IDF cheers British deaths; Bob Vylan says “death to the IDF”

Gathered in honour of terrorism

On 2 March 2017, over 200 people gathered in Tel Aviv’s Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery to mark the 75^th anniversary of Avraham “Yair” Stern’s death — the founder of the Lehi terrorist gang. [1]

This vehemently anti-British Zionist militia better known as the “Stern Gang” after its founder, proudly referred to its members as terrorists, and tried to forge alliances with the German Nazis and Italian Fascists as a means to combatting Britain. [2] [3]

Among the event’s attendees were former Lehi fighters, Israeli politicians, and dignitaries — all assembled to pay tribute to a man once branded a terrorist (and ultimately executed) by the British Empire. Then Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also sent a special letter of support, honouring Stern’s “unyielding belief” in Zionism and affirming his place in Israel’s pantheon of heroes.

The event was complete with wreath-laying and speeches — a very proud celebration of the group that had assassinated British officials, planted bombs, and sought alliances with Britain’s enemies and even the architects of the Holocaust.

A year earlier, Rivlin, alongside the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Meir Lau — who had strong relations with the late former Chief Rabbi of Britain (Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, to be exact), Jonathan Sacks — laid flowers at the memorial of Avraham Stern. [4]

And yet, in a surreal reversal of moral compass and historical memory, it is not Zionist terrorists who are condemned today, but artists. British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan now face investigation for chanting “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury 2025 — even as the descendants of Zionist militias that once waged war on Britain, still celebrate that legacy while raining death on the children of Gaza!

IDF history of bringing death to Britain

The IDF’s precursor militias, the Irgun and Lehi, were Zionist paramilitary organisations in the 1940s that viewed the British Mandate authorities as illegal occupiers to be driven out by any means.

In 1944, Lehi gunmen murdered Lord Walter Moyne, Britain’s minister of state for the Middle East. They even drew up hit-lists to assassinate Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and the founder of the NHS, Prime Minister Clement Attlee, planning to “beat the dog in his own kennel” by sending hit squads to London. [5] [6]

The group bombed the British Embassy in Rome in October 1946 and, two years later, after the creation of the Zionist state, assassinated UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte — whom they saw as a puppet of the British and Arabs, and thus a threat to their vision of a Jewish state. [7]

In 1947, Lehi terrorists mailed 21 letter bombs to members of the British Cabinet; one nearly killed Sir Anthony Eden, who went on to become Prime Minister in 1955. [8]

The Irgun’s most infamous attack was the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem (July 1946), which killed 91 people. This was arguably Britain’s worst single loss of life from terrorism in history. [9]

The hotel housed the British administrative headquarters, and the Irgun, led at the time by future Likud Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, proudly claimed responsibility. In 1946–7, Irgun cells expanded the war to Europe, bombing a British officers’ club in London and planting a massive bomb in Britain’s Colonial Office. The latter was defused before it could slaughter Whitehall officials. [10]

MI5 files show that by 1946, Zionist extremism had become the UK’s top terror threat, as Irgun and Lehi sought to bring their anti-British campaign to the heart of the British homeland. [10]

In Palestine, Irgun militants targeted British troops and police. Famously, in the 1947 Sergeants Affair, Irgun kidnapped and hanged two British sergeants in trees south of Netanya and booby-trapped their bodies with explosives in revenge for the British execution of its members. [11]

Yet these militants were undeterred: as one Irgun fighter defiantly wrote on his prison wall before being hanged by the British,

They will not frighten the Hebrew youth in the Homeland with their hangings. Thousands will follow in our footsteps.” [12]

The Irgun’s emblem was a rifle over a map of Palestine/Transjordan with the motto “rak kach” (Only thus), meaning only force will liberate the land. As future PM Yitzhak Shamir (a Lehi leader) openly admitted, “political violence and terrorism” were “legitimate means” for the Zionist cause. [13]

So when today’s pundits quibble over whether the IDF are terrorists, they ignore the fact that terror was not just a tactic — it was a founding principle, openly proclaimed.

An article proudly titled Terror in the Lehi newspaper He Khazit (The Front) argued the following:

“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat… We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: ‘Ye shall blot them out to the last man.’” [14]

From raining death upon Britain to statehood

The BBC, which had live-streamed the Bob Vylan performance issued abject apologies, calling the chant “utterly unacceptable… anti-Semitic sentiments” that should never have aired. Under pressure from politicians, the footage was scrubbed from BBC platforms, and the US even revoked Bob Vylan’s visas overnight in outrage. [15]

While the British establishment fell over itself to condemn a three-word chant against a foreign army committing genocide, the very songs and chants of the anti-British Zionist fighters have today been institutionalised as patriotic lore.

For example, the Stern Gang’s anthem “Unknown Soldiers”, written by the same Lehi leader Avraham Stern, glorified death and prophesied,

Enemies, spies, and prison houses will never be able to stop us… if we fall… thousands of others will fill our places.” [16]

Militants from Irgun and Lehi sang HaTikvah (the Zionist anthem that later became Israel’s national anthem) even as British nooses awaited them; men charged with killing British servicemen marched to the gallows singing in defiance of their British captors.

Those executed by the British for the same reasons are known in Israel today as the “Olei Hagardom” (those who ascended the gallows), honoured as national heroes and celebrated by the Jerusalem-based Museum of the Underground Prisoners. [17]

Today, Israeli officials openly celebrate the legacy of these militias who hated Britain. In 2006, on the 60^th anniversary of the King David Hotel bombing, a ceremony celebrating the attack was held in Jerusalem, attended by none other than war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu (then a former and future Prime Minister). [8]

The event, organised by the Menachem Begin Center, treated the Irgun bombers as freedom fighters. A commemorative plaque was even unveiled and attendees vehemently blamed British authorities for the high death toll, evoking UK protest at this whitewashing of anti-British terrorism.

The Lehi Museum in Tel Aviv proudly memorialises Stern’s exploits (he was executed by British police in 1942) as part of Israel’s heroic founding story. Streets are named after Irgun and Lehi members (Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir), once leaders of the same gangs. [5]

Netanyahu’s own father was the personal secretary to Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the main ideologue of the Irgun, showing how today’s Israeli establishment is directly descended from yesterday’s anti-British terrorists.

In 1980, the Zionist government introduced the “Lehi Ribbon”, a military honour designed to recognise those who served in the Lehi for six months or more, specifically from 1940, up to the establishment of Israel, during the zenith of its anti-British attacks. [18]

The militant ethos of “death to the occupier” (when the occupier was Britain) is embedded in the Israeli national DNA. Senior Israeli officials join in choruses praising those who bombed British offices and assassinated British officials in the 1940s.

Rewarding genocide and anti-British terror

As of 2024, the UK government has approved over £100m in military exports to Israel, including critical spare parts for F-35 fighter jets.

In fact, British industry produces over 15 per cent of every F-35 jet — warplanes that Israel has been using to devastate Gaza’s densely populated neighbourhoods. Members of Parliament have noted bluntly that “Israeli airstrikes would simply not be possible without British components”, thus positioning Britain as a fully-fledged cog in the machinery of genocide. [19]

Britain is not only rewarding and enabling genocide, in contravention to the Genocide Convention that obligates its prevention and punishment, but is actively complicit in the crimes of an entity that celebrates its death and dances on its own colonial grave.

In the recent Gaza campaign, the IDF brought a 95-year-old former Stern Gang terrorist, Ezra Yachin, to deliver a pep-talk to frontline troops.

In an official IDF video, Yachin exhorted Israeli soldiers to:

…be triumphant and finish them off… erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live.” [20]

The purpose, according to this decrepit war criminal still celebrated and roaming free nearly a century on, was to imbue soldiers with “the fighting spirit of the underground.” [5]

Britain’s response? No outrage. No visa bans for the Israeli figures who sing of its slaughter. Instead, the British Prime Minister and Cabinet doubled down on defending Israel’s “right to self-defence”, even as images of entire Gazan families buried under rubble flooded the world’s screens. The British state’s priority was to ensure no one at home chanted too loudly about genocide.

The outrage of our time should not be a three-word festival chant, but the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the complicity of those who enable it. Bob Vylan’s trial for wishing death upon an entity founded upon death and meting out genocide may titillate tabloids, but the real trial is of Britain’s conscience, and history’s verdict will not be kind.