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THE FRONTMAN OF rap-punk duo Bob Vylan has said he would repeat the controversial ‘death to the IDF’ chant he made at Glastonbury “again tomorrow, twice on Sundays”.
Bobby Vylan, the frontman of Bob Vylan, led crowds in a chant of “Death, death to the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces)” during a Glastonbury set on 28 June.
British prime minister Keir Starmer was among those to condemn the chant and said there is “no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech”.
“Death death to the IDF!” is trending all around the world thanks to Bob Vylan. Free Palestine 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/a9R21xsHNf
— Irlandarra (@aldamu_jo) July 20, 2025
The BBC, which broadcasts Glastonbury, later expressed regret at not pulling its livestream of Bob Vylan’s “unacceptable” set.
However, speaking on The Louis Theroux podcast, Vylan said that immediately after the set, BBC staff told him that the set was “fantastic” and that they “loved” it.
Vylan said that when he came off stage, everyone said it was a “great show” and that it was all “very normal”.
“It wasn’t like we came off stage and everybody was like, ‘ohhh’.
“We come off stage, it’s normal. Nobody thought anything, even staff at the BBC, were like, ‘that was fantastic, we loved that’.”
Oops! Bob Vylan lets slip that BBC staff loved his ‘death to the IDF’ chant.
— Defund The BBC (@DefundBBC) October 21, 2025
Of course BBC faithful Louis Theroux tries to play it down but Bob Vylan just can’t help spilling the beans. The corporation is rotten from top to bottom. #DefundTheBBC pic.twitter.com/29jFBdNuYA
When asked by Theroux what the phrase means in his view, Vylan replied: “The chant is so unimportant and the response to it was so disproportionate.
“What is important is the conditions that exist that allow that chant to even take place on that stage.
“That’s what the focus should have always been on.”
When pressed on the matter, Vylan said the chant means an “end to the apartheid regime that has been created, an end to that”.
He added: “‘End, end the IDF’ does not rhyme, it wouldn’t have caught on.
“That’s what we’re up there to do, we are there to entertain, we are there to play music, I am a lyricist. ‘Death, death to the IDF’ rhymes, perfect chant.”
Meanwhile, Theroux noted that the Community Security Trust, an antisemitism monitoring charity, said there was an uptick in antisemitic incidents following the Glastonbury set.
It reported that 29 June, the day after the set, saw the highest total number of antisemitic incidents in the UK in the first half of the year.
Vylan questioned what was counted as an “antisemitic incident” and said “no one seemed to press on that quite key detail” in the reporting.
He added that he hasn’t “created an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community”.
“If there were large numbers of people going out like ‘Bob Vylan made me do this’, I might go, ‘oof, I’ve had a negative impact here’.”
He added that the chant “allowed the conversation” around Israeli actions in Gaza to “have a new life almost, because unfortunately people have short attention spans and I think a lot of people just got numb to it”.
“Why is [that chant] the conversation that they’re having, but I do think that within that conversation, it allowed [me] to bring the issue back to the front page”.
When asked if he stood by the chant, Vylan said he would do it again and that he is not regretful of it.
“I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all.”
He added that the backlash he faced is minimal compared to what people in Gaza are going through.
“If I can have my Palestinian friends and people that I meet from Palestine, that have had to flee, that have lost members in double digits of their family and they can say, ‘your chant, I love it’. Or it gave me a breath of fresh air or whatever.
“I don’t want to overstate the importance of the chant. That’s not what I’m trying to do, but if I have their support, they’re the people that I’m doing it for, they’re the people that I’m being vocal for, then what is there to regret.
“Oh, because I’ve upset some right-wing politician or some right-wing media?”
Vylan also said he believes the band received more criticism than others for speaking about the conflict.
He said: “Maybe I’m being naive or focusing too much on ‘self’ there, but I think we’ve been attacked to a degree that I haven’t really seen anybody else attacked for speaking up about this issue.”
When Theroux suggested Kneecap has also faced backlash for their approach, Vylan, who is of Jamaican heritage, said: “That’s an interesting one.
“It’s an interesting one because as with everything race comes to play a part in that we are an easier villain, no pun intended, than they are because we are already the enemy.
“So, you don’t really need to give much context as to why the British public should hate us. That’s tricky.”
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