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The crowd at Coachella cheered ‘F*** Israel!’ – and no one blinked

This wasn’t radical resistance, it was crowd-pleasing populism.

April 21, 2025 11:56
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Mo Chara from Irish Hip Hop trio Kneecap performs onstage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 11, 2025 in Indio, California. (Photo Getty Images)
3 min read

There’s a strange kind of silence that follows a crowd of thousands shouting “F*** Israel” under desert lights. It’s not the silence of peace after protest. It’s the silence of something deeper, something uglier, simmering beneath the surface of performative activism.

This weekend at Coachella, the Irish rap group Kneecap projected the phrase “F*** Israel, Free Palestine” behind them and led the crowd in chanting it. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t subtext. It was spectacle – a deliberate, inflammatory act on one of the most visible stages in global pop culture.

But this moment wasn’t about courage – it was about clout. This wasn’t radical resistance, it was crowd-pleasing populism. The kind that masquerades as moral clarity while functioning more like a social trend. At Coachella, this chant didn’t emerge from conviction, it came from calculation. A read of the room. A bet that joining in wouldn’t just be safe—it would be rewarded.

And it was. No backlash outside of the Jewish community. No cost. Just applause.

Topics:

Israel