The Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, affirms that the attempt by Zionist organizations to legally prosecute of the British band Bob Vylan in Belgium, over chants opposing the Israeli occupation army, represents a dangerous escalation in the political and legal war being waged against internationalist voices supporting Palestine, and a failed attempt to shield the Zionist army of genocide from rising global popular anger.
Such attacks do not fall within the framework of “law” or “combating hate speech,” but rather come in the context of an open battle over narrative and consciousness, in which the European judiciary is being used as a tool to suppress rebellious revolutionary art and criminalize every genuine expression that exposes the nature of the Zionist project as a racist colonial system founded on killing, siege, and dispossession.
The deliberate conflation between anti-Semitism and targeting the occupation army is a blatant political and moral falsification that no longer deceives anyone. Its aim is to transform the Zionist killing machine into a “sacred” entity beyond all accountability. The movement emphasized that the Israeli army is neither a religious identity nor a community identity, but a settler-colonial apparatus responsible for ongoing massacres in Gaza and embodying a criminal genocidal regime across all of occupied Palestine.
Targeting an artist over chants uttered on a stage, while maintaining complete silence in the face of open incitement by Zionist ministers and military leaders, exposes the true face of so-called “European values” and confirms that freedom of expression is granted only when it aligns with the discourse of power—and is immediately withdrawn when it becomes a tool of political confrontation with the occupation.
Dragging the name of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network into the accusations lays bare the real objective of this prosecution: to strike at the forces of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, criminalize internationalist struggle, and attempt to break the global front that is forming today in support of Palestine, its resistance, and its historical rights.
Resistance art has always been, and will remain, at the forefront of the confrontation with colonialism. Attempts to subjugate artists through courts, threats, and intimidation will not succeed in halting the global popular tide rejecting aggression and genocide.
We affirm our full solidarity with the artist Bob Vylan and with all free voices that refuse silence and submission. The problem is not the chants, nor the music, nor the art, but the ongoing Zionist occupation and its crimes, and repressing revolutionary voices will not confer legitimacy on a butcher, nor obscure the truth that Palestine will remain a national and international liberation cause until liberation and return.