Kneecap’s Anti-Israel Coachella Show Roils Music Industry, Jewish Groups: Multiple Warnings ‘Totally Ignored’

Organizers were reportedly blindsided by the hip-hop trio's "Fuck Israel" display – but one advocacy group says it sounded the alarm days in advance The post Kneecap’s Anti-Israel Coachella Show Roils Music Industry, Jewish Groups: Multiple Warnings ‘Totally Ignored’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Apr 23, 2025 - 14:53

Kneecap’s Anti-Israel Coachella Show Roils Music Industry, Jewish Groups: Multiple Warnings ‘Totally Ignored’

Coachella organizers were warned in advance by multiple people that the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap would take an aggressive anti-Israel stance when they were booked at the festival but failed to act, according to music industry insiders who spoke to TheWrap after “Fuck Israel” messages and chanting dominated the group’s act last weekend.

“Goldenvoice and AEG are claiming they were blindsided by the band and had no clue,” Ari Ingel, executive director of pro-Israel entertainment nonprofit Creative Community for Peace, told The Wrap on Tuesday. “This is a lie. They knew, and they refused to act.”

The concert organizer Goldenvoice and its owner AEG did not return multiple attempts by TheWrap to respond.

Kneecap kicked up a “Free Palestine” chant during the festival’s second weekend along with shouts of “Fuck Israel” and other antisemitic messaging projected onstage, to raucous chanting by the crowd. Festival organizers have yet to comment on the display, but reportedly said privately that they were “blindsided.”

The naked antisemitism of the moment at a music festival – with echoes of the Nova Music Festival massacre by Hamas still ringing in the air – has divided the music industry and roiled Jewish advocacy groups.

Ingel said he emailed Goldenvoice and AEG executives on April 13 and again April 15, according to an internal communication to his nonprofit’s advisory board obtained by TheWrap. Emails were sent to Goldenvoice CEO and president Paul Tollett, AEG/Goldenvoice COO Melissa Ormond and Goldenvoice owner and COO Jay Marciano, alerting them that the political provocateurs from West Belfast would bring what it called their strident pro-Hezbollah and pro-Hamas messages to the festival stage.

“You had a band here that is an extremist band that supports Hezbollah and Hamas that whipped this crowd of thousands into an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, antisemitic frenzy at a music festival that could have led to who knows what,” Ingel told TheWrap. “Say there was some young kid with a Star of David on his neck. Could that kid have gotten beat up and lynched?”