It’s highly improbable that while Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was killing hundreds of thousands of his citizens during the country’s civil war that any artist gracing the stage of Coachella – one of America’s premier music festivals – flashed a huge message across the screen to the massive crowd and to the world reading “F*** Assad, Free Syria.”
But at this year’s festival, which took place last week, popular Irish hip-hop group Kneecap did just that – only the target of its wrath wasn’t Syria, or Iran, or any other brutal regime that has caused massive death and destruction: it was against Israel.
The group began a chant of “Free, free…” and many in the crowd of 125,000 shouted back “PALESTINE!” It got louder and louder as a giant screen behind them projected a series of messages accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and condemning the United States for its support for Israel’s military.
The messages concluded with a massive reading: “F*** Israel. Free Palestine.”
Besides the festival-goers, the scene was beamed by a popular streamer on the Twitch platform to his millions of followers, making the event truly international.
The troubling incident came a couple of days after rock superstars Green Day performed at the festival and changed the lyrics of a song to include “Running away from pain like the kids from Palestine.”
On the surface, does it really matter what slogans a sea of stoned kids, who probably couldn’t tell Palestinian from Pakistani, chant like sheep when the artists onstage, whom they revere, lead the chant?
The answer is yes, it does.
It’s heartening that people are upset about the loss of innocent lives and the carnage of war. But when they turn the victims into the aggressors, it’s indicative of either a very short memory or of a sinister agenda against a country defending itself from those who would actually commit genocide if given the opportunity.
On October 7, at another festival called the Nova in southern Israel, where some of the same music was probably playing, thousands of similarly aged attendees were hunted down like prey, shot while hiding inside portable toilets and shelters, burned alive in cars, or dragged alive into captivity.
As noted, US musician and author Peter Himmelman wrote on his blog this week about the Coachella travesty, “The memory of the brutal massacre at the nearly identical Nova music festival was completely erased. The rapes, the torture, the kidnappings – gone. October 7 vanished into the desert air, replaced by an easy-to-chant slogan and a false sense of righteousness. No mention of Hamas. No mention of the hostages. No complexity. Just one message: Israel is the oppressive villain, Hamas and its supporters are the righteous defenders of freedom and justice. And anyone who says otherwise? Suspect.”
Himmelman wrote that the theater on display at Coachella against Israel wasn’t only grotesque, it was dangerous.
As we gather on Wednesday night and Thursday on Holocaust Remembrance Day to remember the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis, it’s imperative to remember that as more time passes, the more the deniers are going to come out of the woodwork. Keeping the memory and the stories of the victims and the survivors alive for future generations is the mission that all of us must undertake.
That lesson is just as pertinent for the victims and survivors of October 7. It didn’t take a few years or decades to turn them into the aggressors. As displayed in giant, profane neon letters for the whole world to see, it’s now mainstream for Israel to be blamed for the horrors that have taken place in Gaza.
As new US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said this week when asked by a representative of the World Health Organization to put pressure on Israel to let humanitarian aid into Gaza: Why isn’t the world pressuring Hamas to free the hostages and surrender its arms?
Of course, when a popular hip-hop group is leading a chant that ignites thousands of ignorant youth – the leaders of tomorrow – to shout out “F*** Israel, Free Palestine,” any logic or sense of reasoning has been lost to herd mentality.
If that trend isn’t pushed back and somehow reversed, if it becomes mainstream to support homicidal terrorists, then it’s going to be a dangerous world indeed – and not just for Israel.
