Furor over music fest chant reveals hypocrisy

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is held annually in Somerset, the United Kingdom. Many musicians showcase their talents, although this year the audience got rather more than it expected.

On June 28, when the punk rock duo Bob Vylan performed, the rapper, Pascal Robinson-Foster, deviated from the script. Referring to the Israel Defense Forces' activities in the Gaza Strip, he chanted "death, death to the IDF", which the BBC livestreamed. When they chanted "Free! Free!", the crowd responded: "Palestine!"

BBC's director-general Tim Davie decided the duo's set should not be made available to watch on demand, although the chant remained on iPlayer for five hours.

Almost immediately, Bob Vylan was branded anti-Semitic, with the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, condemning "appalling hate speech".

US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the group's visas for a forthcoming tour would be revoked.

The Avon and Somerset Police urgently opened an investigation, saying it would be "evidence-led and will closely consider all appropriate legislation, including relating to hate crime".

The BBC was also targeted, with Lisa Nandy, the UK's culture secretary, deploring "a problem of leadership at the BBC".

Sharren Haskel, Israel's deputy foreign minister, called for an investigation into why it took the BBC so long to remove the chant from the BBC iPlayer. She said Davie should resign if no one was held accountable.

Chris Philp, the Conservative Party's home affairs spokesman, wanted to see the rapper prosecuted for "inciting violence and hatred". He called on the police to "urgently investigate and prosecute the BBC", which "appears to have also broken the law".

Although Bob Vylan must have been surprised by the reaction, they were not cowed. In an Instagram statement, they denied they were "the number one threat to world peace". They did not advocate the death of any group, Jewish or otherwise, but were "for the dismantling of a violent military machine" that had "destroyed much of Gaza".

If, however, Bob Vylan's critics had shown some sense of perspective, they might have had more credibility.

On June 30, an IDF airstrike on the Al-Baqa seafront cafe killed over 40 people. According to Mohammed Abu Salmiya, from the Al-Shifa hospital, at least 41 people died after a missile hit the cafe, and 75 were injured. The cafe hosted journalists, students and remote workers.

Thereafter, on July 2, The Associated Press reported that an Israeli airstrike on his apartment had killed Marwan Al Sultan, director of the Indonesian hospital, together with his wife, daughter and son-in-law. He was the 70th healthcare worker to have been killed by the IDF in the last 50 days.

After the IDF opened fire in the vicinity of the aid distribution centers operated by the US-Israeli backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, killing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, 600 Palestinians seeking food, the United Nations described the centers as "death traps".

Although the Gaza Health Ministry, on June 25, reported 56,200 Palestinian dead since October 2023, the first independent survey of deaths, reported last month by the journal Nature, estimated almost 84,000 Palestinians had died. The study, posted on the preprint server medRxiv on June 27, revealed that over half of the victims were women aged 18 to 64, children, or individuals over 65 years old.

To understand the scale of the IDF's killings, approximately 43,000 British civilians were killed by Nazi Germany's bombings when its air force launched the Blitz against London and other British cities from 1940 to 1941.

What this means, therefore, is that Haskel, Landau and Philp treat a chant as far graver than daily killings in Gaza, about which they are silent. They have also failed to demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's resignation, notwithstanding the charges brought against him by the International Criminal Court, alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. If this is their idea of the "international rules-based order", it is no wonder the West's favorite slogan is utterly discredited.

Although the UK has suspended about 30 arms export licenses to Israel, the transfer of British-made parts for the US-produced F-35 jets has, despite a court challenge, continued apace. Whereas Amnesty International UK has reminded the British government "of its responsibilities under international law", Oxfam, a British nongovernmental organization, said it was "unconscionable of the government to supply jet components, knowing that they are used to deliberately attack civilians in Gaza and destroy their means of survival, including vital water supplies".

Although Starmer, previously a human rights lawyer, undoubtedly fears that stopping the supply of jet components would upset the US and NATO, he must know this is not a proper basis for allowing the IDF to kill Palestinians indiscriminately. As the UK Director of Human Rights Watch Yasmine Ahmed has explained, "The atrocities we are witnessing in Gaza are precisely because governments don't think the rules should apply to them."

On June 30, the IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee warned of extensive strikes to come across Gaza City and other areas. He said the military was "operating with extreme force", meaning more civilian deaths were envisaged. The IDF is capable of anything, and, on July 3, it was reported that its aircraft had dropped their leftover munitions on Gaza as they returned home after bombing Iran.

Netanyahu fears peace more than he fears the ICC, and his political survival depends on conflict, no matter the death toll.

Starmer, therefore, should focus on bringing Netanyahu to justice. The UK is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, and is obliged to execute its arrest warrants. Although he has called the situation in Gaza "appalling and intolerable", he must target the culprit. He should show leadership by liaising with the other 122 Rome Statute signatories to see how Netanyahu can be held accountable before the ICC in The Hague.

Starmer's duty is clear, and he must uphold British honor, even if it upsets the US. It is Netanyahu who should be in the dock, not Bob Vylan or the BBC. Global justice must finally prevail.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.