BBC knew hate chant would erupt at Glastonbury - they must be held accountable

As the crowds chanted kill the IDF with apparent glee at Glastonbury yesterday I wondered if the BBC would have continued to broadcast such malevolent hate-speech against any other group.

Of course they wouldn't - they'd have cut the feed immediately.

But it seems it's okay to call for the death of the Israel Defence Forces.

Make no mistake this is a very, very difficult time to be a British Jew.

Glastonbury is supposed to be about peace and love but the hate speech that came from that stage was a world away from that.

It was chilling to see that crowd worked-up to a fever-pitch and to such scary levels of hate.

I have just come back from Israel. I went as part of a delegation and I planned to visit the Nova Music Festival where, on October 7, 2023, hundreds of festival goers were murdered raped and mutilated by Hamas and 44 hostages were taken - 16 of them are still in captivity.

Then the Iran war broke out and a two night stay became 14 nights - until I finally managed to get an RAF evacuation flight out.

I was staying with a friend and every single night the sirens would sound that Iranian missiles were incoming and we would scramble to the shelter - it was quite terrifying.

But almost as terrifying was realising that less than two years after the pogrom at the Nova Music Festival, tens of thousands of revellers at Britain's biggest festival were chanting anti-Jewish slogans.

Be under no illusion - chanting "death to the IDF" or "kill Zionists" is just an "acceptable" way of saying kill Jews.

People think if they use the word "Zionist" then that makes anti-semitism okay. They are wrong.

For many people I'm afraid the chants came from ignorance, they really don't understand what is going on but get dragged into the racism.

But can that really be said of the ones on stage, the ones running Glastonbury and the BBC screening it?

That blend of sinister people in charge and ignorance is very, very dangerous.

They play on the ignorance. The whole Israel / Palestine issue is very complicated, but many people in the post-imperial world look for goodies and baddies, as if everything is binary instead of complex and messy.

I have seen this phenomenon developing over years and the binary nature of social media has definitely played into it.

The BBC should apologise and the people responsible should be held to account. The same goes for the Glastonbury organisers.

This is a very volatile time in the Jewish community - there are rising levels of antisemitism and record levels of attacks on Britain's streets.

I think the BBC absolutely need to be accountable for their actions. These awful events with Kneecap and Bobby Vylan did not come out of the blue - the BBC knew it was likely to happen. There were already major concerns around it yet the broadcast continued as if the hate-speech was a normal thing.

We have laws about hate-speech and we can only hope the police bring the full force of the law to bear as soon as possible.

* Dame Louise Ellman is former Independent MP for Liverpool Riverside. She quit Labour in 2019 because of growing antisemitism within the Corbyn-led party. She has since rejoined.