British rap duo Bob Vylan was slated to perform in 19 U.S. cities this fall

Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images
Bob Vylan performing on the West Holts Stage, during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset.
The members of the British rap duo Bob Vylan had their visas revoked by the State Department on Monday ahead of a planned U.S. tour after leading chants calling for “death to the IDF” over the weekend at the Glastonbury music festival in the U.K.
“The Department of Justice Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will work with the U.S. State Department to deny entry into the United States of performers who incite violent antisemitic behavior,” a spokesperson for the DOJ told Jewish Insider.
“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote on X.
Bob Vylan was slated to perform in 19 U.S. cities this fall. Organizers of the annual Glastonbury festival — Britain’s biggest summer music festival — said on Sunday they were “appalled” by the chants.
Irish rap group Kneecap, which had their visas revoked in April, also performed at the festival on Saturday despite one of its members having been charged with a terror offense for displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London concert.
The visa revocation comes amid a broader effort by the Trump administration to crack down on the explosion of antisemitism in the U.S, with several recent high-profile cases of student visa cancellations.
The chant was led by Irish rap duo Bob Vylan

Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images
Bob Vylan performing on the West Holts Stage, during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset.
The organizers of the annual Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. said they were “appalled” by chants calling for “death to the IDF” led over the weekend by the rap duo Bob Vylan during the five-day event.
“Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the Festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech, or incitement to violence,” Emily Eavis, the daughter of Glastonbury co-founder Michael Eavis, wrote Sunday on Instagram.
“With almost 4,000 performances at Glastonbury 2025, there will inevitably be artists and speakers appearing on our stages whose views we do not share,” Eavis continued. “However, we are appalled by the statements made from the West Holts stage by Bob Vylan yesterday.”
In a statement to Jewish Insider, Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights who chairs the Justice Department’s task force to combat antisemitism, said that ahead of Bob Vylan’s upcoming U.S. tour, the task force will be reaching out to the Department of State “to determine what measures are available to address the situation and to prevent the promotion of violent antisemitic rhetoric in the United States.”
Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that the response from Glastonbury organizers was “bland.”
“Saying the chants merely ‘crossed a line’ and offering vague ‘reminders’ to artists is not accountability—it’s cowardice,” Berk said in a statement. “When confronted with explicit calls for violence against Jews, anything short of absolute condemnation and corrective action is complicity.”
“What happened on the stages of Glastonbury yesterday was not just disgraceful; it was sickening, dangerous, and chillingly reminiscent of a modern-day Nazi rally… This was a calculated act of hate speech, glorifying violence and dehumanizing Jews through the demonization of Israel,” Berk continued.
U.K. Health Secretary Wes Streeting also called the chants “appalling” but added in a Sky News interview that Israel needs to “get its own house in order.”
Glastonbury is Britain’s biggest summer music festival and draws some 200,000 festivalgoers annually to Worthy Farm in southwest England. Local police said a review of video evidence would be conducted “to determine whether any offenses may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation.”
Irish rap group Kneecap also performed Saturday despite one of its members having been charged with a terror offense for displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London concert. Ahead of the festival, U.K. politicians, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, called for the controversial group to be dropped from the lineup, saying its inclusion was “not appropriate.”
Also on Saturday, the pop-rock band Haim — comprised of three sisters whose father is an Israeli immigrant to Los Angeles — performed a surprise set. The Grammy-nominated sisters leaned heavily on their Jewish identity since their debut album was released a decade ago. But the band’s Instagram, with 1.5 million followers, went silent after the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks, with some Jewish fans denouncing the sisters’ silence.