Police have ended an investigation into alleged antisemitic chanting at the high-profile Glastonbury music festival led by a punk/grime double act, taking no further action.
Responding to chants this summer of “death to the IDF” from Bob Vylan vocalist Pascal Robinson-Foster, Avon and Somerset Police stated
We have concluded, after reviewing all the evidence, that it does not meet the criminal threshold outlined by the CPS for any person to be prosecuted.
No further action will be taken on the basis there is insufficient evidential [sic] for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction.
While Robinson-Foster wished for demise of the Israel Defence Forces—which would, in turn, enable the swifter murder ‘from the river to the sea’ of Jewish civilians inside the sole democratic state in the Middle East—the UK public broadcaster continued to stream the performance on its iPlayer digital service, fuelling calls for senior BBC managers to resign.
The subsequent row over this unedifying spectacle caused Bob Vylan to lose the work visas necessary for a U.S. tour, be dropped from the European music festival circuit, and even have one of their soft-soap interviewers lose podcast sponsorship. However, Robinson-Foster was soon up to his old tricks again, mocking the slain U.S. conservative Charlie Kirk.
Under some pressure to investigate, police said they (eventually) conducted “a voluntary police interview under caution” with a man in his mid 30s in November and spoke to “approximately 200” members of the public, looking for the victim of a criminal offence.
Critics of the band’s posturing and sloganeering do not necessarily want to see them prosecuted for their words, but are particularly dismayed by the emergence of ‘two-tier’ policing in Britain, where the expression of dissenting views on social media is leading to police harassment on an almost daily basis.
