Sawt Falasteen - Kneecap defy critics with 'Free Palestine' chant at Paris gig

The concert, which began shortly before 6.30 pm (1630 GMT) in front of several thousand people in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud, went ahead in the face of complaints from the Belfast trio's critics.

"Free, free Palestine!," the trio shouted at the start of their show, rallying an enthusiastic crowd where keffiyehs and Irish jerseys were visible, before insisting they were not against Israel.

The performance was briefly interrupted as several individuals whistled in protest, with security removing demonstrators from the crowd.

After organisers kept the politically outspoken band on the programme, local authorities withdrew their subsidies for the music festival where the gig took place -- the annual Rock en Seine festival.

The group from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, have made a habit of using their concerts to canvas for the Palestinian cause and bitterly criticise Israel.

Liam O'Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged in England in May accused of displaying a flag of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah 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.

Kneecap, who also support Irish republicanism and criticise British imperialism, have sparked widespread debate in the UK and Ireland, more than two-and-a-half decades after the peace agreement that aimed to end the conflict over the status of Northern Ireland.

The group 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.

- 'Confident' -

"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, which 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.

But Sunday's concert came against a background of concerns about alleged high levels of antisemitism in France in the wake of Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, and Israel's devastating retaliatory assault on the Hamas-ruled territory.

"They are desecrating the memory of the 50 French victims of Hamas on October 7, as well as all the French victims of Hezbollah," said Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), who had called for the concert to be cancelled.

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.

U.Shaheen--SF-PST