Eurovision’s message to the Israel haters: the world does not share your bigotry - The Jewish Chronicle

I’ll be 60 at my next birthday. In those near six decades, I doubt I’ve watched Eurovision more than half a dozen times. But like so many people, I was glued to last night’s competition like never before.

Thanks to the Jew haters of Malmö, and their supporters across social media and elsewhere, last night had become far more than a song contest. The hounding of Israel’s 20-year-old singer, Eden Golan, was so extreme that she required an armed multi-car convoy merely to travel from her hotel to the competition venue. Fellow competitors, like Ireland’s Bambie Thug – nominative determinism is alive and well in that name – demanded that Israel be barred. The Thug cried when Israel made the final. The haters had decided to make a song contest a proxy for their hatred of Israel and to go after a young Jew on prime time telly.

Others are better qualified than me to comment on the actual competition. To be honest, I couldn’t care less about the music or the winner. Not my kind of music. But I – and, I’m sure, you, too – was forced by the bigots’ behaviour to care deeply about the context of the competition, and the voting. And what a joy it proved to be.

Because when the haters chose to turn Eurovision into their proxy, they made a fundamental mistake. Like bigots and racists throughout history, they assumed that the rest of the world – or, in this case, Europe – shared their bigotry and their hatred of Jews. Well, they don’t.

Eurovision has a public vote alongside the so-called ‘professional’ national juries. It’s not remotely scientific. But while it’s not a poll, it is an indicator of the popularity of the bigots’ hatred of Israel and their dream that Hamas be handed control of the land from the river to the sea. (FYI to the chanters: since none of you have a clue what your chant means, let me help. It’s the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.) I imagine they assumed that the public vote would reflect the unhinged booing inside the Malmö Arena last night when Eden Golan sang. Israel is the world’s pariah and all that.

Except the opposite happened. Across the European Broadcasting Union as a whole, when all the public votes were tallied, Israel came second (to Croatia). Here in the UK, Israel topped the poll, as in Germany and Spain. Even in Ireland – home of Bambie Thug, and with a public realm now widely viewed by Jews as one of the most antisemitic in Europe – Israel came second. Such was Israel’s support from the public that Eden Golan actually finished fifth in the contest – despite the virtue-signalling juries doing their best to keep her out of the running. (Incidentally, if you want a few minutes of uplifting content, this tearful interview with the Thug after realising she had finished behind Israel is a treat.)

I know, it’s just a song competition. Except it wasn’t just a song contest, after the bigots decided to turn it into their version of Borat’s The Running of the Jew, threatening, tormenting and seeking to destroy a young Israeli singer for no reason other than her being Israeli.

And yes, we can draw heart (and even lessons) from this. Just as the campus protestors make a lot of noise but in fact represent no one but themselves – a tiny fraction of students overall - and just as our streets are taken over by bigots and haters who want the world to think they are the voice of the people, but are actually the voice only of bigots, haters and a few imbeciles who haven’t a clue why they marching or who they are marching alongside, so last night showed that broad mass of the public understand that Israel is fighting to defeat a genocidal terrorist organisation. And not only do they understand that: they support it.

Topics:

Eurovision 2024