I keep getting into trouble with friends and family over Eurovision. My hatred of it has turned into anger in the last two years. I can’t believe people are still watching it and clapping like drugged sea lions at this deranged masquerade, which screens off and distracts from unspeakable evil.
Eurovision was always a teeth-grindingly inane parade of the shittiest pop from across Europe. That much has not changed. It is to music what “It’s a Knockout’ was to team sports: unfunny, tedious, and banal beyond description. Even Terry Wogan used to barely contain his contempt for it.
But the inclusion of Israel alongside Australia and other countries geographically remote from Europe (for diplomatic cover) made this nation-branding farce into something more sinister – a public relations exercise to distract from decades-old human rights abuses in occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel.
Never mind that in 2018-19 Israeli troops shot hundreds dead peacefully protesting at the fence of the world’s largest concentration camp, or that settlers kept stealing more and more land and killing Palestinians in the West Bank, or that Israel’s prisons were filled with thousands who dared protest or resist.
A fatuous music festival was a chance to show that the European public can drape themselves with Israeli flags to show how sorry we were for exterminating six million Jews. While Britain couldn’t possibly open our borders to the millions of Jewish refugees desperate to flee Nazi Germany, we could help relocate them after the war to British-mandated Palestine. After all, what’s one more European colony in the scheme of things? And how useful to have our ‘little Ulster’ in the Holy Land.
Israel is now engaged in its European-and-US-funded final solution to the Gaza problem. Does that language sound intemperate? Destroying every shop, school, hospital, and water treatment plant; blocking all aid shooting women, children, journalists, and doctors is all legitimate ‘self defence’ which is why we supply arms and logistical support. It’s why we bomb Yemenis who attack ships bound with arms and supplies for Israel. It’s why we provide so much coverage to the soft power public propaganda of Eurovision and police it so severely on the streets, online, and even in private conversations. Don’t mention the war, and for God’s sake, don’t spoil the music everyone’s enjoying.
Don’t be a spoilsport by protesting at this harmless, non-political bit of mid-May televised fun. The Israeli singer this year just happened to be an October 7th survivor singing about the bright future of tomorrow. So she got the sympathy vote from Britain. Even the Irish, who know a thing or two about being starved off their land, held their nose and took part.
So you can safely forget about the two million traumatised Palestinians who have survived more explosive power than was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and who are being starved to death amidst the rubble of Gaza as you read this. It may all be distastefully livestreamed and filmed for lols by IDF soldiers, amongst others, but don’t you dare disrupt the entertainment in Switzerland. Israel is a good guy (unlike Russia), and talking about the indescribable horror of our time means you support Hamas and are probably anti-Semitic. So shut up.
