Boycotting Eurovision is a small but necessary act

Like thousands of others, I will be participating in the boycott over Israel’s inclusion as its occupation forces in Gaza continue to gleefully take tens of thousands of innocent lives and reduce the territory’s infrastructure to rubble.

Organisers and performers alike will tell you that the contest is about coming together.

This is not the time to “come together for entertainment”, as the UK’s entrant Olly Alexander (below) put it. I have no interest in coming together with apologists for the war crimes taking place in the occupied Palestinian territories; not while an imposed famine tears itself through the north of Gaza; not while mass graves are uncovered in bombed-out hospitals and streets.

READ MORE: Hamas accepts Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal

Instead, it is a time to stand in opposition to the violent and unjust ethnic cleansing of Palestine, carried out by a state that has been welcomed with open arms into the competition where other warmongering nations have been turned away. Alexander, like a handful of other contestants who have spoken out about the Israeli conflict, has been called on repeatedly to use their position of power to pressure the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) into banning Israel from the contest while its sabre rattling in the Middle East continues.

But rather than join the boycott, Alexander has instead centred his own feelings, prioritising his discomfort that protesters have shared, in his words, “extreme” comments in response to his decision to participate during a global boycott; comments such as those rightly pointing out that he has made himself complicit in genocide.

Given the chance, I would point out to Alexander that if he wanted to see what an “extreme” reaction to Israel’s behaviour really looked like, he could look to the brutality and violence brought down upon student and academic protesters on university campuses across the US for standing against Israel’s illegal conflict.

Students have thrown their bodies on to the front lines, and for that they have been beaten, pepper sprayed, smeared by false accusations of antisemitism on the world stage, and suspended. That is solidarity with the Palestinian people, and it has come with a dear cost to those willing to genuinely “come together”.

READ MORE: Inside the Gaza encampment at Edinburgh University

But no, truly, Alexander’s feelings being hurt is what matters right now. Being able to participate in a song contest while making vague concessions to the righteousness of the boycott movement is as good as you can expect.

Speaking on The Late Late Show on RTE One, Ireland’s Bambie Thug went as far as saying that if they weren’t participating in the contest, they would probably be taking part in the boycott. Which to me, is the epitome of the problem. Celebrities who say the right things but go no further, who will advocate for a boycott or a cause – until the moment it inconveniences them personally.

Israel intends to use the Eurovision Song Contest to artwash its horrific crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. While other countries have been disqualified for failing to meet the EBU’s guidelines on “neutrality”, Israel was instead given multiple chances to rewrite the lyrics to its entry after they appeared to reference the October 7 attack by Hamas. Eden Golan’s songs, titled October Rain and Dance Forever, were both rejected by the EBU for being political in nature, before eventually being rewritten into Hurricane, which was approved.

Israel’s public broadcaster refused to change the lyrics until the nation’s president, Isaac Herzog (below), stepped in and demanded they be rewritten to secure entry into the competition.

The broadcaster stated that the president had made clear that “when those who hate us seek to push aside and boycott the state of Israel from every stage, Israel must sound its voice with pride and its head high and raise its flag in every world forum”. Israel’s participation in Eurovision is, unequivocally, a political act.

It feels almost surreal to argue that the position of welcoming a genocide propagandist onto the stage of an international cultural event is, somehow, apolitical in nature. We’re all very aware by now of how advocating for the status quo is seen to be a neutral proposition while critics are branded as agitators.

But obviously, the act of maintaining an unjust system or decision is just as political as the decision to oppose and tear it down, or to set militarised police on students, or pretend that intentionally starving a civilian population of food and water is not a breach of international humanitarian law when it patently, obviously, is.

I won’t centre the feelings of those participating in Eurovision over the needs of the boycott movement – not while it has already been so successful in prompting divestment and change in educational institutions and corporate entities.

McDonald’s has been pressed into buying back all of its Israeli restaurants after franchisees gave thousands of free meals away to the murderous occupation forces. Starbucks profits have taken a significant hit.

And universities have rightly begun to divest from Israel in response to student-led protest movements on campuses that have prompted such violence from police in the US government as to almost surely secure their legacy; wherein peace demonstrators will be brutally suppressed today, only to be lauded and celebrated tomorrow by the same people who cheered at every bloody swing of the baton.

Words mean nothing without the will to take action. And while boycotting Eurovision is a small act indeed, it remains to me a necessary one. I hope, reader, you will join me in doing so – and that you won’t forget those who put their desire to perform above their desire to do right.