From the Liveblog of
Sunday, August 24, 2025
Kneecap to play Paris concert today; Jewish leader: ‘Desecrating memory of 50 French victims of Oct. 7’
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Irish rap group Kneecap, one of whose members faces a British terror charge for allegedly supporting Hezbollah, are set to perform outside Paris later today, despite objections from French Jewish groups and government officials.
The local authorities have withdrawn their subsidies for the music festival where the trio will play — the annual Rock en Seine festival, held in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud — after organizers kept the controversial band on the program for their slot from 1630 GMT.
The municipality of Saint-Cloud for the first time withdrew its 40,000-euro ($47,000) subsidy from Rock en Seine. The wider Ile-de-France region that includes Paris also cancelled its funding for the 2025 edition.
However, such moves do not jeopardize the viability of the festival, whose budget was between 16 million and 17 million euros this year.
“We are confident that the group will perform in the correct manner,” Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine, tells AFP ahead of the festival.
Liam O’Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged in the UK in May, accused of displaying a flag of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah during a London concert in November.
Kneecap takes its name from the deliberate shooting of the limbs, known as “kneecapping,” carried out by Irish Republicans as punishment attacks during the decades of unrest in Northern Ireland.
Videos have emerged allegedly showing the band shouting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” and calling on people to kill British lawmakers.
The concert comes against a background of concerns about rising antisemitism in France in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian terror group Hamas on Israel, sparking the ongoing war in Gaza.
“They are desecrating the memory of the 50 French victims of Hamas on October 7, as well as all the French victims of Hezbollah,” says Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), calling for the concert to be cancelled.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau says vigilance will be required against “any comments of an antisemitic nature, apology for terrorism or incitement to hatred” at the event.
The Times of Israel Community.