The PNG Courier's overseas correspondent with the latest from Glastonbury

Bob Vylan’s IDF Chant Ignites Uproar, While Actual Atrocities Get a Pass

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We return to England, where imprudent language relating to the IDF is now bigger news than that of the civilians in aid queues who have been slaughtered by the IDF.

When punks Bob Vylan led a chant of ‘death to the IDF’ on Saturday, the outrage it provoked was thunderous. Vylan only have themselves to blame. Just ask Bobby Gillespie of Primal

Scream, whose 2005 Glastonbury rendition of “Kill All Hippies” was a one-way ticket to oblivion.

Gillespie was last spotted hawking mixtapes outside Camden TX Maxx. His fate is a stark warning: offend the delicate and febrile sensibilities of the chattering classes, and you’re done. Greenlight arms sales to the IDF, and you’re on the front bench.

It’s almost as if moral fury is a currency spent only on safe targets. The IDF’s bombs don’t discriminate (‘surgical strike’ in a built-up populated area is an oxymoron), but MPs and pundits reserve their scorn for a band bold enough to say so. If only the IDF were as selective with its drone strikes, as these flaccid weathercocks are with indignation.

The farce has a script that’s now heavily dog-eared. Condemn the artist, protect the war machine. The BBC, busily ‘balancing’ itself into oblivion, has now spent more airtime dissecting Vylan’s ‘offensive’ performance than it has in reporting the IDF’s body count.

This is the nation, remember, whose November 11 th Dia Des Los Muertos involves crocheting berets for post-boxes and flaunting tattoos of civilian-reaping Lancaster bombers while statesmen babble at 24hr news anchors about NEVER FORGETTING.

Well, they forgot during Rwanda and they forgot during Bosnia. More recently they forgot during South Sudan, and since last Saturday there’s been so much BBC editorial breast-beating they’ve all but forgotten Ukraine. When we know that the IDF is turning aid queues into abattoirs not only because we can see it on our screens but also because Israeli politicians are bragging about it, and because IDF whistleblowers are speaking out about it (one reason among many not to wish death upon conscripts), the only thing they can plausibly claim to have forgotten, is their humanity.

After Kneecap and Palestine Action, Bob Vylan were the designated villains of this week’s outrage cycle. Their sin was to hold a mirror to a society that weeps over words but winks at slaughter. Here’s to the cowards in suits and newsrooms who’d rather police lyrics than confront their own complicity.

As the deafening moral panic subsides, the West’s silence screams louder than any stage.