No, no, of course not. The rap duo who led a chant of “Death, death to the IDF!” at a music festival in Somerset, England, before a crowd of some 200,000 didn’t mean to call for actual violence. They were just expressing their wish for the “dismantling” of a “military machine”—just a “machine”! They would never, they explained, call for “the death of Jews or Arabs or any other race or group.”
Only problem, the pair’s attempt to tamp down criticism of their call to murder was itself snuffed out by footage from an earlier performance in London, where half the pair screamed “Death to every single IDF soldier out there!” Most Israelis serve in the IDF at one point or another, and most of them, well, are Jews.
It’s as if a racist issued a call to kill “every single African-American” but defended himself by noting that many white guys, like Elon Musk and Zohran Mamdani, were born in Africa.
So add disingenuousness to the charge of incitement to murder.
While the festival crowd enthusiastically took up the murder chant, there were, thankfully, some saner people.
Festival co-organizer Emily Eavis was “appalled” by the comments. Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the performance as “appalling hate speech.” Even the BBC expressed “deep regret” for having aired the ugliness. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the scene “grotesque.” Labor Health Secretary Wes Streeting called the chants “revolting.”
And the US State Department revoked the duo’s entry visas ahead of a planned tour on these shores. “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau explained, “are not welcome visitors to our country.”
And, perhaps the coup de grâce, at least to the beleaguered artistes, the United Talent Agency dropped it as a client. (Hatred apparently isn’t a talent.)
And yet, a profusion of apologists also emerged from the mildewed woodwork. Most were fellow “musicians” like “rap legend” (I’ll take their word for it) “Chuck D,” who averred that “You can’t really kill nobody with a guitar.” (Actually, you can, both figuratively and literally.)
But there were also other supporters of malice (at least when aimed at Jews), largely on social media, including Palestinian “activists” and advocates for unfettered speech.
Okay, so there are imbeciles out there, incapable of using critical thinking to analyze complex situations and given to violent rhetoric. But, like every pet crocodile or boa, they need to be fed.
What nourishes the malevolence that performers like the Somerset simpletons spew as they prance around? Irresponsible media, the inciters’ inciters.
Take, for example, this June 27 Haaretz headline: “It’s a Killing Field: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid.”
Shocking headline, no? Not as shocking, though, as its mendacity.
What an anonymous source (clue #1) told the paper is not true. An officer whom the source accused of “ordering to shoot deliberately” at civilians trying to get food was not stationed at a distribution point at all but, rather, guarding trucks headed to one of those points. Trucks that looters have targeted. And the English rendering of his order was blatantly false. He ordered soldiers to fire above would-be looters, not at them, in order to disperse them.
There’s no room here to detail the other falsehoods in the piece. But, as military researcher Andrew Fox said, the article “pieced together half-truths, one-sided quotes, and convenient omissions to create a cartoon villain narrative of Israeli brutality.”
Another example of disingenuous journalism (one of many) was a June 2025 essay in New York Magazine titled “Crimes of the Century: How Israel, with the help of the US, broke not only Gaza but the foundations of humanitarian law.” It dwelled on a wrenching but indisputably doctored video. Much emotion, little fact.
The ubiquitous reports of starving Gazan children over the past year have yet to produce evidence of any child who has starved.
In visual media, a large red teddy bear, whose young owner is implied to have died in an Israeli strike, movingly appears in multiple shots, in different locations, being held by different children. Teddy gets around.
Rappers may (well, sometimes) be good at rhyming; at research, not so much.
And so, hundreds of thousands of mindless minions were inspired to join a call to murder Jews.
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