Glastonbury has become a sinister festival of anti-Semitism

Spectator

12 hours ago

They're chanting for the death of Jews at Glastonbury. Yesterday a swaying mob of faux-virtuous poseurs blithely howled for 'Death, death to the IDF'. They'll say they were being political. 'It was an anti-war cry, not an anti-Jew cry', they'll insist today, as the hangover lifts and the horror of their noisy clamour for the death of those they hate finally dawns on them. But such thin excuses won't wash, not this time.
That's what Glastonbury felt like yesterday: a woke Nuremberg rally
It was the punk rap act Bob Vylan that appeared to whip the crowd into a frenzy of Israelophobia. The lead singer first got them chanting 'Free, free Palestine', the mandatory holler of every bourgeois youth who's determined to prove his virtue to his peers. Then he upped the ante. 'Death, death to the IDF', he barked, and the audience went with it. Like a Pavlovian pack, they mimicked the rocker on stage and shrieked for the violent demise of the army of the Jewish nation.
Let's speak frankly – our moral crisis is too pressing for pussy-footing. 'Death to the IDF' means the death of Jews. First, because the soldiers of the IDF are predominantly Jewish. But more importantly because this is the force tasked with defending the Jewish homeland from the armies of anti-Semites that surround it. The IDF is the only thing standing between the Jewish State and its genocidal obliteration by the apocalyptic bigots on its borders.
The death of the IDF would be the death of the world's only Jewish nation. Untold numbers of Jews would perish in the event of this thing dreamt of by the preening middle classes of Glastonbury. 'We didn't think of that', some will say today, as shame intrudes into the sick joy they derived from praying for the death of other human beings. Well, to borrow a slogan beloved of you people: 'Educate yourselves.'
The seriousness of what happened at Glastonbury cannot be overstated. I'm struggling to think of any other recent event in the UK where a mob has called for the death of human beings. Where a crowd has agitated with macabre elation for people to die. I guess there were those small, mad gatherings of Islamists a few years ago, where some held up placards saying: 'Behead those who insult Islam.' But Glasto's roar for the death of the young Jewish men and women of the IDF felt worse.
For here we had privileged youths issuing mantras of death. Here we had a festival that's meant to be about peace and love ringing out with a din-like demand for the destruction of human life. Imagine how Glasto's Jewish attendees will have felt. Or Jewish viewers at home – the BBC live-broadcasted the sick death chant. A majority of British Jews identify with the Jewish nation, and yet here were their Gentile compatriots openly fantasising about the death of that nation's youthful protectors. What a sickening sight.
The question that hangs darkly over Glastonbury's death dreaming is this: why the IDF? Why not 'Death to the People's Liberaton Army', which visits such horrors on the Uyghur people? Or 'Death to the Rapid Support Forces', the psycho militia that has caused tens of thousands of deaths in Sudan over the past two years? Or, indeed, 'Death to Hamas', that reactionary, racist army that started the war in Gaza with its fascistic pogrom of 7 October 2023? A pogrom that involved mass rape and murder at a music festival not unlike Glastonbury.
We all know why. It's because hating the Jewish State is all the rage among the activist classes. Singling out the Jewish nation as the most bloodthirsty nation is what passes for 'politics' on today's left. They damn this tiny country as the greatest menace to humanity, as a Nazi-like entity, as a nation so swimming in sin and blood that it deserves to be erased, 'from the river to the sea'. Tell me there isn't bigotry here. Tell me it doesn't echo the older, darker damnation of the Jews themselves as a bloodlusting people, the poison in the well of humanity.
For me, that's what Glastonbury felt like yesterday: a woke Nuremberg rally. With their gleeful cry for the death of Israeli soldiers, for the destruction of the army that defends the Jewish homeland, these people sounded more like the moral heirs of Oswald Mosley than Sylvia Pankhurst. It was a like a gathering of Guardianista versions of Unity Mitford essentially saying, 'F**k the Jewish nation'.
Glastonbury has apologised. The festival said it was 'appalled' by what unfolded. But there's no doubt that this felt like a turning point. The mania of Israel-hate stood exposed before the world. The true nature of the bourgeois cult of Palestinianism, with its virulent hostility not only to Israel but to the West itself, was clear for all to see. We glimpsed, briefly, the threat that the delirium of Israelophobia poses to Jewish security, to the values of our own civilisation, and to all that is decent. These people have had the stage for too long – it's time for the good among us to stand up.