Coachella Becomes Platform for Hate and Terror Support This Year

What was once a festival for young adults celebrating a shared love of music, has now become a stage for rabid anti-Israel rhetoric, broadcast to tens of thousands of impressionable attendees.

In an era where symbolism is everything, Coachella’s global stage became a billboard for hate when Irish rap group Kneecap performed beneath a massive screen that projected the words: “F— Israel, Free Palestine.”

However, Kneecap’s Coachella performance was not a one-time display–it was merely the freshest installment in their saga of glorifying terror. Following swift and well-earned backlash to their April 18 Coachella set, videos resurfaced from a 2024 concert in London, showing a band member shouting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah”—two terror groups banned in Britain, and in over 20 other countries. While chanting for these groups, the band member draped himself in the Hezbollah flag. 

In the UK, it is a crime to express support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. The Metropolitan Police’s counter-terror officers are now investigating footage from that concert, as well as other videos in which the band members openly support these organizations.

Beyond their performances, Kneecap also uses social media to glamorize terror-linked ideology. In February 2025, the band posted a photo on X of a member reading, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah—a book compiling speeches and interviews of Hezbollah’s longtime leader.   

Despite video evidence, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin claimed it is “not clear” whether the group supports terrorist organizations. Yet what stronger signal could there be than publicly waving a terror group’s flag while chanting its name before an international audience? The band now claims the video was taken out of context, which is a hollow, baseless defense and a transparent attempt to deflect responsibility for their own actions.

It’s no surprise that Israel shut down its embassy in Dublin last December, citing the Irish government’s “extreme anti-Israel policy.” Soon after the embassy closure, the Irish government joined South Africa in its case at the International Court of Justice bizarrely accusing Israel of genocide.

This escalation further exemplifies how the West has drawn hard red lines around many forms of hate. Had Kneecap appeared draped in a Confederate flag or proudly displayed KKK visuals, they would’ve been rightfully disinvited from Coachella and denounced across every major media outlet. But when it comes to Jews and Israel, the relentless double standard prevails. Instead of being held accountable for their public endorsement of Hamas and Hezbollah, the band members are celebrated as political icons, supporting terrorism under the guise of “artistry.”

Music festivals, media outlets, and governments that claim “zero tolerance” for bigotry, especially racism and homophobia, have become dangerously dismissive of antisemitism, especially when it comes packaged as calls for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

Most notably, all of this is happening in the shadow of October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,200 civilians. At the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel alone, more than 340 young people were murdered in the rampage where 44 partygoers were among the over 250 hostages abducted to Gaza that day.

Many on social media drew the connection between Coachella and Nova, two music festivals where young people gathered to dance in celebration of the unity music brings. Kneecap’s Coachella performance, whether willfully ignorant or intentionally provocative, desecrated that catastrophe on a world stage.

Tribe of Nova, the organizers behind the Nova Music Festival, said Kneecap’s set “deeply hurt many in our community.” The organization invited band members to “visit the Nova Exhibition and experience firsthand the stories of those who were murdered, those who survived, and those who are still being held hostage.” 

Coachella, and all artistic institutions must face accountability for the platforms they offer. The festival attracts over 125,000 attendees annually. Pure hatred and ideologically charged support for terrorist actors do not qualify as “political art” or edgy style. Nor can we keep allowing the exhausted excuse to “separate the art from the artist”—not when the “artists” in question are using their exposure to publicly endorse terror.