Kneecap returned to the Coachella stage this weekend after claiming that the pro-Palestine message they shared onstage during weekend one of the festival was cut from the official livestream. At the time, the band assured “it’ll be sorted” in time for their next set. During their Friday performance, the Irish rap group challenged censorship by conveying their message through visual graphics, though Coachella did not broadcast any performances from the Sonora tent during weekend two.
At the close of their early evening set, Kneecap broadcast three screens of text, which they reshared on social media with the caption, “Some uncensored messaging to Coachella 🤝🇵🇸.” The first message read “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” followed by “It is being enabled by the U.S. government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes” and a final screen reading, “Fuck Israel. Free Palestine.”
Kneecap’s first weekend performance also included an anti-Margaret Thatcher chant that was also cut from the festival stream and a call for the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. During their second weekend performance, the group highlighted the connection between the causes they’re advocating for. “The Irish are not so longer persecuted under the Brits, but we were never bombed under the fucking skies with nowhere to go,” they said.
Last year, Kneecap told Rolling Stone that “because of where we’re from, everything has to be about politics,” noting their Northern Ireland origins. “We’re a band, for fuck’s sake. We make music. Obviously, we do things that are political. But I worry that just because we’re a band from Belfast that raps in Irish, any kind of political crisis, they’re like, ‘Oh, let’s fucking ask Kneecap what they think,’” Mo Chara said. He made their stance clear: “ It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from. Just because we rap in Irish and might not align with your political views — we can be friends with people that we don’t align with politically.”
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Kneecap weren’t alone in using their platform at Coachella. During Green Day’s headlining set, the band tweaked lyrics in “Jesus of Suburbia” to sing: “Runnin’ away from pain, like the kids from Palestine / Tales from another broken home.” Palestinian flags appeared during sets from Blonde Redhead, who featured the voice of the detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, and Bob Vylan, who said “Palestinians have always mattered” during his set in the Sonora tent.
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“We must continue resisting, here from the belly of the beast. Because this genocide is funded by American money, with technology from Silicon Valley, and thanks to the complicity of all the politicians in this country,” Darkside’s Nicolas Jaar said at the festival. “I also wanna say that today, these days, as some of you may know, just protesting a genocide that is happening means you can get deported, like Mahmoud Khalil. That doesn’t feel right.”
Their advocacy comes as pro-Palestine activists from Hollywood to academia face retaliation from political forces. In March, Hamdan Ballal, one of the Palestinian directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was reportedly attacked by Israeli settlers and detained by the Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has a list of pro-Palestine students and activists to target for deportation.
