Let me start by saying I agree with the principle of the legislation protecting racial groups, religious minorities, people with disability, sexual orientation, and the transgender community against hate crime and hate speech. Bob’s chant, “death death to the IDF”, does not exactly fall into that category, and oddly, the police are investigating the band about protecting an army committing war crimes on a daily basis in another country. This, even to the uninformed, sounds like judicial overreach. However, it has aroused the sanctimonious right-wing press and given them an unjustified excuse to attack our public broadcaster, the BBC. In addition, the shadow home secretary Chris Philp has conflated this incident and the case of Lucy Connolly, who was sentenced to 31 months in prison for inciting racial hatred against asylum seekers. She said, “Mass deportation now,” she wrote, “set fire to all the f—ing hotels full of the b——s for all I care.” He calls this a two-tier justice, a true Muppet. Just to keep in the frame and not to miss an opportunity to jump onto the bandwagon, our Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, condemned the BBC for allowing this to be broadcast and have extracted an apology from the BBC. I suppose the PM is still trying to court the Reform vote, and keep his wife happy, sad. It is absurd that the police are looking into this as a hate crime.
Just to be clear, the IDF, since October 7th, has killed 60,000 people, including 17,000 children, and continues to kill people queuing for food under the guiding hand of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint enterprise between Netanyahu’s Reich, trainee autocrats and praying for Armageddon Christians in Washington. The IDF have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity including orders to shoot Palestinians queuing for food, bombing so-called safe zones that the IDF ordered Gazans to flee, engaged in forced displacement, bombing hospitals and many other war crimes as highlighted by the International Criminal Court, the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. The IDF stands by in the West Bank as settlers intimidate Palestinian families and burn down their houses, and their snipers target and assassinate children. Let us not forget that Netanyahu was caught red-handed funding anti-Hamas criminals in Gaza. None of the right-wing media has outright condemned the genocide in Gaza or the ethnic cleansing going on in the West Bank, but quickly invoked that Israel has the right to defend itself. Death to the IDF is not hate speech as defined by law and is no more effective than “Death to America,” chanted on Iranian television. Much of the right-wing media is no longer a vessel for informing and engaging its audience, so Bob’s chant is an easy headline. The IDF are probably looking at these headlines and laughing, saying, “Sticks and stones will break our bones, and chants will never hurt us”. We are the chosen people with the F-35s, the tanks, the artillery, and we choose to do whatever we want.
Finally, what I would like to say to our right-wing media, catch a goddam grip, and our Prime Minister, to show some balls and recognise a Palestinian State and speak out against the war crimes being committed by the IDF daily.
Finally, finally, the BBC should, as our public service broadcaster, hang its head in shame, capitulating to the right-wing media and probably the Labour government by not broadcasting a programme it commissioned called ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’. The original apology over Bob and this cowardly self-censorship is akin to “Lions led by donkeys”, the BBC journalists being the lions and Tim Davie and the BBC board being the donkeys.
Suneil Sharma
4thJuly 2025
The Gob 
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