18.12.2025
BBC must join boycott
Already five counties are refusing to participate. But despite continued Israeli crimes, not Britain. Anne McShane calls for a redoubling of efforts to force a change
Eurovision is in crisis. Continued Israeli participation, amidst its continued crimes on the West Bank and above all Gaza, has provoked a huge popular outcry demanding a boycott.
So far five national broadcasters have announced they will boycott because of the European Broadcasting Union’s refusal to kick Israel out. Slovenia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and one of the ‘big five’ funders, Spain, will not appear in Vienna in May 2026. The singer-rapper, Nemo, who won for Switzerland in 2024, handed back their trophy this month in protest against Israel.
These are important symbolic victories for the Palestinian solidarity movement, which has been campaigning for Israel’s exclusion for many years. After all, Eurovision is not just a trashy pop-song contest: it is that and much more. The EBU initiated the contest in 1956 to “unite post-war Europe through music”. It is now not limited to Europe, with participants from parts of Asia, North Africa, and most recently, Australia. Yet it is most definitely a Eurocentric lash-up, with lots of glitz and camp performances. And, with an average audience of more than 170 million, it is the biggest singing competition in the word.
Publicity
Being accepted into the Eurovision circle brings international publicity, primarily for tourism, and global legitimacy. Israel, which entered in 1973, has made the most of every opportunity. It has won the competition four times and hosted it on three occasions, the most recent in Tel Aviv in 2019. The competition motto that year, rather sickeningly, was ‘Dare to dream’. A spectacular affair, it received glowing reviews for glamour, daring and progressive symbolism - with effective use of pink-washing.
KAN, the Israeli national broadcaster, reported 182 million viewers. They were treated to a portrayal of the host country as both biblical and modern, and in possession of a ‘fascinating and tolerant culture’. The real history of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel itself were, of course, kept hidden. The EBU stated that it had taken “all necessary steps to safeguard the non-political character of the event”. And, despite being fully cognisant of the atrocities being carried out against Palestinians and the ongoing apartheid, 41 national broadcasters and their governments enthusiastically played along with the jamboree.
At that very moment, in May 2019, Israel was launching air strikes on Gaza. The ‘great march of return’ protests were in their second year. From March 2018 until December 2019, tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched weekly to the borders of Gaza, demanding an end to the siege and the right to return. The Israeli army opened fire on them in murderous sprees, killing 214, including 46 children, and brutally injuring 36,100, including nearly 8,800 children. One in five of them were hit by live rounds. In the aftermath there was continued suffering, with a substantial number of amputations experienced by young men, and chronic problems with inadequate healthcare in the blockaded strip. Studies revealed, unsurprisingly, a very high level of post-traumatic stress among young Gazan men.1
Israel’s use of deadly force was condemned in June 2018 in a United Nations general assembly resolution, but Benjamin Netanyahu praised his troops for protecting the border, and the violence continued. 2019 also witnessed an increase in settler violence towards Palestinians on the West Bank, with at least 341 attacks, two Palestinians murdered and 115 injured. Palestinian land and property were vandalised. Israeli forces demolished 623 buildings, of which 98 were EU-funded humanitarian aid structures, doubling the destruction of such EU-funded structures compared to the year before. Overall, there was a 35% increase in demolitions and a 95% increase in displacements that year, compared to 2018.
So Israel had actually accelerated its persecution of Palestinians in Eurovision year, while being fawned over by the west. The EBU was intransigent in dealing with even the token protests against Israel - for example, Icelandic entry members raised the Palestinian flag during voting and its broadcaster was punished with a fine of €5,000.
While the EBU insists it is not political when it comes to Israel, this was very much not the case with Belarus and Russia. BTRC, the Belarus broadcaster, was banned for three years in 2021. The EBU claimed it had breached journalistic freedom during the electoral challenge to president Aleksandr Lukashenko, and the songs proposed for entry breached rules because of the “obvious subtext”.
Yet Israel has breached just about every code of journalistic freedom since October 2023, killing 220 media workers. That is, of course, in addition to the many other atrocities it has committed, the killing of the Al Jazeera team with targeted drones. Israel’s last two Eurovision entries - ‘Hurricane’ in 2024 and ‘New day will rise’ in 2025 - were unashamed propaganda for its war on Gaza. Truly, while Lukashenko is no democrat, he does not hold a candle to Netanyahu.
Russia was the next to go. Just a day after its invasion of Ukraine, it was out. Ukrainian broadcaster UA-PBC appealed to the EBU to expel its enemy and was joined by national broadcasters from Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Denmark, with the editor in chief of the Danish broadcaster stating: “We find it incompatible with Eurovision’s values that Russia is participating.” On March 1 2022 the EBU announced that not only was Russia banned from the competition, but also from all its governing bodies.
Ukraine was crowned winner that year - hardly a shock. The English language journal, Kyiv Post, reported Ukrainian political scientist Oleh Saakyan as saying: “Eurovision is not only about music: it is also about meanings and images.” According to him, winning Eurovision has “brought many positive aspects for Ukraine at the political level”.2 It buoyed the country in its struggle against Russia and made clear which side Europe was on.
Next year
As for Israel, it knows the importance of European backing and has fought tenaciously against any possible exclusion. Earlier this year, there was an open letter from over 70 former contestants demanding Israel be expelled. More importantly perhaps, journalists in a number of national broadcasters began to express their doubts.
In the last couple of years the atmosphere around the event has become unmistakably politicised. There was a demonstration of 10,000 outside the auditorium in Malmo in 2024 demanding a boycott. Contestants inside this and the 2025 event raised Palestinian flags in spite of the ban, and a large section of the audience booed and heckled Israeli entries. Both events were massively censored by broadcasters.
At an EBU assembly in July 2025 a number of countries called for Israel to be excluded. When this was refused, Ireland, Spain, Netherlands and Slovenia announced publicly that they would not take part. The EBU promised a vote on the issue at its assembly on December 4-5, but then backed out after Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, stating that circumstances had substantially changed for the better. Instead the assembly was limited to voting on a new set of rules preventing Israel cheating.
To explain: the EBU uses a combination of country jury panels and televoting to select the winner. In 2025 the divergence between the jury vote and the public vote for Israel was unprecedented. Most jury votes were low - between 1 and 7 out of a top score of 12. However, the public support for Israel was huge by comparison: televoting in 13 countries gave Israel the maximum number of votes - something which has never happened before for any country. Israel’s Yuval Raphael went from nowhere to top the public vote and finish second overall. Given the mass movement against Israeli genocide and in support of Palestinian self-determination, it was obvious that something was not right.
Reports were presented to the EBU which showed that an Israeli government agency had paid for advertising and state social media accounts to push for votes for its entries in 2024 and 2025. This included TV and YouTube ads “encouraging viewers to vote for Israel’s song, with content tailored in various languages to appeal to diverse European audiences. The ads emphasised that viewers could vote up to 20 times, aiming to maximise public support.”3 An Israeli company, Morrocanoil, as one of the Eurovision’s main commercial sponsors, successfully manipulated the event itself, with audience boos during Israel’s performance muted in live broadcasts, replaced by artificial cheers.
Not worked
Obviously the EBU had to act. But, rather than removing Israel, it hoped that the new rules it introduced would satisfy its critics. Clearly this has not worked.
In Ireland campaigners are very happy with the results of our efforts. But this is not the time to be sanguine. As I have shown above, Israel is determined to win official support at all cost, and will use whatever form of manipulation and threats it can lay its hands on to silence its critics.
We now need the movement to redouble its efforts demanding the removal of Israel from Eurovision. Without that the BBC must be forced to join the boycott. A British boycott would be a huge moral blow to Israel. And it is within our reach.