What Glastonbury shows is that harassing Jews has become cool again

But other controversies at the blockbuster music event, which didn’t make the news, were too many to count. All of them were entirely avoidable.

Glastonbury’s organisers delivered a greatest-hits line-up of figures whose rhetoric and actions have systematically alienated and endangered British Jews.

This line-up included: Gary Lineker, who previously shared a video about Zionism with a rat emoji; Owen Jones, the columnist-activist who claimed Germany was “forcing” Palestinians to “pay” for the Holocaust; Francesca Nadin, a member of soon-to-be-proscribed Palestine Action, an extremist group of thugs who gained notoriety after it recently claimed the sabotage of two RAF planes; and Ben Jamal, whose organisation orchestrates the regular Palestine marches that have caused untold misery for ordinary people across the country and effectively turned our urban centres into no-go zones for Jews.

Those were all in addition to a performance by Kneecap, one of whose members is alleged to have supported terrorism at a gig last year and has been charged with the offence of supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation, Hezbollah.

A separate charge in relation to comments appearing to encourage the murder of MPs has reportedly been dropped by police after too much time had elapsed since the alleged offence. It appears that  Glastonbury is becoming less of a music festival and more of an extremist political conference.

The organisers ignored repeated warnings from British Jews, choosing to plough ahead and host these controversial figures, thereby creating an environment that was anything but safe and inviting for Jewish people.

Emily Eavis, co-organiser of the Festival and daughter of Glastonbury’s founder Michael Eavis, observed, “there have been a lot of very heated topics this year,” but nevertheless insisted that “everyone is welcome.”

But when rap duo Bob Vylan ranted about “Zionists” and led tens of thousands of festival-goers in a chant of “Death to the IDF,” it became painfully clear that the real message was: ‘Everyone is welcome – unless you’re a Jew.’

Glastonbury has continued its headlong descent into a pit of extremism and hate. Every year, the Jewish community looks to Glastonbury not for its musical appeal but to try to anticipate which Jew-baiters will be performing.

It would be bad enough if the audience were exclusively impressionable youngsters, but the average age at Glastonbury is thought to be around 40, and the controversial acts are welcomed by the crowds.

So this isn’t just a youth problem.

Ms Eavis issued something of an apology for what happened on her stage this weekend, but the damage, which could have been avoided, has been done.

Radical politics has permeated our cultural institutions, from media to music. Artists are now emboldened to stand on stage during a globally-broadcast performance and target calls for death at one of our nation’s allies, to which a minority community is deeply bound.

It doesn’t have to be like this. As Noel Gallagher advised: “Play your f**king tunes and get off." But more and more artists seem to have to rely on espousing inflammatory views about issues they know nothing about, without a care about the impact it has on regular people, for the infamy and notoriety they crave.

But it does have an impact. Half of Britain's Jews have considered leaving Britain in the past two years due to antisemitism, according to our representative polling. 

No less dispiriting is the conduct of the BBC, our national broadcaster, which aired Bob Vylan’s chants for death and destruction. Whether or not it has acted illegally, what is not in doubt is that, by giving a stage and a seal of respectability to this venom, the BBC is helping to normalise antisemitism in Britain once again. That is unforgivable.

How is a Jewish person to feel when they see that on their television while a licence fee demand is popped through their letterbox? For our national broadcaster, being a mouthpiece for antisemitism seems to be a role that it’s willing to take on time and time again, even if here and there it concedes it could have done things differently.

It is a cruel irony that, through the licence fee, British Jews are compelled to contribute financially towards hatred being whipped up against them.

What Glastonbury shows is that harassing Jews has become cool again. At some point, cultural institutions have to take responsibility for their role in bringing that about – and, if we’re really lucky, doing something about it.

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Stephen Silverman is the Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism.

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