378 people were murdered at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on 7 October: 378 young people who just wanted to dance, let loose and party, as young people all over the world do at music festivals. They were murdered by Hamas, in cold blood and in a murderous frenzy, filmed by Hamas themselves as they did it. Some were raped, others tortured, others still kidnapped and taken as hostages back to Gaza where some still suffer unimaginable atrocities in their underground dungeons.
Today, tens of thousands of their festival-going counterparts at Glastonbury, led from the stage by Bob Vylan, chanted “Death, death to the IDF”. They, too, were just young people at a music festival, and the ease with which they went along with a call for Israelis to be killed reveals a deep sickness at the heart of our culture.
Something broke at Glastonbury today. I can’t remember any other single occasion when a crowd of that size chanted for anyone to be killed. It’s the kind of mass hatred that belongs at a Blood & Honour neo-Nazi gig, not at Britain’s biggest music festival, broadcast live on the BBC. But it happened, and it lays bare the sheer permissibility of hating Israelis even to the point of wishing them dead. This is the racism that is not just allowed but actively celebrated in progressive circles…..
But read it all.
Mick Hartley 
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