The boycott of Eurovision exposes the racism of the Israel-bashers

There’s a question that needs to be asked of those four nations that have flounced out of Eurovision over Israel’s inclusion: why were you content to take part in 2003? That year’s camp shindig took place on 24 May, two months after Britain invaded Iraq. A mere nine weeks after the UK aligned its military might with that of the US and waged an illegal, unjustified war on a sovereign state that would cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents. And yet there you were, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and the Netherlands, all gaily bopping along to Britain’s crap entry – ‘Cry Baby’ by Jemini.

Let’s up the ante. Why were you happy to take part in 2006? British forces were still in Iraq as part of what the UN had condemned as an illegal war. By 2006 the true horror of the Iraq venture was widely known. A hundred thousand had perished. Murderous Islamists had moved into the vacuum left by Britain and America’s toppling of the Ba’athist regime. In 2006, almost 100 people died in extreme violence in Iraq every day. Yet there you were, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands, all singing along to the UK’s creepy entry – ‘Teenage Life’ by Daz Sampson.

This question needs to be put to every person who’s hollering for a boycott of next year’s Eurovision. Not just to the cultural overlords of Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands – who announced yesterday that they’re pulling out – but also to the bedroom-bound Israelophobes cheering them on. And those preening members of the LGBTQ community who say they won’t watch their beloved Eurovision if the nasty Jewish State is there. And those legion twats in keffiyehs yapping about how Israel’s toxic presence will sully Eurovision forever.

Ask every one of them – why does an Israeli war enrage you more than a British war? Why does Israel’s pursuit of the army of anti-Semites that attacked it so barbarously on 7 October 2023 sicken you more than Britain’s destruction of a sovereign state that never laid a finger on us? Why did you happily carry on dancing during a war that laid waste to many more Arab lives than the current war in Gaza has? Let’s cut the crap. We all know what needs to be asked. It’s this: why does your ‘moral conscience’ only ever kick in when it’s Jews who are fighting a war?

That’s the thing about the great boycotting of Eurovision – the boycotters are puffing out their chests and posing as unimpeachable dispensers of human virtue, and yet their rank, rancid hypocrisy is plain for all to see. Every mortal with an internet connection knows these self-exalting states and their simps on social media did not boycott Eurovision when a participant was waging a war which on every single metric was worse than the war in Gaza. We all know it’s not death and destruction these vain frauds hate – it’s one little, uppity state in the Eastern Mediterranean. I wonder why?

The staggering cant and conceit of the Eurovision dodgers is best summed up in the Republic of Ireland. Its national broadcaster, RTÉ, issued one of the most vainglorious communiques I’ve read in years. We will neither compete in nor broadcast next year’s Eurovision, said the darlings of Dublin 4. It’s ‘unconscionable’, they yelped, that Israel will be taking part despite its war that has caused such an ‘appalling loss of lives’. It is egotistical drivel to which there is one simple reply: why did you compete in and broadcast Eurovision when Britain was in Iraq? It’s either because Iraqi lives mean less to you than Palestinian lives, or because the Jewish State sickens you to your moral core more than any other state. It’s hard to decide which is worse. But do tell us, RTÉ: which is it?

What’s really ‘unconscionable’ is the flagrant double standards by which the world’s only Jewish nation is so harshly judged and savagely damned. We can safely ignore the historical illiterates of the bourgeois left who are saying: ‘Russia was barred from Eurovision in 2022, so why is Israel still in it?!’ Russia invaded its neighbour. Israel was invaded by its neighbour – by a 6,000-strong army of Islamists who arrived by air, sea and land to slaughter more Jews in one day than anyone else had since the Nazis. If you can’t tell the difference between those two things then I have some bad news for you: you’re either stupid or anti-Semitic.

No, what the Eurovision boycott really reveals is the deep well of bigotry from which the poison of Israelophobia froths and flows. Time and again, the Jewish nation is judged by a different standard to every other nation on Earth. Its academics are boycotted, whereas America’s are not, despite America’s far more destructive wars. Its artists are raged against and banned, where China’s and Iran’s are not. Its wars are marched against week in, week out, where Sudan’s are not. Its future destruction is openly dreamt of – from the river to the sea – where no other nation’s is. And its Eurovision singers are smeared, screamed at, witch-hunted, whereas Britain’s aren’t, or France’s, or Turkey’s. Indeed, Turkey won Eurovision in 2003, and no one gave a fuck that just two months earlier it had invaded Iraqi Kurdistan.

If you call this anti-Semitic, they will attack you. Okay, what is it, then? How do we explain the unique and disproportionate fury with the Jewish State? Why is it more boycotted, loathed, demonised and damned than any other nation? Why is it the only state whose violent demise is openly campaigned for on the streets of the West? Why do so many seek to ringfence their lives from its wares, its artists, its books, its people? I’m sick of pretending this is ‘politics’. It isn’t – it’s racism. Past efforts to make Europe ‘Judenfrei’ have been replaced by a new crusade to make it ‘Israelfrei’. That’s what the campaign to drive Israel from Eurovision really represents – the latest bigoted effort to cleanse our continent of the disease of the Jewish nation. Plus ça change…

This year’s Israeli entry to Eurovision was Yuval Raphael, a 24-year-old singer who survived Hamas’s fascist slaughter at the Nova music festival by playing dead under a pile of bodies. Yet when she arrived in Switzerland for Eurovision she was confronted by jeering mobs. A man made a throat-slitting gesture. She required 24/7 security. A survivor of Nazi-style barbarism being taunted and threatened? Now that’s unconscionable. And it was a direct product of the top-down racial hatred that has the gall to doll itself up as ‘opposition to Israel’. Shame on every lowlife boycotter of Eurovision.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.