Thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered in host city Malmö yesterday, to protest against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision song contest.
The action prompted Israel’s national security agency to order Golan to stay in her hotel room, except for performances, in the same week that snipers were deployed on Malmö rooftops to protect her delegation.
National media reported that some of the “over 10,000” protesters attempted to break into the Eurovision Village, but were prevented from doing so by police officers. The day before, Golan was booed while rehearsing her song “Hurricane.”
Greta Thunberg took a break from her usual climate change preoccupations to join the ‘Stop Israel’ crowd calling for singer Eden Golan to be excluded from the competition.
During the broadcast of the Eurovision semi-final, Flemish public service channel VRT broke off to show a message condemning “the State of Israel’s violations of human rights” in Gaza, ie. its response to the October 7th terror attacks. Socialist trade union ACOD-VRT said it was behind the message, describing Israel’s participation in the song contest as “scandalous” because “we are convinced that the State of Israel is carrying out a genocide.”
Thunberg said it was “good” that protests were taking place and praised young people for “leading the way and showing the world how we should react to this.” However, regardless
of such efforts from campaigners, Golan has now secured a place in the Eurovision final, which will take place this Saturday, May 11th.
Indeed, there was already one unwitting indication during the public vote which suggests that Israel could actually win the contest as a whole. One Italian broadcaster mistakenly revealed that 39% of Italian semi-final voters backed Golan—an overwhelming figure, given that the Netherlands came in second place with just seven percent of the vote.
Ukraine won the competition in 2022—mostly thanks to political voting, following Russia’s invasion of the country just months before. An Israeli victory this year would undoubtedly prompt further protests both in Malmö and across Europe, and possibly also ‘break the internet’ by provoking pro-Palestinian online activists into vent their anger on social media. Deliciously, a win for Israel would mean that under Eurovision rules, next year’s contest would have to take place there: all the more reason to vote for Eden Golan on Saturday night!
