LONDON — UK police announced Monday that the weekend performances by rap punk duo Bob Vylan and Irish-language band Kneecap at the Glastonbury Festival are subject to a criminal investigation, after they led crowds in chants calling for “death” to the Israeli military and chants of “Free Palestine.”
Police said the performances at the UK’s largest summer music festival “have been recorded as a public order incident.”
Meanwhile, the US State Department said it has revoked the US visas for Bob Vylan after their “hateful tirade at Glastonbury.”
The rap duo’s lead vocalist, known by the alias Bobby Vylan — who until the weekend was relatively little known — led crowds in chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF” — the Israel Defense Forces.
The BBC said it regretted livestreaming the performance. “The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves,” it said, adding that it “respects freedom of expression but stands firmly against incitement to violence.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and UK politicians condemned the chants, saying there was no excuse for such “appalling hate speech.”
“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a social media post.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and the subsequent war against the Palestinian terror group in Gaza have triggered anti-Israel protests in many capitals and on college campuses. Israel and some supporters have described the protests as antisemitic, while critics claim Israel uses such descriptions to silence opponents.
Starmer said the BBC must explain “how these scenes came to be broadcast.”
Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, said it was “very concerned” about the BBC livestream and said the broadcaster “clearly has questions to answer.”
The BBC said earlier in its defense that it had issued a warning on screen about “very strong and discriminatory language” during the livestream.
The Israeli embassy to the UK said over the weekend it was “deeply disturbed by the inflammatory and hateful rhetoric expressed on stage at the Glastonbury Festival.”
Bob Vylan, which formed in 2017, have released four albums mixing punk, grime, and other styles with lyrics that often address issues including racism, masculinity and politics. Its two members keep their real names secret for privacy reasons.
In a statement posted on social media, singer Bobby Vylan said he was inundated with messages of both support and hatred.
“Teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place,” he wrote.
The duo played Saturday afternoon right before Kneecap, another band that has drawn controversy over its stance on Middle East politics. Kneecap led a huge crowd in chants of “Free Palestine” at the festival.
They also aimed an expletive-laden chant at Starmer, who had said he did not think it was “appropriate” for Kneecap to play Glastonbury, after one of its members was charged under the Terrorism Act. Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged with supporting a proscribed terror organization for waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London last year.
Amid the anti-Israel rhetoric from some of the performers at the music festival, which draws some 200,000 people annually, some in the crowd used the tradition of waving large flags during performances as an opportunity to draw attention to the plight of the hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
They also drew attention to the victims of the October 7 massacre at the Nova music festival, where some 380 people were brutally killed.
One image circulating online showed a black flag with a yellow ribbon emblazoned on it waving above a flag reading “We Will Dance Again” — the name of a documentary about the Nova festival massacre.