As predictably as someone losing their tent on day one, the annual outrage machine has fired into action—this time over the sight of Palestinian flags waving in the dust and dry cider haze of Glastonbury.

Apparently, the mere presence of a flag is now cause for national alarm. And not just from the usual suspects on GB News who believe “woke” is a communist plot. No, even mainstream commentators have taken time out from defending oil companies and quoting Orwell out of context to express horror at artists like Bob Vylan and Kneecap showing solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Because obviously, the real danger to civilisation is not the flattening of Gaza—it’s a teenager in a bucket hat waving a flag.

October 7th Was Horrific—But Not the Beginning

Let’s be clear: the Hamas attack on October 7th, including at a music festival in Israel, was a barbaric and indefensible atrocity. But the idea that this was the starting point of the crisis is a bit like saying the Titanic sank because the deck chairs were poorly arranged.

Ask any historian not on the payroll of a think tank with the word “Freedom” in the name, and they’ll point to 1948, the Nakba, or even further back to the Balfour Declaration, where Britain generously gave away someone else’s land—classic British Empire admin. “Good idea Bartholomew old chap, that’ll do it”.

To pretend everything was fine until October 2023 is to ignore decades of blockades, displacement, military occupation and collective punishment—something the Israeli government has made into a dark art form.

Netanyahu and His Friends from the Far-Right Nuthouse

Since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power (again), he’s hitched his wagon to far-right zealots who seem to believe peace negotiations are best conducted with bulldozers and machine guns. Some of them, charmingly, have openly said they want every Palestinian “gone”—a bold vision for a multicultural democracy, if that were ever the goal.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu himself is dodging bribery and fraud charges like a man trying to avoid eye contact with a busker outside Bank tube station. His attempts to gut the Israeli judiciary suggest he’s less interested in leading a country and more interested in staying out of the clink.

October 7th handed him the perfect excuse to do what he and his coalition had long wanted: wage a military campaign so brutal that even arms dealers started checking their emails nervously to see what the maniacs wanted next.

Festival Flags Are Not Weapons of Mass Destruction

So here we are. Glastonbury. Dusty fields. Bucket hats. Probably a few mild cases of sunstroke in this year’s fabulous summer. And among it all: a few Palestinian flags, some waved by young people in Ramones T-shirts with little knowledge of the region, some by students of politics and history who have spent years studying the situation in detail and think a bit of solidarity might be in order.

Neither group, to my knowledge, attempted to storm the Pyramid Stage, declare a caliphate or force anyone to read Edward Said. Instead, they just held up some flags and listened to music. There are people, a worrying amount of people, who think that constitutes prison, or at least a birching.

Freedom of Expression Isn’t a Terror Threat

Calls to ban Palestinian flags or blacklist artists who express support for Gaza are not the measured responses of serious democracies—they’re the kind of thing Nigel Farage dreams about while wanking on a laminated photo of Enoch Powell wearing photoshopped stockings and suspenders (perhaps not even photoshopped, who knows these days?)

You don’t have to agree with the message. You don’t even have to like it. But wanting people silenced because they make you uncomfortable? That’s not democracy. That’s middle management in a dictatorship. It’s fucking ridiculous if you take more than 10 seconds to think it over.

Keir Starmer, the Human Damp Towel

And then there’s Sir Keir Starmer, the man I naively thought would do better. Some say he is doing better, but doing better than Boris Johnson and Liz Truss is like winning a grass snake rather than an adder at your village fete tombola stall.

“Put it back in Doris, I’ve just seen swivel-eyed former UKIP Councillor Phillip Heath, let him have a go”.

Keir’s contribution to this discourse has been to nod solemnly along with whatever the pro-Israel lobby says while hoping no one notices the smoking ruins of Labour’s moral compass. Meanwhile, even what Tory MPs there are left line up to remove themselves from the wrong side of history.

Keir’s position on Gaza appears to be: “It’s not ideal, but let’s not offend anyone rich or American.”

Backing what many human rights groups are openly calling a genocide, while insisting Labour is still the party of international justice, is a bit like pouring petrol on a house fire while reading out the fire safety policy.

Time to Get a Grip

So, let’s stop pretending that waving a Palestinian flag at a festival is a radical act of sedition. It’s a visible sign of political engagement—sometimes naive, sometimes informed, always peaceful.

If that really terrifies you more than war crimes, you might want to have a word with yourself.