The appalling events at Glastonbury this weekend – not just Bob Vylan’s hateful rhetoric but the fact that large numbers of the crowd joined the murderous chants – highlights once again the manner in which antisemitism has been normalised in some sections of our society.
There are, of course, legitimate and important questions which both the BBC and the organisers of Glastonbury should answer.
But these should not detract from the wider problem: a quiet toleration of hatred and extremism which has gone on for far too long.
Let’s not forget that the weekend before last, anti-Israel demonstrators in London carried photographs emblazoned with pictures of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and stamped with the words “Choose the right side of history”. Others chanted: “We Stand With Iran”.
Put to one side the fact that “standing with Iran” wilfully ignores the huge dangers – not just to Israel, but to the UK and our other regional allies – posed by Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, as well as its support for international terrorism and proxy armies which have brought bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East.
Instead, we should ask: why would anybody think – as the Islamic Human Rights Commission which printed the banners appears to believe – that Iran’s ageing regime is “on the right side of history”.
Damien Egan
For more than 35 of the Iranian regime’s 46-year-existence, they have presided over the wholesale and violent suppression of the human rights of the people of Iran. Khamenei’s regime violently put down peaceful protests in 2009, 2019-20 and 2022-3. It flogs, jails, tortures and executes hundreds of people (as of 27 May, 478 so far in 2025) each year, often following sham, systematically unfair trials. And, as Human Rights Watch has detailed, it treats women as second-class citizens; persecutes ethnic and religious minorities, refugees and migrants; and murders gay people. The rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly – rightly enjoyed by protesters in London last weekend – are denied by the very regime some of them were celebrating.
But, as Dave Rich, an expert on antisemitism and director of policy at the CST, detailed last weekend, Khamenei is also “a fully committed and fervent antisemitic conspiracy theorist”. He has, for instance, warned against the dangers posed by “bloodsucker capitalists and Zionists, and the global Zionist network, which possesses most of the global media”. He has repeatedly called for the eradication of the world’s sole Jewish state (a “cancerous tumour”). And he mocks and denies the Holocaust, while his regime has hosted Holocaust denial cartoon contests. “#Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened,” he tweeted following a sermon marking the Iranian new year in 2014.
Nor is Khamenei a man to make idle threats. On his watch, Iran has purposefully and methodically worked to surround Israel with a “ring of fire” of terrorist proxies, arming and funding the terrorists responsible for the atrocities of 7 October 2023.
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ali Khamenei, November 23, 2015 in Tehran, Iran.
The Palestinians themselves are more clear-sighted about Iran’s malign activities and attempts to exploit their cause. Last year, for instance, the Palestinian Authority publicly rebuked Khamenei’s praise for the 7 October attacks. “The Palestinian people have been fighting and struggling for a hundred years, and they do not need wars that do not serve their ambitions for freedom and independence,” it said. The PA is particularly mindful of Iran’s attempts to meddle in the West Bank, where it is backing terrorist groups which are attacking Israelis and destabilising the PA itself. As an adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, commented: “Tehran is sacrificing the blood of the Palestinian people for its own interests.”
Comparisons between the conflict between Iran and Israel, and the potential western involvement, and the 2003 Iraq war have, for understandable reasons, abounded in recent weeks. But among the many differences is the fact that, in 2003, there were no placards bearing Saddam Hussein’s image being carried by anti-war protesters during the mass demonstrations leading up to the US-UK invasion of Iraq and no effort on their part to erase his regime’s many crimes.
But, in 2025, having already endured nearly two years of distressing and intimidating protests on the streets of our cities, Britain’s Jews are now being forced to watch an unabashed antisemite and Holocaust-denier lauded as some sort of political icon.
This may be shocking but, given the sharp rise in antisemitism we’ve seen since 7 October, and the tenor of the demonstrations which have taken place, it is sadly unsurprising. Indeed, it is part of a pattern: last October, for instance, some protesters at an anti-Israel march carried signs declaring support for the murderous terror group Hezbollah.
We cannot accept the normalisation of such behaviour. The ever-rising tide of extremism within the anti-Israel movement must be called out and confronted.
There is certainly a role for government. Yvette Cooper’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action – which is reportedly receiving support from Iran – is a welcome sign of its unwillingness to tolerate this extremism.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper speaks at CST lunch
So too was her decision to establish a review into whether existing terrorism legislation adequately deals with state threats, such as those posed by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is plotting attacks on UK soil and attempting to radicalise young people and stir antisemitic hatred. The home secretary’s speedy acceptance of the Hall review’s recommendations last month means ministers will – at long last – have the ability to rapidly ban the IRGC. We must ensure these powers are on the statute books as soon as possible.
Finally, the previous government set up – but largely ignored – a series of reviews into extremism. In 2021, for instance, the Commission on Countering Extremism warned of a “gaping chasm in the law that allows hateful extremists to operate with impunity”. We must give the police and security services the powers they need to keep us all safe.
But this is also a challenge for society as a whole. A noisy and fanatical minority have been allowed to poison and dominate debate, abuse and intimidate their opponents, and, on occasion, disrupt our democracy itself by preventing constituents from meeting their MPs and our elected representatives doing the job they were sent to parliament to do.
In one of his most powerful lectures, the late Elie Wiesel once warned of “the perils of indifference”.
It’s time to put an end to our collective indifference to extremism.
Those in positions of authority and influence must shatter the silence, speak out and declare: Enough is Enough.
Damien Egan is MP for Bristol North East.
