Pro-Israel agitators have reported anti-genocide rap group Kneecap to the police, who are assessing whether footage from a concert last year merits further investigation.
Danny Morris from the Community Security Trust (CST) posted a video which seemed to show a member of Kneecap making a comment he disagreed with. This comes as Kneecap attracts the attention of genocide apologists for highlighting Israel’s war crimes and the USA’s involvement at the recent Coachella festival.
Key aims of the Israel lobbyists at CST reportedly include “opposing anti-Zionist activity” and fighting against boycotts of the apartheid state.
Kneecap: who are Hamas and Hezbollah?
The focus of the Israel lobby and the police now is on a Kneecap member’s apparent reference to Hamas and Hezbollah. So let’s have a quick summary of who these groups are.
Hamas and Hezbollah are Islamist political movements in occupied Palestine and Lebanon respectively. Islamism is “the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life” and, partly because of Western efforts to undermine left-wing and nationalist forces during the Cold War, the school has over time become “the most powerful ideological force” in the Muslim world.
It’s particularly important to note here, however, that there are different types of Islamism. And Hamas and Hezbollah are definitely not from the same school as Al-Qaeda or Daesh (Isis/Isil), groups that “label other Muslims heretics [or] apostates” and have strong links to Saudi Arabia‘s state ideology of Wahhabism (which is not representative of the world’s Muslim community). Instead, Hamas and Hezbollah are defensive nationalist militants first and foremost, primarily seeking to “protect local constituents” with “a specific set of local political demands that are the focus of their activity and the core concern of their supporters”. This doesn’t mean they are progressive champions. Because they’re not. But international law protects their right to self-defence.
When do we class genocide as terrorism?
Because Hamas and Hezbollah have a specific local focus, they don’t tend to attack countries they are not in direct conflict with. The Israeli occupation forces are their primary opponent. And under international law, Israel does not have the right to self-defence in the territories it occupies. Yet unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has been undertaking a genocide which has killed at least one Palestinian child every hour since October 2023, murdering around 17,492 children in the process, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds.
Nonetheless, Israel is a Western ally – an outpost, proxy, and tool for imperialism in the Middle East. So Western governments support, participate in, and cover for its genocidal war crimes. And because Hamas and Hezbollah resist Israeli crimes, Western states call them terrorists. Hamas in particular, however, is currently challenging this designation in UK courts.
Kneecap: their stance
Genocide apologists now believe police should take action due to a member of Kneecap apparently saying “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” last year.
The band’s positions on Israel and Palestine are pretty clear, though. It firmly condemns decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians. It insists that it’s actually Israel that is a “terrorist state“, believing resistance against it is justifiable. And it emphasises that:
Resistance is not terrorism
They also seem to have little interest in particular religious ideologies. Instead, they want to unite the world.
As the band’s manager says:
there’s three young working-class people here who have built a career for themselves, on the basis of the Irish language, music, culture and identity… They have the bravery and conviction, especially where they’ve come from in a post-conflict society, to stand up for what’s right… despite the fact it may harm their careers, and their income
Featured image via the Canary
