Yes, the hatred on display at Glastonbury was Antisemitism
There are moments in history when the veil is pulled back — when we glimpse not just a lapse in judgment, but a rupture in the moral fabric of our society. Glastonbury 2025 was such a moment.
When I responded to the appalling events at the Somerset festival last weekend by referring to them as “vile Jew hatred”, I was giving voice to what many in the Jewish community have known for a long time. That the kind of rhetoric heard in the punk duo Bob Vylan’s chant of “Death, death to the IDF” — the Israel Defence Forces — though clothed in the guise of justice and liberation, is no more than thinly veiled anti-Jewish hatred.
However, it has been disturbing to read the responses of many in the last week who were unwilling to accept this characterisation, and unable to distinguish between reasoned criticism on the one hand, and outright antisemitic incitement on the other.
It could not be clearer to Jews that what we saw on that stage, and in that crowd, was the same old ancient prejudice, but surprisingly, it seems there is a need to explain how and why.
It was broadcast for the world to see: a crowd of thousands, voices raised in unison, chanting “Death, death to the IDF”. Cheering. Euphoria. Celebration. And then the voice from the stage, a voice of influence, declared that he was no pacifist. That violence is sometimes the only language “people” understand. That he had once worked for a “Zionist”, whom he characterised in terms I don’t wish to republish here. And it was all met, not with shame, disapproval or even silence, but with a thunderous ovation.
Herein lies the problem: when hatred presents itself as virtue, it becomes seductive. It offers the thrill of righteous outrage against the establishment, which can pass unchecked by the conscience of an otherwise decent person. And so, we saw thousands swept up by hateful zeal, chanting for the death of strangers.
Do we ever find such behaviour directed at any other nation, people or military, regardless of how controversial they are thought to be? One would simply never find such casual bloodlust directed towards the soldiers of any other state, let alone find it greeted by such a response from a crowd. This was not a call for a change of policy. It was not a cry for peace. It was pure hate.
When the term “Zionist” becomes a slur — a synonym for exploiter, tyrant, puppet master — we are no longer speaking about geopolitics. We are seeing the revival of ancient prejudices in modern form. Just look at how the term is sometimes used: “my Zionist boss”; “the Zionist lobby”; “Zionist media”. These are the same tropes that have been used for centuries alongside the word “Jew.”
War is unbearable. It always is. No decent person can be unmoved by the horrific suffering of innocent civilians. But that feeling does not confer a licence to incitement.
As the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism puts it: “Criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be considered antisemitic.” There is no suggestion, from any quarter, that a person lamenting the loss of innocent lives, just as one might do in the context of any other conflict, is antisemitic. But what one must never do — what no ethical society should tolerate — is to chant for death. Not of civilians and not of the soldiers called to serve their country. Not of anyone.
Israel has a conscript army. Every 18-year-old Jew is called to serve. And serve they do – alongside Christians, Muslims, Druze, and others, because they know that the country faces enemies whose stated intention is to wipe out the Jewish state and all its inhabitants. Consequently, without such service by the population at large on behalf of the entire country, Israel would not exist. And so, calling for “Death to the IDF” is a call to kill the vast majority of the population of Israel. It is effectively a call for the death of the world’s only Jewish state. What could be more hateful to Jews than that?
Heaping vulgar insults upon one’s former boss because they are a Zionist is antisemitism. Not because one cannot criticise the views of a former colleague, but because it attacks who they are and invokes the classic trope of malign Jewish power.
The most important lesson emerging from this awful episode is not about Glastonbury or the BBC. It is about the moral test that our society faces. A test of whether ordinary people — musicians, television producers, fans, viewers at home — can resist the comfort of slogans and the thrill of joining in with the crowd, to instead see clearly that calling for the death of others is not righteousness. It is hatred. And it corrodes us all.
The historic test is before us. We must not fail it.
[This article was first published in The Sunday Times on 6th July 2025.]
