Massive Attack urge BBC and media to redirect their attention to “what is happening daily to the people of Gaza” rather than Bob Vylan Glastonbury furore 

Massive Attack have urged the media to centre their attention towards “what is happening daily to the people of Gaza”, rather than focusing on the controversy surrounding Bob Vylan’s controversial set at Glastonbury.

• READ MORE: Bob Vylan: “We’ve been screaming about these topics at the top of our lungs for years. Why has it taken this long?”

The band shared the statement today (July 1) on Instagram, explaining that numerous media outlets had contacted them asking for their views regarding “something a musician said”. The incident they refer to is Bob Vylan’s performance at Glastonbury over the weekend, which saw the duo voice their support for Palestine, and call out the BBC, Israel, the US and UK governments.

They had political slogans projected onto the screen behind them too, reading “Free Palestine – United Nations have called it a genocide – the BBC calls it a ‘conflict’”, and also led chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF”, referring to the Israel Defence Forces.

The set led to the duo having their US visas revoked, and US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau described the actions as a “hateful tirade”. They were reportedly dropped by their agent United Talent Agency (UTA) too, and Somerset police launched “a criminal investigation” into the set. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy also weighed in, and said that the BBC’s decision to livestream the set indicates “a problem of leadership”.

Now, Massive Attack – who have been vocal in their support for Palestine for decades and have boycotted performing in Israel since 1999 – have spoken out, and said that the focus should be on the people of Gaza, not the artists trying to raise awareness.

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“Today, a hot day when 22 Palestinians (including journalists) sat in a seafront café were murdered by one Israeli bomb, various national media outlets have contacted us (again) to ask our view of something a musician said,” the statement on Instagram read.

“For 636 days now, unprecedented & insufferable horror has been recorded by the brutalised communities of Gaza and shown to us on our phone and television screens. It will not stop. No one, it seems, will stop it,” the Bristol trip-hop icons continued.

The band also claimed that there was an “absence of objective journalism and any moral leadership from government”, and that the lack of intervention was something that has caused a “sense of acute frustration, deep sadness and rage amongst a majority of the British public”.

They also added that while they “watch on aghast, every single day… typing into an echo chamber of complicity,” they constantly see the media and politicians around the country centre their coverage on the artists themselves, rather than the issues they are trying to draw attention to.

“Given the total ban by Israel on international journalists reporting from Gaza, and the simultaneous murder of hundreds of journalists in Gaza by Israeli forces, Massive Attack would urge the BBC and other media outlets to redirect their considerable news resource to reporting the truth of what is happening, daily, to the people of Gaza,” it concluded. “And critically, to explaining the corresponding inaction of western governments (such as the UK) to their viewers.”

Bob Vylan have spoken out to defend their Worthy Farm set – saying it is vital to “teach our children to speak up for the change they want”, and reiterating that they are wanting the “dismantling of a violent military machine”, not calling for “the death of Jews or Arabs or any other race or group”.

As for Massive Attack, the band also spoke out in support of Kneecap earlier this year, when there were countless calls for the Irish trio to be dropped from festival line-ups, and member Mo Chara appeared in court over an alleged terror offence relating to comments regarding Palestine.

“Kneecap are not the story,” Massive Attack wrote at the time. “Gaza is the story. Genocide is the story. And the silence, acquiescence and support of those crimes against humanity by the elected British government is the real story.”

As well as publicly defending both Kneecap and Bob Vylan, Massive Attack were also among the famous faces who signed an open letter urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “end UK complicity” around the war in Gaza. Other names included Dua Lipa, Primal Scream and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Around that same time they also joined Pulp, Fontaines D.C., IDLES, Paul Weller and more in signing a letter from Heavenly Recordings, supporting the right to freedom of expression for musicians and artists following the backlash surrounding Kneecap.

In terms of their on-stage efforts, the band played a powerful headline set at London’s LIDO Festival last month and used the set to raise awareness for the people of Gaza by bringing out actor and activist Khalid Abdalla.

Just days later, the members also threatened legal action against an Israeli influencer who accused them of “incitement”. This related to them displaying footage of late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on a video screen during a concert. Sinwar was the Hamas Political Bureau chairman and was killed last year by Israeli troops in Gaza. He was a chief architect of the attack on October 7 2023 that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage.

A spokesperson shared an update on their X account that the influencer deliberately took the footage out of context, writing: “To isolate a single section of reportage from the artistic context within which it sits […] is tantamount to a wilful device to create conditions for misinterpretation, or distortion.”

Following Bob Vylan’s divisive Glastonbury set, the BBC has said it should have pulled live coverage of the group’s Glastonbury 2025 set, and Ofcom has said that it is treating it “as a matter of urgency”.

Glastonbury organisers also issued a statement saying it was “appalled” by their “death to the IDF” comments, adding: “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 anti-Semitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”

The comments towards the IDF made by Bob Vylan at Glasto came shortly after it was reported that the Israeli military had launched an investigation into possible war crimes following mounting evidence that troops intentionally opened fire on Palestinian civilians trying to access aid in Gaza.

The IDF has rejected the accusations and said that no such orders were given, and both Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defence minister, Israel Katz, described the claims as “malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world” (via The Guardian).

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