Kneecap perform at Glastonbury music festival in England on 28 June 2025. [Getty]
Pro-Palestine Irish rap group Kneecap will perform outside Paris on Sunday, despite objections from French Jewish groups and government officials.
The annual Rock en Seine festival – held in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud – has resisted pressure to drop the group from local authorities, which have withdrawn their subsidies for the event.
“We are confident that the group will perform in the correct manner,” Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine, told AFP ahead of the festival.
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 jeopardise the viability of the festival, whose budget was between 16 million and 17 million euros this year.
The group has already played twice in France this summer – at the Eurockeennes festival in Belfort and the Cabaret Vert in Charleville-Mezieres – both times without incident.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said vigilance would be required against “any comments of an antisemitic nature, apology for terrorism or incitement to hatred” at the event.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), accused the band of “desecrating the memory of the 50 French victims of Hamas on 7 October” and demanded the festival cancel their performance.
Strongly backing the Palestinian cause and bitterly criticising Israel, the group from Northern Ireland have turned concerts into political events.
Liam O’Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was earlier this year charged with terror offences by British authorities for displaying a Hezbollah flag during a London concert in November.
They played a closely scrutinised concert at the Glastonbury Festival in June, where Chara declared: “Israel are war criminals.”
The group later missed playing at the Sziget Festival in Budapest after being barred from entering the country by the Hungarian authorities, a close ally of Israel.
(AFP and TNA staff)
