The Glastonbury Festival’s official response to chants of “Death to the IDF” and “From the river to the sea” from the stage this weekend was slammed Sunday by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, with the Jewish advocacy group’s CEO calling the statement “bland,” “cowardice” and “complicity.”
Glastonbury organizers said in a Sunday Instagram post that they are “appalled” by the onstage statements of the punk duo Bob Vylan, whose singer led the crowd on Saturday in a series of chants including “Death, death to the IDF” and “Free Palestine.”
“Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence,” the festival and organizer Emily Eavis posted Sunday.
Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the onstage display “was not just disgraceful; it was sickening, dangerous, and chillingly reminiscent of a modern-day Nazi rally.” He was equally unimpressed with the festival’s response.
“Saying the chants merely ‘crossed a line’ and offering vague ‘reminders’ to artists is not accountability — it’s cowardice,” Berk said. “When confronted with explicit calls for violence against Jews, anything short of absolute condemnation and corrective action is complicity.”
Read Berk’s entire statement below:
“What happened on the stages of Glastonbury yesterday was not just disgraceful; it was sickening, dangerous, and chillingly reminiscent of a modern-day Nazi rally. When Bob Vylan chanted “Death, death to the IDF” and Kneecap urged fans to “start a riot” outside a court where one of their members faces terrorism-related charges, it was public incitement, not performance. The explicit calls for violence against Jews, broadcast live by the BBC without interruption, literally gave hate a stage, a microphone, and the stamp of legitimacy of one of Britain’s most respected public institutions.
This was a calculated act of hate speech, glorifying violence and dehumanizing Jews through the demonization of Israel. The bile once spewed at fascist rallies in 1930s Europe is now being blasted from British concert stages, cheered on by huge crowds and broadcast by taxpayer-funded media. If festival organizers and broadcasters can’t (or won’t) foresee violent speech against Jews, the Glastonbury concert-goers certainly could: horrifically, the crowd of thousands was primed to join in call and response to Bob Vylan’s hateful chant.
At Coachella earlier this year, we saw similar antisemitic themes thinly disguised as activism. Cultural spaces once devoted to peace and unity are being hijacked to mainstream hate.
And Glastonbury’s bland response? Saying the chants merely “crossed a line” and offering vague “reminders” to artists is not accountability—it’s cowardice. When confronted with explicit calls for violence against Jews, anything short of absolute condemnation and corrective action is complicity.
On October 7, 2023, hundreds of young people were massacred and taken hostage by Hamas terrorists at Israel’s Nova music festival. To hear calls for the death of Jews at a music event in the UK is deeply retraumatizing and terrifying. When young Jews attend a music festival they are murdered: when young Britons attend one, they’re calling for those murders.
This is a moment of reckoning. Festival organizers, media outlets, and artists must choose: will they be platforms for peace, or enablers of hate? Because silence is not neutrality, it is a green light for bigotry.
Festivals must be prepared to halt performances that invoke hate; broadcasters must air festivals on deferred live and use their kill switch to take hate speech immediately off the air.
Never again is not a slogan: It’s a responsibility. And it’s being betrayed on the world’s biggest stages.”
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