Kneecap’s “F*ck Israel, Free Palestine” stance and imagery at Coachella this weekend has earned both condemnation and outreach from one of America’s leading Jewish human rights organizations.
Three days after the confrontational Irish hip-hop trio took to one of the high-profile festival’s stages in front of thousands and lambasted the Benjamin Netanyahu-led state over the war in Gaza, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has joined those denouncing Kneecap’s actions. In part, the Wiesenthal Center wants to change the overall dynamic and show the overtly political group the error of its ways and the insensitivity they displayed.
“At its best, music should bring people together and spread empathy, not hate,” Wiesenthal Center CEO Jim Berk said Monday. “It’s therefore remarkable that Kneecap used a music festival to foment hate, exactly the kind of gathering where, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered, raped, burned and kidnapped innocent young people at the Nova Music Festival in Israel.”
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Giving the band a history lesson, Berk invited Kneecap and Coachella organizers to come to the Wiesenthal Center’s Roxbury Drive offices to discuss the toxic consequences of such attacks on Israel and the antisemitism it can breed. “We believe music and music-makers should be part of the solution and not the problem,” Berk said.
The subject of a Michael Fassbender co-starring biopic last year that was Ireland’s submission for the International Feature Oscar, Kneecap has explicitly criticized Israel and Netanyahu’s response to the murderous rampage of Hamas many times over the past two years. Additionally, part of what occurred in Coachella’s Sonora tent during Friday’s set was in direct response to the festival cutting the band’s verbal blasts of Israel from the livestream of it April 11 performance on Weekend 1. To make sure it was “sorted” for this weekend, the Belfast-based Kneecap put its remarks up on the screens surrounding the stage.
Among the text that went up, were the “f*ck Israel” statement and others such as “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” and “It is being enabled by the U.S. government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes.”
However, as puerile as the comments and imagery were, they had a limited range as Coachella organizers Goldenvoice did not provide a Sonora tent livestream this past weekend.
That didn’t stop other bands at Coachella this year — like headliner Green Day — from making their own pro-Palestinian references in its sets the past two weekends.
Out of the more than 1,200 who were killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, there were also more than 250 Israelis and other nationalities taken hostage by the West Bank-based terrorist group.
Although around 145 of the hostages have been returned in complex prison exchanges, the relentless pounding of Gaza by the IDF has not resulted in the rescue of many of them. Dozens of the hostages have already been declared dead as Hamas proposed a full release deal last week while refusing to give up arms simultaneously. As negotiations for a supposed ceasefire were going on, Hamas’ armed wing put out a video April 15 that told Israelis and others their “children will return in black coffins with their bodies torn apart from shrapnel from your army.”
The post Kneecap’s Anti-Israel Message At Coachella Condemned As “Cry For Hate” By Simon Wiesenthal Center appeared first on Deadline.
