Do you ignore the deaths of Jews or of Palestinians? Close your eyes and pick a side

Damon Albarn at Glastonbury

At the Glastonbury festival last weekend Damon Albarn called to the audience: “Are you pro Palestine? Do you feel that’s an unfair war?”

“Yes,” came the thunderous reply.

Of course it did. Ask those questions at any progressive forum and the answers are preordained. There would be shock if anyone cried, “Actually, I am pro-Israel”. One can imagine punches being thrown.

Kneecap, the Irish rap band, performed alongside slides reading: “More than 20,000 children have been killed by Israel in nine months”, “The British government allows this” and “Free Palestine”.

Throughout the event, Palestinian flags waved in the crowd. And who can blame the spectators? The misery of Palestinian civilians, the contempt of the ultra-reactionaries in power in Jerusalem for human rights: they demand protest.

And yet something was missing.

No one on stage mentioned the young people at the Supernova Succot Gathering on October 7, 2023.

Their festival in southern Israel was a miniature version of Glastonbury. The audience was a part of the same global music culture as Albarn, and shared its inclusive, egalitarian spirit.

Of all Israelis, they were the most likely to be leftists with a well-merited contempt for the right-wing and indeed far-right-wing government in Jerusalem.