British duo Bob Vylan chanted ‘death to the IDF’ and ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free’ from a stage at the Glastonbury Festival in England
The Trump administration on Monday formally canceled U.S. visas for British rap group Bob Vylan, which recently went viral for a performance at a British music festival in which the duo called for the murder of Israeli soldiers and the end of the Jewish state.
“Bob Vylan’s visas have been officially revoked,” a senior State Department official confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon. The move came a day after reports suggesting the Trump administration was aware of the rap group’s scheduled tour throughout American cities and had contemplated taking action to prevent the duo from arriving on U.S. shores. A second senior State Department official told the Daily Wire on Sunday that “under the Trump Administration, the U.S. government will not issue visas to any foreigner who supports terrorists.”
The group drew the State Department’s attention over the weekend after a performance at the Glastonbury Festival that included calls for the killing of Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
“Death, death to the IDF,” the group’s lead singer, Pascal Robinson-Foster, chanted from the stage, as shown in videos watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org posted online over the weekend. Many in the crowd waved Palestinian flags and applauded as Bob Vylan’s members encouraged violence against Jews.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine must be—will be, inshallah—will be free,” Robinson-Foster added, employing a phrase that encourages the destruction of Israel and the forced removal of Jews from the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.
The video of the chants quickly spread across social media, and soon after the State Department confirmed it had revoked the two members of Bob Vylan’s visas, Sky News reported that United Talent Agency had dropped the group as a client.
Mark Goldfeder of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and Arsen Ostrovsky of the International Legal Forum wrote a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday morning in which the two authors called on the State Department to revoke the visas.
“[L]eading chants of the phrase ‘From the River to the Sea,’ when paired with language like ‘death to the IDF,’ is readily understood as a call for the violent elimination of the State of Israel, aligning with the goals of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” Goldfeder and Ostrovsky wrote. “In today’s climate of escalating antisemitism, such behavior is only likely to inflame further hatred, legitimize terror, and put American lives at risk.”
Glastonbury Festival organizers addressed the performance in a statement on Sunday, saying they were “appalled” by the display.
“Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence,” organizers wrote.
StopAntisemitism.org founder Liora Rez told the Free Beacon that her organization appreciates the State Department’s decision.
“StopAntisemitism is determined to prevent the United States from mirroring the U.K.’s alarming normalization of institutional antisemitism,” Rez said. “We commend the State Department for acting quickly and decisively in revoking the visas of known antisemites Bob Vylan.”
One half of the group posted a statement on Instagram on Sunday with the caption, “I said what I said.”
“Let them see us marching in the streets, campaigning on ground level, organising online and shouting about it on any and every stage that we are offered,” the rapper wrote.
