The hatred shown at the Glastonbury festival this past weekend is unprecedented.
The notion that calls are made for the death of anyone, let alone the soldiers who have just played a major role in saving Western civilisation from the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, demonstrates a form of intellectual depravity that has not been seen before.
At the root of this issue is the seemingly unending hate fest of Jew hatred, just as it is with the “pro-Palestinian” hate marches. In the latter case, the only reason they are taking place is because they provide an excellent opportunity to attack Israel and, by extension, Jews.
If they were truly pro-Palestine, they would have marched when former Syrian leader Bashar Assad was massacring them in the hundreds of thousands.
They would also be marching in support of the persecuted Sudanese people, who are victims of a real genocide. It is widely accepted that when there are no Jews involved in a dispute, there is no interest. That explains why those marches are antisemitic.
Yet Glastonbury takes this argument a step further. The mindless left-wing and Islamist thugs have shown that they will support any entity that fights against Jews, even if that entity is against all forms of British values.
The Jew hatred at Glastonbury has been 50 years in the making. We simply chose to ignore it - Gary Mond
|Getty Images
Killing Jews matters most, even if the champion of the protesters tortures and murders vast numbers of its own people for failing to adhere to Islamic dress, being gay or holding different political views.
Indeed, I have little doubt that this mob of haters would have supported Hitler, given the chance to do so.
Yet one other aspect of the appalling display of Jew hatred at Glastonbury has not been mentioned by other political commentators.
It is an extreme example of the unfortunate interface between sport and entertainment on the one hand and politics on the other. It has always been problematic, for the past 50 years or more, when politics gets in the way of popular pursuits. We saw it both this year and last year when attempts were made to ban Israel from the Eurovision song contest.
In the 20th century, there were many instances of countries boycotting the Olympic Games because of the participation of other countries or the choice of venue.
For me, and prior to Glastonbury, the most shameful example ever of this tendency was when, on multiple occasions, the England football team took the knee at the beginning of soccer matches in deference to the racist Black Lives Matter movement, a stance also repeated by Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner.
The above tendency is one which I have opposed all my adult life. Can legislation help?
It should not be beyond the wit of politicians who care about antisemitism to introduce laws to prevent political slogans of any kind from being chanted at public events.
Entertainers are being paid to entertain, not indoctrinate audiences with political bias – they should stick to entertainment.
However, hardly any politicians care enough about the issue to want to do anything about it, so I fear that there is little hope.