The Board of Deputies are writing to the organisers of the Glastonbury Festival today to urge them to immediately remove Kneecap from their line-up at this year’s festival and distance themselves from the band.
Kneecap’s history of comments in late 2023 of ‘kill your local MP’ at such a time where MP security is at its most fragile, and ‘up Hamas, Up Hezbollah’ two proscribed terrorist organisations in the UK, are deeply concerning to both British Jews and wider British society. This is the same of social media posts of a member of their band reading Voice of Hezbollah, The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah – Hezbollah’s third Secretary General. Whilst the band has made a partial apology, they have not acknowledged the harm that that their comments have made to the Jewish community, instead, laying the blame on ‘establishment figures’ looking to ‘manufacture moral hysteria’. Likewise, the public statements made by their management are of great cause for concern.
Sir Michael and Emily Eavis should follow the example that the Eden Festival has set and cancel Kneecap’s set.
Read the letter here: