Yes, condemn the anti-IDF rappers. But then you don’t get to ignore it when others do the same thing

A pair of rappers sparked global outrage at Glastonbury, quite rightly. Meanwhile a double standard lurked in the background.

COMMENT

Before we deal with more complicated matters let’s acknowledge, without caveat, the numbskullery of a British rap duo called “Bob Vylan”.

First of all, on a note that carries no substance but bugs me nonetheless: Bob Vylan? Really? Is that ... is that allowed? We’re just stealing the names of other musicians, now, and changing one letter?

By that logic I could go around calling myself Chakira, and indulging in a little bum wiggle here and there, and committing tax fraud, and label it art.

(That’s a touch too harsh on Shakira. She did give us the second-catchiest World Cup anthem of my lifetime, and the raciest Super Bowl half time show since Janet Jackson, both of which warrant no small dividend of respect. Pay your taxes though, babe.)

That face when you’re performing and suddenly spot the tax authorities entering the room in the corner of your eye.

As for the real Vylans of the piece here. While performing at the Glastonbury music festival in Britain, the pair led chants of “death, death to the IDF”, referring to Israel’s military, which were broadcast live by the BBC, and thus beamed around the world.

As a general rule, surely we can agree that any sentence starting with “death, death to” is heading in a very poor direction. “Restraint, restraint from the IDF” may lack punch, but it also lacks any conceivable justification for, or incitement to, violence.

Which is to say much of the indignation this week has been warranted. British police opened an investigation into the group, which is roughly in line with their treatment of other extreme rhetoric. Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned them. Their agent ditched them. Shows across Europe were cancelled. The US government revoked their visas, stressing that “foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors”.

(No word on whether hatred glorified by American citizens - say, members of Congress, or senior administration officials - deserves similar condemnation, but that’s a whole other kettle of scalding hot water, and we shan’t touch it today.)

One member of Bob Vylan performing at Glastonbury, while very much dressed for the wrong country. Picture: Yui Mok/PA via AP

I’m not here to argue any of the backlash described above was wrong. It all ties into a broader question about how liberal societies should calibrate their restrictions on free speech, and across 34 years of life I have never yet encountered a perfect answer. You’re fumbling around for the least objectionable border between irreconcilable rights. Not easy.

You can sense the looming “but”.

I am here to wonder why these loathsome words, from a pair of formerly quasi-famous rappers - (I’m not quite deficient enough in self-awareness to call them nobodies) - are being treated as more outrageous, and worthier of action, than the daily, continuing tide of actual violence, and actual death, in Gaza.

You don’t go to any music festival in search of sophisticated views on foreign policy. There’s a rawer form of humanity on display.

So why is it that we seem, collectively, to care so much more, to be so more readily angry, about a chant at Glastonbury than the opinions, and decisions, of those privileged individuals who actually hold the power to shape what will happen in Gaza and Israel?

The future tense there is deliberate.

We all know what happened, past tense, on October 7 of 2023. We know of the innocent lives stolen, and the indelible trauma those horrors have inflicted on thousands of Israelis. We know civilians were dragged into the tunnels as hostages, where some remain all these months later.

We know about the litany of other atrocities committed by Hamas, not just on that day, but for many years before it.

We know it’s a terrorist group whose existence hinges on an objective of genocide.

We know it cynically uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, hiding in hospitals and neighbourhoods. And we recognise the cruel irony that follows, when Hamas condemns the deaths it goaded Israel into causing.

So to banish any lack of clarity: a person who supports Hamas in Australia, or Britain, or America, or any other liberal nation, is insulting their own intelligence.

We also know that, in this age of social media, the terrors of war are more easily witnessed and documented than ever before. Which makes the images from Gaza uniquely affecting.

All these things we know. And not one of them gives Israel a carte blanche to do absolutely anything it likes in response. Not one renders all collateral damage acceptable. Not one frees Israel from the obligations of international law, or of basic morality. Not one strips all the women, children and innocent men in Gaza of their dignity and right to life.

A father and his son in Gaza. Why is he so distraught, you may wonder? Because his two other kids, twin babies, were killed in an air strike. Picture: Mohammed Abed/AFP

The responsibility of those with power is to consider what comes next; to build the best possible future they can. Not to seek vengeance for what came before. And this war ... what has it become, exactly?

It started as a crime against Israeli civilians. Then it became a retaliatory mission, one of self-defence, whose stated aim was to root out Hamas.

What is it now? Whole cities have been reduced to rubble. Some monumental number of the 2.2 million people who lived in Gaza are dead. And the survivors of this carnage live in tents, and walk kilometres to line up for food, ever fearful of gunshots from the soldiers above.

Where does it stop? What is the objective? How does this end any other way than with the radicalisation of an entire new generation of Palestinians, and more decades of violence, and more despicable anti-Semitism rising across the world in a backlash to Israel’s actions, and any prospect of a lasting peace being killed off for another lifetime?

If you are genuinely angry, and genuinely horrified, by those words from Bob Vylan, then I ask this of you: as you read these quotes below, imagine the roles are reversed. Assess how you would react if a Palestinian said these things about the Israeli people.

How much of Gaza looks now. With a population of about 2.2 million people. Though to be fair, a recent study suggested that population had dropped to something more like 1.8 million. With all the horror that implies. Picture: Mahmud Hams/AFP

First is Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker in Israel’s Knesset and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. He described the Palestinians as “subhumans”. And he called for all men in Gaza to be killed.

“Who is innocent in Gaza? ‘Civilians’ went out and slaughtered people in cold blood,” Mr Vaturi told the radio station Kol BaRama. Air quotes there implied by him, not me.

“They are outcasts, and no one in the world wants them.”

He argued that Israel should “separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza”, and said the IDF was being “too considerate”.

“The international community understands the residents of Gaza are not welcome anywhere.”

Too considerate! One truly does shudder at the thought of an inconsiderate IDF.

Here is Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

“The humanitarian aid currently entering Gaza is an absolute disgrace,” Mr Gallant said just last week.

“What is needed in Gaza is not a temporary halt of the ‘humanitarian’ aid, but a complete cessation of it.

“Stopping the aid will quickly advance us toward victory.”

That would be the aid which is currently the only thing feeding children who might otherwise starve to death.

Yoav Gallant, a man on whom I will not be editorialising, for fear of saying something indelicate. Picture: Tobias Schwarz/AFP

Give Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich some marks, at least, for brevity: “Gaza will be entirely destroyed.”

Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said there were “no uninvolved civilians” in Gaza. None. Among a population of more than two million. All of them are complicit, apparently.

Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Zehut party in the Knesset, is mercifully not a government minister. He is, however, a man of questionable opinions.

“Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy,” said Mr Feiglin.

“The enemy is not Hamas, nor is it the military wing of Hamas.

“We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory.”

Look, I could keep going here. There is no shortage of material. And given the time, I could draw up a list of stunningly bloodthirsty language from Arab leaders as well.

It’s not all Israelis, nor is it all Arabs, nor is it all Palestinians, and that is part of the damn point here. Everywhere you look in this conflict, there’s a refusal to recognise the humanity in other people.

From the anti-Semites, you get a failure to distinguish between the actions of Israel’s government and those of the Jewish people. And in the other direction, a failure to tell the difference between Hamas militants and the civilians, many of them small children for goodness’ sake, whose bodies lie crushed amid the ruins.

Perpetuating those attitudes will give us nothing more than pain and death, forever. Someone in a position of leadership needs to grow beyond them. Or you will be back here in 20 years reading the same rant, and I’ll be back here in 40 years writing it again.

Palestinians carrying sacks and boxes of food, having travelled a great many kilometres, in many cases, and lined up for hours. And I consider it an imposition when I have to drive to the local bakery for a pie. Picture: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

After October 7, I made a point of watching the footage responsible news organisations would never publish. To call it harrowing would be a mockery of the word.

Now the images that you, as a reader, will never see, are of Palestinian kids with their limbs blown off. Among other horrors.

If you can muster fury for one, but not the other, then for the love of whatever god you believe in, do consider waking up. Consider the fact that everyone involved here is a human being, with the same inherent dignity. Consider the fact that, were you born in Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, or Gaza, or the West Bank, you might be a victim, not a witness.

The entire conflict is a catastrophe. It’s repugnant. Every day it degrades us.

So yes. Condemn the rappers. Cancel their shows. Prosecute them, if laws have been broken. But the next time a government official speaks of children as enemies, not from the stage at a music festival but from a place of real, substantive power, I expect your indignation to burn no less brightly.

Twitter: @SamClench

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Originally published as Yes, condemn the anti-IDF rappers. But then you don’t get to ignore it when others do the same thing