BURSTJournalist Bari Weiss said Monday that punk rap duo Bob Vylan’s U.S. visa revocation was less about free speech and more of an effort to address a growing cultural movement against Zionism.
“It's a sideshow. Of course, this punk rocker Bob Vylan, who I'd never heard of before, has every right to get up and say, you know, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]...,” Weiss said during a Monday evening appearance on NewsNation’s “Cuomo.”
“That's really though, not what this is about," she added. "This is about calling out clearly a cultural ideological movement that is trying to purge Jews from institutional spaces, from cultural spaces."
Weiss, who is Jewish, railed against the band and the U.K. for not addressing the music group's weekend chants against Israel's military amid the unrest in the Middle East, which were broadcasted across the world.
The Israeli Embassy condemned the chants as “inflammatory and hateful rhetoric.”
Still, Weiss acknowledged that the UK does not have a First Amendment clause and is ultimately governed by “different principles” than the U.S.
“What we are seeing happening is a active ideological movement, not just to demonize Israel, not just to demonize the Israeli military, not just to demonize the war that began on October 7, but to demonize Jews 'from the river to the sea,'" she told host Chris Cuomo, referring to the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas. "Palestine will be free. That's part of it."
“Part of it is about erasing Israel from the map," Weiss continued. "But the larger movement happening here that I don't think people are yet alive enough to and I know that you are, and I know you talk about it so much on this show, is erasing Jews from the moral map."
Despite her statements and criticism from Republican lawmakers, Bob Vylan defended their on-stage comments in a post online.
"We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine," the duo wrote Tuesday on social platform X.
"A machine whose own soldiers were told to use 'unnecessary lethal force' against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza," the group continued, referencing the nearly two-year war in the Gaza Strip. "We, like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story."
They added, "And whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction."