The Anti-Israel Tantrum Threatening To Break Eurovision

Last year, I watched the Eurovision Song Contest live from a weird little bar in Shoreditch. The atmosphere was something akin to what I can only assume football fans and other enjoyers of organised sports routinely experience. Drinks were flowing. The audience was booing and cheering. An over-excited drag queen was making his way across the room, asking people which country they were voting for (I imagine they don’t have drag queens at the footy). I hid from him, having just snuck into the loos to use all 20 of my phone-in votes on Israel and knowing this wouldn’t go down well—the bar had actually muted the entirety of Israel’s performance. 

When it came time to count the jury votes from each country, Israel’s ranking was unremarkable. But as soon as the first public votes came in, it shot straight up to first place—eliciting angry cries from the bar’s other patrons, and a jubilant shout from me. “That’s disgusting,” said the man sitting across the table from me, “I am disgusted.” I laughed, partially out of shock and mostly because it was objectively funny to see a grown man take Eurovision so seriously. He promptly got up and left. 

Since then, the performative politics around Eurovision has only got so much worse. It was bad enough in 2024, when Israel’s entry, Eden Golan, was treated as a pariah for simply representing the Jewish State and was protested against on the streets of Malmö, that year’s host city. In particular, Ireland’s contestant, a nonbinary creature called Bambie Thug, made a big song and dance (and not in a fun way) over Israel’s inclusion, claiming that she cried when she heard Israel had made it into the final and wailing about how an Israel broadcaster supposedly incited violence against her after a commentator noted that Thug liked to “speak negatively about Israel.” Despite all the outrage, Golan won fifth place for Israel—one place ahead of Ireland. 

This year’s contest was marred by yet more protests against Israel, once again trying to silence the nation’s entry, Yuval Raphael. The winner of the 2024 contest, a Swiss singer (also nonbinary) called ‘Nemo,’ joined the chorus of voices demanding that Israel be excluded. This was made all the more disgraceful by the fact that Raphael, at just 24 years old, is a survivor of Hamas’s October 7th pogrom. She was injured in the attack and hid for several hours in a bunker beneath the bodies of those murdered. Raphael bagged a well-deserved second place for Israel. 

Now, things seem to have reached a head. This week, four countries have stomped out of the competition because the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organiser behind Eurovision, refused to hold a vote on kicking Israel out. In response, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia announced that they would be boycotting the contest in Vienna next year. Other nations may yet follow, with Belgium’s broadcaster confirming it would “take a position in the coming days” and Iceland saying it will reach a decision by next week. 

Rumblings of a boycott started earlier this year, with various broadcasters threatening to drop out if Israel was allowed to compete. At one point, in September, over 50 MEPs from 15 different countries went so far as to demand in the European Parliament that the EBU—which is in no way associated with the EU—bar Israel. At the same time, Germany—one of the Big 5 entrants—and Austria, next year’s host, have threatened to pull out if Israel were to be removed from the show. 

Predictably, many in favour of expelling Israel from the competition draw comparisons to Russia, which was banned from Eurovision in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine. But this analogy is crude at best. Russia was punished for launching a war of conquest, while Israel is fighting a war it did not initiate, against a genocidal enemy that openly calls for its destruction. To pretend these are morally interchangeable is reprehensible. It demands that the world’s only Jewish nation meet a standard that no other country is ever expected to satisfy.

Of course, whenever you have entrants competing under a national flag, you can’t really get away from politics. But Eurovision was so sparkly, so friendly, that it almost seemed like it could rise above it all. Indeed, in previous years, it felt like politics played less of a role. As Brendan O’Neill points out in spiked, no nations boycotted the contest in 2003 or 2006 over Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War. Where was the institutional panic about Eurovision’s ‘values’ then? 

The sad reality is that Eurovision is bending under the weight of politics. Its stage is now being used less for glitter and kitsch, and more for moral peacocking of trendy causes. It’s not just the pro-Palestine set that is exploiting Europe’s favourite, campiest contest. From songs about ‘discovering’ one’s nonbinary identity to bearded ‘women,’ the focus of Eurovision is increasingly not whether you can hold a tune, but whether you hold the right politics. 

This is a real shame. In 2023, Eurovision adopted the official motto: “United by music.” And this has always been its chief aim. Founded in 1956, the purpose of the contest was to unite a continent ravaged by war. The idea was, no matter what troubles were unfolding elsewhere in the world, Europe could put aside its differences and instead argue over power ballads, novelty bangers, and crossdressing men wearing tinfoil. It was a soppy, sentimental, and downright unrealistic idea. But it was nice while it lasted. 

Honestly, Eurovision will be better off without Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia, and any other country that decides it cannot tolerate the presence of the Jewish State. And, hopefully, a wider boycott will keep away all those rabidly Israelophobic lunatics who cannot bear to see an Israeli singer on their screens—like that man who was so enraged by Israel’s success that he had to physically remove himself from the bar. Good riddance to the lot of them, and let the rest of us enjoy the camp-fest in peace.