20 hours ago
As the BBC airs punk band's shocking chants, STEVE POLLARD asks: Has baiting Jews become the new national pastime?
The Glastonbury music festival bills itself as a celebration of all that is good in the world, with great artists communing with a crowd of 200,000 self-styled progressives, for whom the festival is a chance to wallow in their own goodness and smug sense of superiority.
But nothing better illustrates the darkness that has entered the soul of today's progressives than the crowd's response yesterday to punk duo Bob Vylan, whose screams of 'Free, free Palestine ' and 'Death, death to the IDF' were chanted back with such fervour that the scene was like a 2025 version of Hitler's Nuremberg Rallies.
The chant was 'Death, death to the IDF', but what they meant – because the IDF is the army of the world's only Jewish state – was 'Death, death to the Jews'.
Imagine being a Jew at Glastonbury, knowing that you are hated by almost everyone around you. In Sasha Baron Cohen's satirical film, Borat, the character describes a game, 'Hunt the Jew'. Everyone laughed at that when the film came out in 2006. But yesterday's Glastonbury chanting showed that its satire is all too pointed.
Imagine, I ask you, being a Jew in Britain. In the 20 months since 1,200 Jews were massacred by Hamas in Israel, the UK has seen a leap in anti-Semitic incidents. Between January and June last year there was a 41 per cent increase in assaults on Jews.
But that is almost the least of it. The biggest impact in Britain of the October 7 attack has been the unleashing of this torrent of Jew-hate – the likes of which we saw yesterday.
Every other week there are hate marches in London and elsewhere with chants to ' globalise the intifada' – to kill Jews, in other words.
There is open support for Hamas and Hezbollah, not least by Kneecap, another band performing at Glastonbury. There is pure hatred and poison. But for Jews in Britain, the real point about all this is the double standard.
Can you imagine if someone had stood on that stage and screamed 'Death to Muslims'? There would certainly – and quite rightly – have been anger from the crowd. But when it is Jews who are the target, they cheer.
And where are the police? Whatever your views of Lucy Connolly's imprisonment after her Southport riot tweets, the double standard is shocking. The lead singer of Bob Vylan incited a mob. Will he be arrested, charged and prosecuted? There is, I suggest, not the slightest chance if the past 20 months of open anti-Semitism is anything to go by.
For those who make a regular pilgrimage to Glastonbury, it is more than just a music festival – is a carnival of light and peace. Not for Jews. Palestinian flags fly everywhere. Leaders of Palestine Action – shortly and rightly to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation – are given a platform to spread their bile.
The now infamous Kneecap rapper J J O Dochartaigh wore a 'We are all Palestine Action' T-shirt on stage and led a Free Palestine chant.
Glastonbury, in reality, reflects the state of modern progressivism – a poisonous cocktail of anti-Israeli prejudice, support for Islamist terror and a moral calculus so warped that Nazi-style chanting is seen as upstanding and worthy.
