LET us be perfectly clear: when Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and now Iceland announced they would boycott Israel’s participation in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, they were not making a principled stand for humanity.
They were handing a propaganda victory to terrorists. Their public broadcasters issued statements heavy with references to Gaza and ‘shared humanity’. Yet none acknowledged the simple chronology that brought us here.
For years, Israel pursued withdrawal and diplomacy while facing relentless hostility from Gaza. From the early 2000s onward, thousands of rockets and mortars were launched at Israeli towns, forcing civilians in the south to live in bomb shelters as part of ordinary life.
Yet in 2005, Israel chose the path of peace: every soldier and nearly 9,000 settlers were removed from Gaza, at huge financial and social cost, in the hope that self-governance would bring stability. Instead, Hamas, a movement whose charter calls openly for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, seized control of the Strip in 2007 and turned it into a fortified base of warfare.
Israel has long sought political solutions. In 2000, Israeli leaders entered the Camp David negotiations with proposals for sweeping territorial compromises and shared arrangements in Jerusalem. In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further, offering the Palestinians roughly 94 per cent of the West Bank, land swaps, and a secure corridor linking Gaza with the West Bank.
The Palestinian leadership did not accept these offers, leaving the proposals unanswered. While Israel repeatedly put forward concrete, map-based peace plans, Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza prioritised conflict, ‘martyrdom’ rhetoric, and the goal stated plainly by Hamas of eliminating the Jewish state.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led forces launched a brutal assault on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. Co-ordinated land, sea and rocket attacks killed around 1,200 people, primarily civilians, and about 250 hostages were taken into Gaza. Many of the atrocities, including killings in homes and at a music festival, were documented as they occurred.
Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, have concluded that the attacks involved deliberate targeting of civilians and amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Analysts from the Henry Jackson Society and others have documented how Hamas embeds its military capabilities within densely populated civilian areas, increasing the risk to non-combatants and complicating efforts to protect them.
None of this excuses excessive force, but it explains context – and context is what the boycotters conspicuously ignore.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme covered the Eurovision debate over Israel’s participation, and commentators have noted the possibility of further broadcaster withdrawals.
British commentator Douglas Murray, reporting from Israel this year, has criticised some Western demonstrations for seeming to reflect emotion rather than detailed knowledge of the conflict, and there are widely shared clips of protesters struggling to answer basic questions about Gaza or the groups involved. Passion without knowledge, critics argue, is not solidarity but performance.
In June, the Co-op severed all sourcing ties with Israel. A Tesco worker who refused to scan Israeli avocados and peppers was quickly suspended by management, only to be hailed as a hero by pro-Palestine protesters who turned up at the store demanding his job back and a full boycott.
A democratic nation facing an existential terrorist threat is penalised at every turn, while the organisation that launched the war is spared anything close to the same level of scrutiny. The moral inversion could not be starker. Democratic Israel is punished; the terrorist group that started the war escapes equivalent scrutiny.
Eurovision’s organisers should act decisively. A ten-year ban on countries that boycott Israel in this manner would send a clear message: selective outrage that rewards terrorism has no place in a contest supposedly dedicated to unity.
Israel has repeatedly offered land, security guarantees and co-existence. It has received rockets, rejection and massacre in return.
Until Hamas and its Palestinian supporters are removed from power and genuine partners emerge, the responsibility for continued conflict lies squarely with those who choose violence over negotiation.
The rest of us should have the courage to say so.
