was 'little compassion' to be seen during Vylan's Glastonbury set, adding it appeared as though it was a 'Hezbollah rally in downtown Beirut and not a music festival in Somerset'.
'Almost 400 Israelis were butchered dancing at a festival, now they're using their festivals to preach hatred and chant for death. It's just extraordinary,' Mr Rychin told Sky News on Monday night.
Mr Ryvchin said the festival-goers had followed along with the chanting 'like sheep' and 'fanatics', and explained the gradual change of tune since Hamas invaded Israel in 2023.
'This movement, which really swelled post-October 7, it began by calling for ceasefires, as though it wanted peace and was anti-war. They very quickly dropped that and turned to donning their kaffirs and chanting for Palestine,' he said. — Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) June 29, 2025
'Then they started cheering on Iranian rockets and Houthi drones, and now they've gone a step even further. Now they're openly calling for death.
'This is what they are, and it's not merely Glastonbury. The same chant was heard on the streets of Melbourne just last night.'
Mr Ryvchin said the calling for the death of a group of people should be met with 'serious consequences', otherwise such actions and rhetoric would 'go on and on'.
Spiked Online chief political reporter Brendan O'Neill said the performance was 'disgusting, racist, horrible' and questioned the direction in which the Western world was heading.
'Let's be honest about this, when you say death to the IDF, you are saying death to Jews, firstly, because the IDF is predominantly a Jewish army and, secondly, because everyone knows that the IDF is the force that protects the Jewish homeland from the armies of antisemites on its borders,' he told Sky News.
'So when you have this mob of young privileged Brits crying for the death of the IDF, they're essentially saying death to Israel, death to the Jewish homeland, death to Jewish people in the Middle East.
Mr O'Neill said since October 7, the world had seen the 'rot of the West rise to the surface'.
'We've seen all the backward, regressive trends in our own societies come to the surface,' he said.
'The horrible fact is that lots of young people in our own societies have taken the wrong side, and that should really worry us.'
United Kingdom Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said there was 'no excuse' for the kind of 'appalling hate speech' which was amplified to thousands of festival goers and millions at home watching.
'I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence,' he said.
'The BBC need to explain how these scenes came to be broadcast.'
Meanwhile, the United States State Department confirmed on Sunday it was considering revoking the British artists' visas following the "death to the IDF chants" before the duo travel to North America for a scheduled tour of 20 US cities including New York, Los Angeles and Boston.
A senior State Department official told The Daily Wire the Trump administration would not issue visas to "any foreigner who supports terrorists".
Avon and Somerset Police said video evidence of the set would be assessed to determine if a criminal investigation was warranted.
The Israeli embassy in the UK said it was 'deeply disturbed' by the chanting on stage at the festival, which has been widely condemned by artists and global leaders alike.