‘I’M NOT GOING BACK’: WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE JEWISH AT GLASTONBURY
“A friend had seen Kneecap play at Coachella [the music festival held in California in April] and told me not to go to Glastonbury,” says Suzi Sendama. “He said he thought it would be more difficult for me than I thought it would be. I didn’t grasp what he meant at the time.”
After spending the weekend at the festival in Somerset, she now understands what her friend meant. A lawyer by day, Sendama, 42, has been going to Glastonbury for over 20 years. This was the first time she felt uncomfortable.
“What I’ve always loved about festivals is the ability to leave your life at the gate and enter a complete world of escapism, where it’s just silly and fun and full of love and everybody supports each other, and you don’t have to think about the horrific outside world,” she says.
“There’s always awful things going on in the outside world to escape from. At the start of Ezra Collective’s performance they said ‘we want everyone to make friends’. Festivals are about those moments of love and unity. The rest of the weekend was not like that.
“I know that I’m part of an ethnic minority but you don’t feel the hate every day. This weekend was pretty tough. It felt like a massive wake-up call as to the number of people who really do want to dismantle the state of Israel and that scares me. On Sunday, I had to take myself out of the event because I was so upset. People say ‘you shouldn’t feel threatened, it’s not anti-Semitic,’ but they would never dare tell a black person what is or isn’t an anti-black racist statement.’”
Sendama is not alone. Other Jewish attendees have been writing about the discomfort they felt over the weekend. In The Jewish Chronicle, Elisa Bray wrote that the “stardust” of Glastonbury “was lost this weekend.”
When Jamie Peston, 44, who works in education, went to the festival for the first time last year, he “fell in love with the chaos and the joy.” But after his experience this year, he wrote in a Facebook post entitled “The Last Sunrise at Glastonbury: How a Festival of Freedom Turned Its Back on Jews Like Me” that he will not be returning.
“Before I went last year I was apprehensive and a lot of people thought I shouldn’t be going, but I had a great time,” he tells The Telegraph.
“There were loads of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs, but that’s not what Glastonbury is about, it’s just what is portrayed [in the media]. I loved and enjoyed it this year, as well, but the context and detail and gravity of the anger, and the much more blatant anti-Semitism, had a huge impact on my experience. I’m not going back.”
Apart from the general atmosphere around the festival, one incident in particular changed his mind. On Saturday afternoon, before a performance by the Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers, “I realised I was in the middle of all the people who were holding Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyahs,” says Peston, who usually wears a kippah but didn’t at Glastonbury.
“I got talking to a woman next to me. She asked if I’d seen Kneecap and I said no, then we had a chat, then suddenly in the middle of the conversation she said ‘Oy vey’ at the end of a sentence. I jolted. I said ‘What did you just say?’ and she said ‘it’s Yiddish’. I said ‘I know, are you Jewish?’ and she said ‘no.’ I remembered in the back of my mind reading about people in these kinds of groups learning Yiddish phrases so they could work out who was Jewish and who was not. I realised then that I didn’t want to be there any more.”
Peston says his experience at Glastonbury was part of a trend of rising anti-Semitism.
“What we’re seeing is a massive shift in what the mainstream thinks is acceptable and OK. It’s making me feel significantly concerned and destabilised. While I champion free speech, I think there is a very clear line, which was crossed a long time ago. Part of the problem is the normalisation of extreme language.”
Police have launched criminal investigations into the Glastonbury performances by Kneecap, an Irish rap group, and Bob Vylan, a punk duo from London. In May, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, a member of Kneecap who performs as Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a gig in London last November. Kneecap have been outspoken critics of Israel’s war in Gaza.
During Bob Vylan’s performance on Saturday, singer Bobby Vylan led thousands of fans in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” and spoke about working for a “f------ Zionist.” The BBC, which screened the performance, issued a statement saying the “anti-Semitic sentiments were utterly unacceptable.”
In a separate statement, Glastonbury organisers said they were “appalled” by the comments, which “very much crossed a line.” Sir Keir Starmer condemned the “appalling hate speech.” The chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, posted on social media that the “airing of vile Jew-hatred at Glastonbury” and the botched response amounted to a “time of national shame.” Bob Vylan have had their US visas rescinded ahead of a planned tour and have reportedly been dropped by their management.
“I’m not scared, and that’s the irony of this whole situation,” says Peston.
“Zionism is simply the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. The existence of Israel means that, if things ever got truly dangerous, I could pack my bags and go somewhere safe – something Jews haven’t always had the luxury of doing, often with disastrous consequences. So when I hear ‘death to the IDF’ it lands as something much deeper. It doesn’t mean I support every action of the Israeli government or military. It means that the very idea of Jewish safety and continuity is being rejected, and that’s profoundly unsettling.”
For at least one Jewish attendee, Glastonbury was an opportunity to openly celebrate his faith.
“I have always worn a massive Star of David necklace,” says Matthew Waxman, 34. “It’s a big part of my identity. For a long time wearing it has been a mixed experience. On the one hand it stops people from making casual anti-Semitic remarks around me, but on the other hand it generates filthy looks from time to time. People who have a problem with it rarely say anything. Glastonbury was in line with that experience.
“The other reason I wear it is because it’s not a pleasant time to be a Jew and I know a lot of people who hide their identity in public. I’ve had many experiences where people come up to me and say seeing someone being proudly visibly Jewish made them feel a bit safer or not alone. Again that was the case at Glastonbury. You can’t let the b------- grind you down. There were pockets of genuine anti-Semitism at Glastonbury like there are everywhere, but I don’t let anyone intimidate me.”
Glastonbury will have a fallow year next year to allow the fields to recover. While war rages in Gaza, organisers of festivals and broadcasters – particularly the BBC – will continue to face the difficult question of where artistic freedom ends. For the Jewish festival-goers put off by their experience this time, that may not be enough.
“I’m sad that this place of unity and love from people from all walks of life felt like it’s not for everybody any more,” says Suzi Sendama. “I’m glad there’s a break next year because it gives more of an opportunity for it to be rectified.”
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