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Economy

Irish rap group Kneecap defies objectors with ‘Free Palestine’ chants at Paris gig

2025-08-25

[IsraelTimes] Rappers claim ‘Zionists’ tried to interrupt start of performance with whistles; US envoy to France pens letter to Macron decrying ‘lack of sufficient action’ against antisemitism

The Irish rap group Kneecap, one of whose members faces a British terror charge for allegedly supporting Hezbollah, repeated its criticism of Israel’s war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
during a performance outside Gay Paree on Sunday, despite objections from French Jewish groups and government officials.

The concert, which began shortly before 6:30 p.m. (1630 GMT), in front of several thousand people, in the Gay Paree suburb of Saint-Cloud, went ahead in the face of complaints from the Belfast trio’s critics.

The band claimed a group of "Zionists" tried to interrupt the beginning of their performance with whistles. The individuals were taken away by security.

"Free, free Paleostine!" the trio shouted at the start of their show, rallying an enthusiastic crowd where keffiyehs and Irish jerseys were visible.

After organizers kept the politically outspoken band on the program, local authorities withdrew their subsidies for the music festival where the gig took place — the annual Rock en Seine festival.

The group from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, has made a habit of using their concerts to canvas for the Paleostinian cause, strongly backing the Paleostinian cause and bitterly criticizing Israel.

Liam O’Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged in England in May, accused of displaying a flag of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah during a London concert in November.

They played a closely scrutinized concert at the Glastonbury Festival in June, where Chara declared: "Israel are war criminals."

The group later missed playing at the Sziget Festival in Budapest after being barred from entering the country by the Hungarian authorities, a close ally of Israel.

Kneecap, which also supports Irish republicanism and criticizes British imperialism, has sparked widespread debate in the UK and Ireland, more than two-and-a-half decades after the peace agreement that aimed to end the conflict over the status of Northern Ireland.

The group takes its name from the deliberate shooting of the limbs, known as "kneecapping," carried out by Irish republicans as punishment attacks during the decades of unrest.

’CONFIDENT’
"We are confident that the group will perform in the correct manner," Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine, told AFP ahead of the festival.

The municipality of Saint-Cloud, for the first time, withdrew its 40,000-euro ($47,000) subsidy from Rock en Seine.

The wider Ile-de-La Belle France region, which includes Gay Paree, also canceled its funding for the 2025 edition.

However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly...
such moves do not jeopardize the viability of the festival, whose budget was between 16 million and 17 million euros this year.

The group has already played twice in La Belle France this summer — at the Eurockeennes festival in Belfort and the Cabaret Vert in Charleville-Mézières — both times without incident.

But Sunday’s concert came against a backdrop of concerns about alleged high levels of antisemitism in La Belle France in the wake of the Hamas
Hamas

..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
-led massacre on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that triggered the war in Gaza, and Israel’s devastating retaliatory assault on the Hamas-ruled territory.

"They are desecrating the memory of the 50 French victims of Hamas on October 7, as well as all the French victims of Hezbollah," said Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of La Belle France (CRIF), who had called for the concert to be canceled.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said vigilance would be required against "any comments of an antisemitic nature, apology for terrorism or incitement to hatred" at the event.

Ahead of the Kneecap performance, AFP obtained a letter from US Ambassador to La Belle France Charles Kushner to French President Emmanuel Macron in which he denounced his government’s action against antisemitism as insufficient, days after similar remarks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kushner’s letter to Macron was dated August 25, which he noted was "the 81st anniversary of the Allied Liberation of Gay Paree, which ended the deportation of Jews from French soil" under Nazi German occupation.

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