The Met Police spent five months ‘investigating’ Bob Vylan frontman Bobby Vylan for repeating his chant of ‘death to the IDF’ (Israel’s genocidal occupation forces) in March. But as with previous investigations, authorities have ended up taking no further action. And Vylan suggested the Met had pointlessly wasted public money, adding:

Maybe now you can stop the harassment and do some real work.

After 5 months of “investigating”, the @metpoliceuk have decided to NFA me for the same thing their mates @ASPolice couldn’t bring a charge about for when it was performed live on the BBC. Great use of resources guys! Maybe now you can stop the harassment and do some real work. https://t.co/BnuJFsbim4

— Bob Vylan (@BobbyVylan) August 26, 2026

Bobby Vylan: not backing down

A longstanding opponent of Israeli crimes, Bobby Vylan has clarified that he doesn’t regret his comments about Israel’s colonial occupation army. But supporters of the apartheid state and its war criminal leaders have cynically and antisemitically tried to equate Israeli occupation forces with the entire Jewish community.

A Met Police spokesperson said, for example, that there had been concerns “particularly among London’s Jewish communities” about the chant. And they said they’d keep working to “ensure the safety and security of Jewish Londoners”. Ensuring people’s safety is supposedly their job, of course, but what that has to do with Vylan’s chant is unclear.

Jewish Voice for Peace has called the treatment of “Jewish people as a monolithic group” a ‘contemporary expression of antisemitism’. So speaking about one group of mainly Jewish people (the IDF) who have participated in genocide is not the same as speaking about all Jewish people. To say otherwise is antisemitic.

Just as there are Jewish people who support the IDF, there are many, many Jewish people who abhor the IDF’s crimes.

How about punishing actual crimes?

If words were crimes, there would not still be a witch hunt against the former West Midlands Police chief for banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in 2025. Because in addition to the justifiable case for banning all Israeli teams during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the chants of that team’s fans are not ones that should grace any stadium.

As we reported previously, many Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are “highly organised” hooligans who proudly chant “death to Arabs”, sing about rape, and glorify genocidal actions. And “death to Arabs” (an entire ethnic group, not just a specific army) is a “popular Israeli slogan” which the IDF has followed through on (and not just in Palestine).

There’s even an annual hate march in Israel where large groups of people chant “death to the Arabs”, “may their villages burn”, and other criminal slogans. And an Israeli song calling for the deaths of anti-genocide celebrities even topped the charts. We just don’t hear much about all this from our pro-Israel politicians or corporate media.

At the very least, though, our police forces should arrest British citizens who have served in the IDF during the genocide. And they should actually follow through on the international arrest warrants for senior Israeli politicians rather than rolling out the red carpet for genocide-inciters.

In short, we fully endorse Bobby Vylan’s request that the police stop harassing people opposing genocide and actually get on with ‘doing some real work’.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

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