By Michael Kramer
July 7, 2025

July 7 – The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is an annual five-day festival in England attended by hundreds of thousands. On June 28, the punk/rap/hip hop duo with Jamaican roots named Bob Vylan led tens of thousands attending their main stage performance with the chants “Death, Death to the IDF!” and “Free, Free Palestine!” in a sea of Palestinian flags.

The BBC, which broadcast the festival performances live, has subsequently edited out the performance of Bob Vylan for future viewers. British Prime Minister Keith Starmer criticized the chanting as “appalling.” And the British police have begun criminal investigations of Bob Vylan on bogus accusations of antisemitism.

The Trump administration reacted by immediately revoking their visas to the U.S. for an upcoming 18-city tour. Recently the Irish hip hop trio Kneecap from Occupied Belfast also had their U.S. visas revoked for their outspoken solidarity with Palestine at the April 2025 Coachella festival in California.

The U.S. tour was to include the Canadian rapper Grandson who is Jewish and who came to the defense of Bob Vylan on an Instagram post: “Censorship of art is a tactic of control. … As a Jewish artist I am deeply offended by the conflation of criticism against a military force known for their indiscriminate violence with antisemitism. … Bob Vylan are the one feature on my album and that feature will go on.”

What is the IDF?

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — now more popularly known as the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) — is the armed military wing of the Zionist movement. It is fully funded and armed by the U.S. and its NATO allies. It has been a proxy for U.S./NATO military strategy in West Asia since its formation in 1948. It relies on forced conscription.

It is a killing machine that has never followed so-called international rules of war as codified by the United Nations Charter (1945) or the Geneva Conventions (1949), with deadly implications for civilian populations, especially children, as is currently ongoing in Gaza. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and most recently Iran have been in its crosshairs.

So what’s wrong with calling for “Death, Death to the IDF!”? It’s not antisemitic to call for the end of a military organization that has entrapped thousands of Israeli youth every year for decades in endless wars to maintain apartheid and genocide in the twisted interest of U.S. imperialism.

Support for Bob Vylan

Many artists and fans worldwide have come to the defense of Bob Vylan, including the Australian band Amyl and the Sniffers who also performed at Glastonbury. Lead singer Amy Taylor spoke from the stage: “They want us to shut the f–k up, because if we think about Palestine, then back home in Australia, we think about the Indigenous people there.” (billboard.com, 6/29/25)

And in just a few days Bob Vylan gained almost 300,000 new followers on Spotify, including this writer!

The writer is a member of Veterans For Peace and served in the IOF (IDF) 1972-1975.