The antics at Glastonbury last weekend took place in performance spaces with twee names such as ‘Woodsie’s Stage’, ‘Avalon’, ‘Arcadia’, and, of course, ‘Left Field’. The only thing missing was a ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ platform because even if Aunt Ada Doom and the Starkadders were missing, there was no shortage of ‘something nasty’ that had come out of the woodshed and was frolicking in public.

As the ABC reported, ‘A major trend of this year’s Glastonbury saw multiple artists using their platform to voice solidarity for Palestine and condemn Israel.’ The ABC, like its big sister the BBC, can take a bow. They have surpassed themselves in presenting Israel as a heinous war criminal and Hamas as the victim of the war it unleashed on Israelis and Gazan civilians and refuses to end.

British police are belatedly investigating whether ‘grime-punk’ duo Bobbie and Bobby Vylan committed a hate crime when vocalist Bobby Vylan led the crowd in a chant of ‘Death, death, to the IDF’, broadcast in full on the BBC. Vylan also talked about his boss at a record label – ‘a bald-headed c–t’ who would speak very strongly about his support for Israel’, telling the crowd, ‘We’ve done it all, from working in bars to working for f—ing Zionists, and if we can do this, I promise you lot, you can do absolutely anything that you put your mind to.’

Does that sound like incitement to hatred or violence? Probably not to a NSW police investigator or, indeed to Vylan, who posted a photo of himself afterwards on social media with a cup of pink ice cream, sporting the caption, ‘While Zionists are crying on socials, I’ve just had late-night (vegan) ice cream.’ Vylan, it seems, is squeamish about harming bovines but not about calling for the slaughter of several million people who have served in the IDF. He changed his tune when the duo’s visas were revoked for the US, and their agent dropped them. He said they were not calling for the ‘death of Jews’, they were calling for ‘the dismantling of a violent military machine’.

Vylan presumably hadn’t noticed the ‘violent military machine’ that attacked Israel on 7 October, 2023, murdering 378 people at the Nova music festival, taking 44 of them hostage, chaining them up and starving them in tunnels in Gaza or the rest of the 1,200 people who were killed that day, the 3,400 people who were injured, and the 251 people who were taken hostage. Fifty people are still held hostage in Gaza, nine from the Nova music festival.

Vylan also failed to notice that despite building 750 km of tunnels in Gaza, which could have sheltered the entire population, they were reserved exclusively for Hamas fighters who used them to escape from densely populated areas after launching missiles at the Israeli army to draw incoming fire.

Kneecap, an Irish hip hop group, wasn’t broadcast by the BBC because a member of the band is already facing terror charges for waving a Hezbollah flag at a London gig and chanting ‘Up Hamas, up Hezbollah’. The band claims the actions were satirical and intended as political commentary. Mo Chara was released on unconditional bail on 18 June. When the crowd chanted ‘Free Mo Chara’, he jubilantly told them, ‘Glastonbury, I’m a free man’ before asking, ‘Has anyone been watching the news?’ Looking out at the sea of Palestinian flags, Chara wished the BBC editor ‘good luck’ with editing them out of the footage, telling the crowd, ‘There’s no f—ing hiding it, Israel are war criminals.’

Australian band Amyl & The Sniffers defended Vylan and Kneecap, accusing the British media of being in a ‘frenzee’ about them, ‘when artists all weeekend (sic)… spoke up on stage & there were tonnes of flags on every streamed set.’

It’s a fair point. Indeed, why not hold Glastonbury in Gaza, a special encore performance of performative justice for Palestine? Instead of Hamas fighters invading Israel, Glastonbury Gays for Gaza could fly into their promised land on motorised paragliders. Bimini, a star from RuPaul’s Drag Race, CMAT (Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson) and JADE are a trifecta of turkeys calling for the destruction of Israel, the only country in the Middle East where gays are not at risk of being tossed off tall buildings.

JADE, who likes to attack J.K. Rowling for anti-trans comments, said, ‘It’s more important than ever for pop artists to show that it’s okay to speak out and educate yourself.’ Her education hasn’t extended to finding out that in Gaza, ‘Any person who has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature… is liable to imprisonment for ten years.’

In 2017, a novel by Palestinian author Abbad Yahya – Crime in Ramallah – about a man in Ramallah who faces arrest and torture for being gay was banned because it threatened ‘morality and public decency’, and the editor was detained. Yahya, who was abroad at the time, chose not to return to Palestine due to fears of arrest and threats to his safety.

Glastonbury in Gaza might encounter a few other hurdles, like the fact that Hamas hates music. In 2005, shortly after it seized total power in a bloody coup, the Hamas municipality of Qalqiliya banned a music-and-dance performance, deeming it ‘haram’ (forbidden). It even prohibited music in the zoo. In 2010, Hamas authorities broke up a hip-hop concert in Gaza, citing the failure to obtain a permit and concerns over immoral conduct.

Islamist hostility to music stems from the Salafi and Wahhabi belief that music, particularly with dancing or mixed-gender crowds, is morally corrupting. Events like Glastonbury embody cultural decay. Attacking such gatherings is a strike against Western imperialism and a win for Islamic imperialism. Concerts also make ideal terrorist targets: the sudden shift from celebration to horror amplifies the psychological impact, precisely what they seek.

None of this should surprise even the most drug-addled hipster. There have been more than 25 attacks on concerts and festivals worldwide by jihadists between 1970 to 2019 such as the attack on the Bataclan Theatre in Paris in 2015, the suicide bomber who detonated an explosive device at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017, and an Islamic State-inspired attack that forced the cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna. Of course, the October 7 massacre at the Nova music festival was the worst mass killing at a music event in recorded history, but the Glastonbury set takes a perverse pleasure in ignoring it. Yet only a fortnight ago, Shakeel Afsar, the founder of the Islamic Independent Candidates Alliance, was recorded saying, ‘We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over.’ If he has his way, Glastonbury’s days may be numbered.