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Widespread Palestinian Support, Criticism of Israel Displayed at Glastonbury Festival in Britain
Revellers dance as they attend the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, in Pilton near Glastonbury, Somerset, Britain, June 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
The legendary Glastonbury Festival that took place over the weekend in Britain included dozens of displays of Palestinian support, from paraphernalia to comments made by performers, and a number of instances that featured condemnation of Israel and false claims about the Jewish state’s military actions during the ongoing Gaza war.
This year’s Glastonbury Festival, which celebrates music and the arts, featured a “Palestine” stall that sold badges, stickers, bracelets, keychains, and magnets that said “Free Palestine,” “Free Gaza,” and “Boycott Israeli Apartheid.” Some of the items depicted the state of Israel being covered entirely by the Palestinian flag, which was widely displayed across the festival grounds besides dozens of Palestinian banners.
GLASTONBURY @glastonbury have allowed a “palestine” stall to sells badges depicting Israel being wiped out entirely and replaced with just the Palestine flag.@emilyeavis you wiped off Star of David’s from the M.Levine sign.
Care to explain this too?
@__jacker__ pic.twitter.com/LswpUK9rRP
— Kosher (@KosherCockney) June 28, 2024
During their set on Friday, the British rock band Idles called for a ceasefire in the ongoing Gaza war and the Irish folk band Lankum Dublin sang to the crowd, “You’ll never take possession of the rocks of Palestine.” Norwegian singer Aurora also dedicated her performance in part to the “children in Palestine.”
British-Albanian pop sensation Dua Lipa, who has a history of expressing pro-Palestinian views and criticizing Israel, headlined the main stage on Friday and walked into the audience during her performance, which many claim was an effort to get a nearby “Glasto for Palestine” flag in the camera shot. A video from Lipa’s performance also showed that some attendees carried LGBTQ rainbow flags with Stars of David and flags in honor of the victims of the Supernova music festival massacre near the singer.
Kudos to the one who waved 3 Nova flags and 1 Jewish Pride Flag right in front of Dua Lipa’s performance at Glastonbury music festival pic.twitter.com/XbxIyXPy8t
— Assaf Chriqui (@AssafChriqui) June 29, 2024
The Irish rap trio Kneecap — who pulled out of this year’s South by Southwest because one of its sponsors, the US Army, had ties to Israel — took to the stage at Glastonbury on Saturday. As part of their set, they displayed on large screens a “Free Palestine” message that falsely claimed “over 20,000 children have been murdered by Israel in 9 months” and that “it is being enabled by the British government.” They got encouraged fans to chant with them “Free, free Palestine.”
Some of the artists that performed at Glastonbury this year also wore Palestinian keffiyehs including Welsh singer Charlotte Church, who sang “free Palestine” multiple times during a performance on Friday when she joined Billy Bragg’s set. Also on Friday, Blur frontman Damon Albarn made a surprise appearance on stage during a performance by the indie band Bombay Bicycle Club and asked the crowd, “Are you pro-Palestine? Do you feel that it’s an unfair war?”
Throughout the five-day festival, which concluded on Sunday, there was no mention or reference on stage to the deadly massacre at the Supernova music festival that took place on Oct. 7 in southern Israel, where more than 300 people were murdered by Hamas terrorists and 40 others were taken as hostages.
Coldplay headlined the main stage at Glastonbury on Saturday and welcomed several surprise guests on stage, including Michael J Fox and Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna. During their set, the band’s lead singer Chris Martin stopped the music at one point and asked the 100,000-strong audience to send love to both Israel and “Palestine.”
“Just raise your hands like this and turn towards the main stage like this. Now, we’re gonna send a big Glastonbury love thing,” he said. “You can send it to anyone: you can send it to your grandmother, you can send it to Israel, you can send it to Palestine, you can send it to Myanmar. You can send it to Ukraine, you can send it to beautiful Russia. You can send it anywhere – you can send it all over the world from Glastonbury.”
He later thanked the crowd “for giving us and me restored faith that most humans can gather together very peacefully with all different flags, all different colors, all different genders, sexualities, ages, everything, and just sing and have a good time and ice cream, there’s no fighting, nothing like that.”
“So thank you for being inspiring to us,” he added. “And hopefully we’re sending all this out into the world all together as a beacon of togetherness in a time when it might seem like that’s impossible. You just proved that it is, so that’s amazing. Thank you.”
The post Widespread Palestinian Support, Criticism of Israel Displayed at Glastonbury Festival in Britain first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.