Editorial: Shameful scenes at Glastonbury rock festival of anti Israeli and abuse and Kneecap again taunting IRA victims with their republican balaclava

​What shameful scenes at Glastonbury, where performers – including the Northern Ireland rap band Kneecap – spewed out anti Israeli rhetoric.​

The Belfast rappers did not go as far as Bobby Vylan of a rap punk duo called Bob Vylan, whose chants of 'free, free Palestine' (like those of Kneecap who performed at the rock festival just after them) were then accompanied by 'death, death to the IDF' (Israeli Defence Force).

Note the slyness of that: no performer at Glastonbury would dare to say death to Jews or even death to Israelis, so Bobby Dylan can say he was talking militarily – and about an Israeli military that Kneecap says is guilty of ‘genocide’ (which is rubbish, because the Israelis have the means of genocide but unlike Hamas not the inclination to push their neighbours into the sea).

The BBC would not until the last minute tell us, despite repeated inquiries, whether it would broadcast Kneecap live. In the end they didn’t. But that was easy for them, because they could start their live coverage just after Kneecap’s set, and thus sidestep the issue.

That Glastonbury goers revelled in anti Israel chants, some overtly hateful like Bobby Vylan, is all the more appalling in light of the attack on the Nova music festival on October 7: a specific murderous massacre of young people enjoying the sort of music festival we have in the UK and they have in Israel but would not have in the repressive, surrounding Islamic states.

Police are reviewing Kneecap. We do not comment on any such investigation when we point out how appalling BBC NI’s coverage of that band was for months, until controversy grew up post a US appearance. Warm, on occasion gushing, reports on a band that disgraces itself wearing distressing imagery of republican terror, a tricolour balaclava. This would (rightly) not be accepted if it was loyalist ​terror imagery.