'Death to the IDF' chant at Glastonbury proves the death of British moral clarity – opinion

The words were spat out not from a dark corner of the internet or a fringe protest, but from an act named Bob Vylan, performing on a stage sponsored by the British public, with the tacit blessing of the cultural elite.

“Death, death to the IDF” – not criticism of Israeli policy, not solidarity with Palestinians, but a bloodthirsty chant calling for the extermination of soldiers, most of them 18- and 19-year-olds, many of whom are defending the very values of liberal democracy that Glastonbury claims to celebrate.

When asked for comment, Wes Streeting, the UK’s health secretary, did, to his credit, condemn the chant. Yet, as is now routine in the twisted moral calculus of British politics, he couldn’t resist adding a slap in the face to Israel while he was at it. He felt the need to criticize the Israeli ambassador for complaining about the chant, saying Israel should “put its own house in order.”

Excuse me?

This comes from a man overseeing one of the most dysfunctional health systems in the Western world. While he hurls sanctimonious scolding at Israel, a democracy facing enemies sworn to its annihilation, his own “house” is collapsing in real time.

Let’s talk about that house, shall we?

The NHS is in free fall. Waiting times in Accident & Emergency are the worst they’ve ever been. GP services are a national disgrace, with patients giving up even trying to get an appointment. Staff morale is at rock bottom. Junior doctors are fleeing. Nurses are burned out. Claims for medical negligence are at record highs. And what is the British Medical Association, my union, supposedly representing UK doctors, doing at its national conference? Debating the healthcare system in Gaza.

Have they not looked in the mirror at their own rotten NHS?

So no, Mr. Streeting, with all due respect – put your own house in order.

THE DOUBLE standard is grotesque. While Israel is expected to behave like an angel under missile fire, Britain’s own institutions can host incitement to murder on live television and barely raise an eyebrow. If an artist had chanted “Death to the Palestinians,” there would be mass resignations, arrests, and front-page outrage – and rightly so. But “Death to the IDF”? Ah, that’s just a form of “expression.”

But forgive my skepticism. What more evidence do they need? This isn’t a difficult case of parsing coded language. It was chanted, repeatedly, in plain English, with full intent, broadcast globally. That’s not art. That’s not protest. That’s hate speech, pure and simple. The kind of hate that gets people killed.

Meanwhile, the United States, often caricatured in the UK as clumsy and aggressive, has shown what moral clarity looks like. They didn’t form a committee or launch a review. They revoked the visas of the two Bobs who are the Bob Vylan duo. Just like that, 20 concert dates across America, gone. Actions have consequences. Simple, effective, and right. No bobbing up and down about this.

Contrast that with the UK’s flailing, flaccid response: the BBC mumbles something about editorial independence and that in retrospect, it would have been better, blah, blah, blah...

The Glastonbury organizers claim ignorance, and politicians talk about “restraint” and “balance” while the virus of open antisemitism festers in their backyard.

This is not just about one performer or one festival. This is about the collapse of moral clarity in British society, a society that increasingly treats Jews, Israelis, and Zionists as uniquely deserving of suspicion, scrutiny, and scorn.

We are expected to tolerate the intolerable. To smile politely when chants of death to our children are labeled “resistance.” To accept that our soldiers, our sons and daughters, are fair game for genocidal fantasies shouted from National Treasure stages.

I’M TIRED of it. I’m tired of being gaslit by cultural gatekeepers who say antisemitism is a fringe issue, even as it blares from massive speakers into fields filled with tens of thousands. I’m tired of politicians who say they’re friends of the Jewish community – so long as we don’t make too much noise, complain too loudly, or expect basic decency.

And I’m tired, as a doctor, of seeing the NHS exploited as a platform for virtue-signaling on Gaza while patients wait weeks for treatment and colleagues drop like flies from exhaustion. Israel didn’t create this crisis. But it’s always easier to blame Jerusalem than to fix London.

The rot goes deep. It’s in the universities that allow pro-Hamas marches but silence Jewish students. It’s in the unions that pass boycott motions with gleeful efficiency while ignoring racism in their own ranks. And it’s in the broadcasters who offer a platform to hatred under the guise of art, then plead innocence when called out.

Can I still believe in the UK? I still work there. I still treat patients there. But I worry deeply for its soul. A country that cannot distinguish between free speech and incitement, between protest and a call to murder, is not a healthy democracy.

So let me say it plainly, since so many seem unwilling: Chanting “Death to the IDF” is not edgy or brave. It’s despicable. It’s a call for the death of my friends, my family, my people. And if the British establishment cannot say that clearly and without a proviso, if it always has to come with an asterisk, a caveat, a veiled accusation against Israel, then it has lost its moral compass.

But perhaps the most chilling part of all this is the context that Glastonbury and its cheering crowd so brazenly ignore.

Hundreds of young Israelis were shot, maimed, raped, beheaded, burned alive, and kidnapped. Some were hunted down in fields like animals. Others were slaughtered while hiding under stages and DJ booths. Over 360 were murdered in cold blood. Some are still held hostage in Gaza.

Many of the festival-goers were young women who were paraded half-naked through the streets of Gaza City to the cheers of a howling mob.

And what has Glastonbury said about this?

Nothing.

No tribute. No moment of silence. No stage-side artwork honoring the dead. No spoken-word lament. No acknowledgment that their own musical cousins were annihilated at a peace festival just like theirs.

In fact, the first mention of the word “Nova” on a Glastonbury stage this year was not to mourn the victims, but to justify the chant of “Death to the IDF” as some twisted form of retaliation.

It is grotesque.

A festival that wraps itself in the banner of peace, love, and unity showed no solidarity with the murdered, the raped, or the kidnapped.

Not even a flicker of empathy for the music-lovers whose lives were destroyed by genocidal hatred. Instead, they handed the mic to the supporters of such vile animals.

This should be simple. If someone calls for the murder of your allies, you don’t nod and say, “But really, you should look at your own house.” You say: “No.” You say: “This will not stand. And you act.”

The USA did. Why can’t Britain?