A still from Spanish band Ska-P’s video for their song ‘Jaque el Rey’. Photo: Screenshot

A coalition of Jewish, Roma and left-wing groups has issued a call for a the cancelation concert by a popular Spanish ska band who are scheduled to play at a music festival in Munich on Friday.

The group want festival organizers to cancel the appearance of Ska-P, a Madrid-based band that plays ska and punk songs with a left-wing orientation. The band is accused of both antisemitism and anti-Gypsyism.

The coalition — comprised of the Left Alliance against Antisemitism Munich (LBGA), the Association of Jewish Students in Bavaria (VJSB), the Association of German Sinti and Roma in Bavaria and the Youth Forum of the German-Israeli Society Munich — pointed to one of the band’s songs as well as as it stage act as problematic.

Ska-P’s track “intifada” — a tribute to the Palestinian struggle against Israel — was cited as unacceptable because of a line which asserts that Israelis have become like Nazis.

“The victims have become executioners, they turn their insides out,” the song proclaims.

The coalition’s letter argued that the song turned the “Jewish victims of the Shoah into perpetrators” and consequently “held responsible for the ‘colonization’ of Palestine.”

“This is completely unacceptable, especially in Munich, 50 years after the Olympic attack,” a spokesman for the LBGA told broadcaster BR24.

Representatives of the Roma group in the alliance separately complained about one band member who reportedly dressed as a gypsy holding a crystal ball during a concert in the city of Augsburg. Given the suffering of the Roma during the Nazi era and the ongoing discrimination against them, “it is also unacceptable that this band should have been offered a stage in Munich,” the coalition stated.

Festival organizers however have refused to cancel Ska-P’s appearance, pointing out that the song “intifada” is not on the band’s setlist.

“In addition, the festival stands for freedom of expression and freedom of art within a democratic framework,” the organizers said in a statement.