Mayor Femke Halsema has said she will not act like “a tinpot dictator” following criticism from JA21 councillor Cas van Berkel for allowing the performance of controversial punk rap group Bob Vylan at Paradiso earlier this month to go ahead.

Bob Vylan came under fire in June for political statements made during a performance at the Glastonbury Festival in Britain.

In Amsterdam, lead singer Bobby Vylan repeated the slogan “death, death to the IDF,” referring to the Israeli Defence Forces, and shouted and “free, free Palestine!”

He also called on the audience to “get out there and meet them [fascists and Zionists] in the streets, get out there and let them know that you do not fucking stand by them, you understand me?” Several Dutch Jewish organisations have made police reports about the comments.

Van Berkel called the comments “a witch hunt of Jews on the streets of Amsterdam”, and said Halsema had failed when she did not intervene, since this was a “subsidised” venue.

While Halsema called Vylan’s comments “in bad taste”, she said she would not bow to censorship. “What you want from me is that I illegally raid a cultural venue and have police drag someone from the stage. That can’t be done, that is not what I do and what I will never do,” she said.

She went on to say that the ban on censorship means no interventions ahead of an event. “I am not going to raid venues like some tinpot dictator,” she said.

While protesters daubed Paradiso in graffiti, and threatened violence, the performance went ahead without problems. A subsequent show at the Tilburg venue 013 was cancelled, with organisers saying the band had gone “too far”. The final performance, in Nijmegen, went ahead without any problems.