Bob Vylan say they have been 'targeted for speaking up' at Glastonbury
They were criticised after leading chants of "Death, death to the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)" during a livestreamed performance at the Somerset music festival on Saturday afternoon.
In a lengthy statement posted to Instagram, the British duo - Bobby Vylan and Bobbie Vylan - said: "Today, a good many people would have you believe a punk band is the number one threat to world peace. Last week it was a Palestine pressure group, the week before that it was another band."
"We are not for the death of jews, arabs or any other race or group of people," they continued.
Bob Vylan said they "are for the dismantling of a violent military machine" that "has destroyed much of Gaza".
"We, like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story. And whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction," they said.
"The government doesn't want us to ask why they remain silent in the face of this atrocity? To ask why they aren't doing more to stop the killing? To feed the starving?"
They concluded: "We are being targeted for speaking up. We are not the first. We will not be the last. And if you care for the sanctity of human life and freedom of speech, we urge you to speak up too.
"Free Palestine."
On Monday, British police launched a criminal investigation into Bob Vylan and Belfast rap trio Kneecap's performances at Glastonbury.
The police are investigating both groups over public order incidents, the police statement said.
Avon and Somerset Police said a criminal investigation was being undertaken after video footage and audio from Bob Vylan and Kneecap's performances at Glastonbury were reviewed.
"Following the completion of that assessment process we have decided further inquiries are required and a criminal investigation is now being undertaken. A senior detective has been appointed to lead this investigation.
"This has been recorded as a public order incident at this time while our inquiries are at an early stage. The investigation will be evidence-led and will closely consider all appropriate legislation, including relating to hate crimes," police said in a statement.
The BBC said on Monday it "should have pulled" the live stream of Bob Vylan's performance that contained, what it called, "utterly unacceptable" and "antisemitic sentiments".
Bobby Vylan, one half of the duo, also led the Glastonbury audience in chants that included: "Free, free Palestine."
Kneecap's set was not streamed live. An edited version was later uploaded.
Bobby Vylan is the stage name of Pascal Robinson-Foster, 34, according to reports, while his bandmate drummer uses the alias Bobbie Vylan.
The group was formed in Ipswich in 2017 and are known for addressing political issues in their albums including racism, masculinity, and class.
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After being awarded the freedom key to New York by the city's mayor, John Lindsay, she delivered it to the local Black Panthers via her comrade, Eamonn McCann, with a message: "To all these people, to whom this city and this country belong, I return what is rightfully, theirs, this symbol of the freedom of New York." Devlin befriended Angela Davis after visiting the imprisoned Panther in 1971. Years later, Davis joined the campaign to free Devlin's daughter, Róisín McAliskey, jailed on IRA bombing charges. Addressing a protest in San Francisco, Davis declared, "Róisín must be freed and Northern Ireland released from the shackles of British imperialism!" (In his book How the Irish Became White, author Noel Ignatiev explains how the new Irish immigrants in America achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of Black Americans. This was the start of a chasm between Irish people and Irish Americans that exists today. While in general, Irish Americans look fondly at the island many see as their ancestral home, the descendants of the Irish who stayed look at them with less affection.) Ireland's affinity for Tupac is just the latest in a mutual sense of kinship shared by Irish people and Black American activists that can be traced across centuries. The IRA and the Black Panther Party were founded to fight back against oppressive states. Both established networks of community services to provide what the state failed to offer. Both faced suppression through counterintelligence. And both sought a radical left- wing reorganization of society. The two groups, not failing to spot the parallels, used their own newspapers to report on and support each other's cause. It was instinctual for Irish freedom fighters to express solidarity with other political prisoners given their long history of imprisonment at the hands of the British state. Throughout the twentieth century, Irish prisoners used hunger strikes to protest British authority, many condemning themselves to the horrible fate of death by starvation. Playwright and politician Terence MacSwiney died after a seventy-four-day hunger strike in 1920; his demise was known to have had a profound impact on Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican Black nationalist leader. Garvey even sent telegrams to both British prime minister David Lloyd George, urging him to compromise so Mac-Swiney's life could be spared, and to Mac Swiney's priest, asking him to "convey to McSwiney [sic] sympathy of 400,000,000 Negroes." Garvey's admiration for the Irish response to colonial rule had been total. 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Around the one hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, a key event in the Irish struggle for independence, a Facebook page was set up with the purpose of ensuring Tupac received credit for his contributions to the cause. The group's admins photoshopped Tupac into old photos, alongside Connolly, Pearse, and other heroes of the armed rebellion who'd almost all been executed for the part they played. It was for laughs, yes, but through meme culture, the group was ambiently solidifying the bond. It made a weird kind of sense: Tupac Shakur was in the original IRA. The joke wouldn't have worked with any other rapper— maybe, even, no other American.
