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Israel at Eurovision? What do you think?

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If you think Israel should be subject to a cultural (!?) embargo with regard to Eurovision participation while their cynical leadership cohort commit war-crimes as part of a populist attempt to hold on to power, you can put your name to a campaign to demand their exclusion at the link here.

If you think that’s not the right thing to do, or that it’s pointless as a gesture, I’d love to hear your rationale.

https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2026-05-Israel-out-Eurovision-petition-EN?akid=s7618935..6hvo8i

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Comments

  2. What Israel is and has been doing, is beyond all rational justification. Ban them from Eurovision, yes, they should be ostracised completely from the world stage until the villainous Netanyahu’s sickening regime has been replaced by civilised humans. At least the Venice Biennale’s jury has done the right thing and resigned en masse.

    • I agree. I see Spain, Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands and Slovenia are boycotting this year’s. Slovenia’s national public broadcasting organisation has announced it will be broadcasting “the film series Voices of Palestine, featuring Palestinian documentaries and feature films” instead.

    • I don’t know if this proposed boycott would have any impact on the Israeli government, and it’s not clear what the supporters want to achieve – two state solution, the abolition of Israel? Just a righteous feeling?

      I am no defender of the Israeli governments actions at all, but there is no mention in this thread of the war being started by an attack on a music festival by Hamas, involving murder, rape and kidnapping. Or of the violence they commit against Palestinians, or using civilian locations as shields for their soldiers.

      If there is solution to any this, it will also involve the leadership in Gaza being replaced by civilised humans. No-one seems to have any idea of how that could be brought about.

      • I think there’s no mention of Hamas on this thread simply because the atrocious attack of October 7th has been roundly condemned, here and elsewhere, in the intervening years. Noone but a psychopath could regard it with anything but abhorrence. The question on this thread is whether Netanyahu and his military should be condemned for their ongoing actions.

        I would say that it’s not so much that condemning Israel gives a righteous feeling, more that the sense of complete impotence at the deaths of so many innocents, especially children, especially at the hands of an ally, is so sickening. And Netanyahu’s ongoing disregard for international law and the value of human life is frightening.

        I think it’s clear that the leadership in Gaza has to be replaced. How that could be achieved and to what extent it could work are certainly not questions anyone here can answer with any surety, but the killing of thousands of children should never be seen as justifiable.

          • You mean no one has said that the killing of thousands of children is justifiable? I’m not saying anyone has. I’m explaining why I support public condemnation of Israel by boycott.

              • Ah, ok. Wasn’t clear, sorry. I think actually a lot of people have. Certainly the UN and also the UK.

                Edit: Just AI-ed it:

                The United Kingdom said it welcomed progress on the Gaza peace plan and the announcement of a Palestinian technocratic committee, while urging implementation of the deal and continued humanitarian relief.

                The United Nations has treated the transition as part of a broader chance to end the war and move toward reconstruction and a political settlement.

                Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey were reported to have backed the idea of a committee of Palestinian experts to manage Gaza, with the committee said to be headed by Ali Shaath.

                The Palestinian Authority has supported a transitional body, but insists Gaza must ultimately be linked to a single Palestinian governing framework rather than a separate system.

                  • Golly, but I’m a ball of confusion.

                    To be honest, I hadn’t expected anyone to talk about regime change in Gaza on a thread questioning whether Israel should be boycotted from the Eurovision. I reckon others didn’t either. Kinda off the topic. (I’m not opposed to widening the discourse though – I get on to wealth tax further down!)

  5. I don’t see banning Israel from Eurovision without a much more widespread cultural and financial embargo alongside it will achieve anything much.
    Apart from adding to the self-fulfilling sense of victimhood that Zionists promote and use as justification for the state of Israel’s actions, that is. A behaviour that antisemites also latch onto as part-justification of their hatred.

    Trying to conflate the very real rise in antisemitic incidents with people demonstrating peacefully against what’s occurring in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon is simply despicable.
    The way Zionists assert themselves as representing all jews is the primary cause of the rise in Antisemitism.

    But as to the song contest; as usual, I won’t be watching or paying attention to it anyway. It used to be crappy but quite amusing. Nowadays it’s just crappy.

    • Here we go again.

      In the week in which we have Jews being stabbed in our streets, the argument that antisemitism is in fact primarily being caused by certain Jews.

      Antisemitism has no excuse and no justification. It is the responsibility of anti semites.

      To give but one example, the Green Party candidate who recently posted “ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s revenge” cannot simply point at “Zionists” to excuse her behaviour. Any more than the vile racists who targeted Muslims after 7/7 should have been allowed to blame for their hatred the Islamic extremists who also asserted themselves as representatives of all Muslims. It is simply not a logic we should ever accept.

      Awful argument to resurface on this of all weeks.

      • Racism of ALL stripes has no excuse and no justification. It is the responsibility of all those who seek to sow division for political or material gain irrespective of their race, or their religious beliefs. As always I stand with the innocent victims irrespective of whichever side in any dispute or conflict they are unlucky enough to find themselves. In this particular instance I am as equally appalled by the deaths of Jews on October 7th as I am by the death and destruction in Gaza and the continued acts of criminality taking place on the West Bank. I am also equally appalled about the unwarranted attacks upon our fellow British citizens whether they be Jewish or Muslim.
        There are no winners in this, no heroes, just victims.

          • @gary – this struck me again, when listening to “Any Answers” the other day. Should “hate marches” be banned was the question. Usual nonsense from certain members of the “Any Questions” panel – marches are “hate marches”, anti-semitic outpourings of pure racism, etc, threatening to Jews etc. Yet the number of callers identifying as Jewish who had joined these marches and spoke of the sense of belonging they had was a wonderful corrective to the division being fomented by our wise leaders. It’s often the way – in this country, we have managed to rub along together pretty well, compared to many other countries. This is obviously a source of great irritation to those who would seek to divide us to further their poiitical ambitions

            • I see the campaign against Polanski has really started to heat up, with accusations often flying in the face of any reasonable logic. I haven’t seen him accused of being homophobic yet, but I’m sure that’s not off the cards.

              • He’s similar to your previous crush Corbyn in that he can plausibly claim he’s not antisemitic himself, but he has endorsed a number of people who are.

                • Who would you prefer to see people vote for on Thursday? Personally, if I were in the UK, I think I’d be in tune with Gary Stevenson (rather than the Telegraph, Daily Mail etc.).

                  • I expect we’ll see just how hard it is for a sitting Government to compete against compelling three-word ideologies like ‘Blame the Immigrants’ and ‘Blame the Billionaires.’ The parties offering easy answers and obvious enemies will share the majority of the vote, and there will be no clear indication of which direction Labour should take over the next three years.

                    • I’d encourage people to vote Labour, because however badly they’ve done, and they have done some exceedingly dumb things, they will still be better than a party that tolerates racism or a party that tolerates antisemitism.

                    • Thanks for the answer.
                      In the video above, Gary Stevenson (who has impressed me in other videos) argues that the best chance for getting the wealth taxes he would like to see is for the Greens to do incredibly well on Thursday, so that Labour will be pressured to follow the same line. Ultimately though, at the next GE he’s in favour of voting Labour, simply because he thinks a split Left will allow the Right to win, and Labour have more chance of winning and stopping the Right than Greens do (he doesn’t rule out the possibility of Greens winning the next GE but he thinks it’s a lot less likely scenario than a Labour win). However, he’s convinced that unless Labour do change their policy in favour of taxing wealth, they have absolutely no chance of winning the next GE.

    • @Mike_h

      No need to mention the ‘anti’ word or the ‘Z’ word or the ‘J’ word at all, this is about a nation having acted in a way that should mean that it is cold-shouldered by the rest of the world – trying to have some fun – until it gets its house in order.

      • Netanyahu will be spinning it into “See. This is the kind of antisemitism we’re up against!” and unfortunately huge numbers of Israelis will believe it, along with sizeable numbers of jews in the rest of the world too.
        Anti-Zionist jews have been and are being whitewashed (and in some cases hounded) out of the discourse on antisemitism.

  8. Putin invaded Ukraine, when Russia was banned from the Eurovision S.C. and most major sports and cultural events I’m not aware of many coming to that nation’s defence and why should the.

    Why hasn’t the same happened to Israel whose leader is responsible for atrocities and genocide many times the magnitude of Putin?

    Whether actually banning a nation from these events has any affect on those leaders I doubt it. On the population of those countries? Of course they are affected both positively and negatively.

    In my opinion cultural and sporting boycots are useless, if participants from both nations were allowed to attend these events they would be taking back the opinions of others. Although this can have a negative effect I think the positive effect would be err, more positive 👍

    If I’ve got my affects/effects muddled up please point them out to me.

  9. The Eurovision is unlikely to impact the awful situation in any way regardless of what happens. Not banning Israel shouldn’t be taken as approving the government of Israel’s actions. It also allows other countries and artists to do what they want to do in terms of objecting, withdrawing and the like.

    It is impossible to divorce politics from an event such as Eurovision. I suspect attempts will be made both to silence opposing views as well as disrupt the event to make a point. I think this is what free speech looks like.

      • Surely the best form of passive aggression would be to have Israel perform, then have nobody applaud, and nobody give them any points.

        To qualify to be in the competition takes no more than being a paid-up member of the European Broadcast Union, hence the appearance of Australia, etc.

      • It’s worth mentioning that Israel “nearly won” primarily due to a huge public vote, almost certainly thanks (at least in part) to a huge cross-Europe advertising campaign paid for by the Israeli government, encouraging all good Jews to vote for Israel, and use all 20 votes allowed per voter. Amazingly this campaign wasn’t against the rules, though the EBU has reduced it to 10 votes per voter this year in an attempt to avoid a recurrence…

  11. I think a cultural and sporting, and, indeed economic, boycott of Israel is justified all the time it is behaving as it is doing in Gaza. There is absolutely no defence for the horrific way the government are prosecuting this war and we and other governments need to be clearer about that not only in our words but in our actions.

    But I remain shocked at the way some people who proudly wear their anti-racism badges with honour seem incapable of showing any kind of empathy with Jews in this country. .They show a complete failure to do as they would to any other ethnic or religious group, and respect their lived experience. When Jewish people say they find chants like ‘ Globalise the Intifada’ or ‘From the river to the sea’ deeply offensive, you would think the response of the marchers and organisers would be to say – ‘fair enough – it’s not meant that way but we hear you and we’ll protest against the war but we’ll avoid using those chants because we really don’t want to offend you.’ But no. Jews are wrong to be offended and if they can’t even go to school or to worship without having security guards in front of their buildings, well, that’s Israel and the Zionist’s’ fault. It’s just horrible, and no wonder this small minority (only around quarter of a million) in this country are feeling ignored, misunderstood and under threat.

  12. I really wish we would just stop having these threads about antisemitism. They always end badly.

    There is demonstrably a great deal of antisemitic content swirling round the internet and public discourse at present.

    Some of it is glaring, but some of it is quite subtle: the endless conspiracy theories, the use of “Zionist”, in the knowledge that some, but not all, of the audience will read that term as interchangeable with “Jew”. We’re witnessing a post war high watermark of this type of speech, and you don’t need to travel very far to find it.

    Inevitably, in these discussions, a good hearted person will post a statement or express an opinion they’ve seen issued elsewhere without challenge. And that statement will be at least bordering on antisemitism. I could give you a long list of examples from prior threads.

    And then someone like me, who has a lot of Jewish friends, will read those statements and wonder how to respond. How do you look those friends in the eye if you read this stuff and say nothing – exactly the same quandary we faced with our Muslim friends 20 years ago.

    So, like an idiot, we’ll call out the offending articles. And then an argument ensues in which people only become more mutually offended and double down even further, because – depressingly – that’s how these things go.

    I’ll put my hands up. I’ve got pretty angry on these threads in the past. When I see something I know to be bordering on antisemitism I sometimes forget intent and go right to thinking of my friends and the impact this stuff is having on them. And that puts me in a quandary, because I know that arguing about it just makes me one more prick on the internet. But I also know that saying nothing at all makes me a pretty shitty friend.

    So, I don’t want to make that same mistake here – although I will say that there’s at least one glaring example above already that I am struggling to ignore. What I will do instead is tell a couple of stories.

    I went for dinner with a mate recently. She’s a North London Jew, I’ve known her 20 years. She’s staunchly apolitical and has no love of Israel. She has two young kids and neighbours who not too long ago woke up with a swastika scrawled on their door. She tells her kids not to go out with Jewish symbols on. Her ageing parents live in Golders Green. Six months ago she started the paperwork to arrange German passports for her family – just in case they need a getaway plan. Germany. Because that’s where her grandparents lived. Have a think about that.

    I have another friend who doesn’t take his family into town on the day demonstrations are on. Why not? Because he lives in Golders Green, and in May 2021 a convoy of cars literally drove past his front door with Palestinian flags and megaphones shouting “Kill the Jews, rape their daughters”. Between that and having viewed the footage of 7 October, what the Palestinian flag says to him is stay well away. Symbols can mean different things to different people. Can you actually blame him?

    I know other Jews who think differently. Some are fervent supporters of Israel. Others the precise opposite. I don’t mean to suggest for a moment that they’re all thinking the same thing, or that the above is anything other than anecdotal data. But I do know that the majority of my acquaintance are varying degrees of scared right now.

    I don’t think the marches should be banned, or that the people who go on them are evil. I have friends who have been on them with nothing but pure intent. Free speech is important, and I’m inclined to believe that marches of this type aren’t particularly effective political tools anyway. But nor do I think it’s enough to say to people like my friends (and these are just two examples, there are countless others) that some Jews happily join the marches so they should get over it, any more than I would expect rounding up 50 women who don’t believe in the patriarchy to convince a woman that the patriarchy doesn’t exist.

    It’s legitimate for different people to read these things in different ways, and the onus is on us to try to take account of those differences in our actions, just as we do with other ethnic groups. To recognise that no statement, no symbol, means just one thing. A while back I heard one of my kids’ mates to castigate something as “gay” and I pulled him up on it. He replied that he didn’t mean it in a homophobic way. But what if it lands that way anyway? What if intent isn’t the whole ball game?

    In an ideal world, there would be no bans, because we’d self police. The bad apple praising Hamas or holding a banner with paragliders would be kicked off the march. We’d listen to a speech made by someone we really agree with and notice that one line that floats a conspiracy theory about Jews. And we’d do that, because for all that what’s happening in Gaza is important there is – regrettably – fuck all that any of us can do about it, whereas there’s plenty we can to keep this stuff out of our own communities. To prevent ethno-religious conflicts from being imported wholesale to our shores. The onus is on us to keep our own houses clean, not to spend all our time arguing that the dirt is someone else’s doing.

    So I guess my ask is this. Please have a think about what this country’s Jews are experiencing this week. A lot of them are pretty scared, a lot of them are worried about where this is all heading. Please recognise that it’s possible for their views and experiences to differ from your own, and that there’s nothing sinister about that fact. That when they tell you they’re intimidated it’s not some sort of plot to silence you. It’s simply that they’re intimidated, just as you and I might be in their shoes.

    Pick another slogan. Use a different word. It’s not that great a cost. You can (and should) criticise Israel until the cows come home, but please at least try to find a way to do it that doesn’t make life harder for a bunch of people who in most cases having nothing to do with Israel and who are just trying to live their lives.

    And none of this is particular to Jewish people. If the boot was on the other foot – and let’s face it, it often is – I’d be saying the same of any other ethnic group in this position. Just a bit of compassion, a willingness to listen and a desire to not make an already bad situation even worse. The same reason you don’t sing the N word out loud at a rap concert, even if you’d have no racist intent in doing so.

    Like I say, I would love it if there were no more threads on this subject. If these discussions just stayed on coating off Israel. But I would love it even more if people would just be a tad more careful when the topic does roll round.

    On the actual subject, I think Vulpes puts it well. There are plentiful grounds to boycott Israeli involvement, for whatever that may achieve. I also agree with him that there was
    “no need to mention the ‘anti’ word or the ‘Z’ word or the ‘J’ word at all”. And I would add that if we are going to start talking about antisemitism right now it might be good to begin with an acknowledgment of quite how dire the situation has now become. To deal with the real antisemitism before we turn our attentions to whatever confected antisemitism may exist. Just as we would and should with any other hatred.

    • Okay, I’ll try and respond, hopefully without being contentious.

      As regards our previous arguments, I’ll just say that I don’t think asking a question or admitting to ignorance of a subject should be taken in bad faith.
      The issue of anti-semitism is undoubtedly a subject that has to be treated with great sensitivity, as I have learnt. However, I think as adults we should be able to freely discuss vitally important issues of the day (from Corbyn to Polanski, Brexit to Gaza) with the recognition that no one here is intentionally racist or anti-semitic. Quite the opposite, I’m sure. I think that’s a given. And clearly any personally directed accusation to the contrary is going to provoke. Sensitivity should work in both directions.
      Sharing different perspectives and having their validity or invalidity explained from different perspectives in a friendly way is what I think this place should be about.
      Personal and anecdotal experience counts for a lot and is useful to read, but must be separated from reactionary emotion.

      As regards the steps from Z to J to A, Twang, I’m afraid I can’t agree. I see Z purely as a political ideology and therefore open to criticism. I don’t equate Z with J although I imagine some or most Jews think I should, as they see Z in terms of religious belief. I’m not interested in any religious belief and I don’t accept taking it as a valid justification of criminality. And crimes in the name of Z are being committed.

      • I genuinely don’t want to get into this with you, not least because the above was not specifically directed at you and was instead a general comment.

        However, in the interests of clarity, I will say the following: the issue in the past hasn’t been that questions have been asked. It’s been that various antisemitic statements have been posted (presumably in ignorance), and that once they’re posted they’re nearly impossible to ignore, for the reasons I’ve explained.

        Your comment about the lack of intent misses at least some of the point of the above post, which is that the absence of intent doesn’t mean that it’s OK, that harm isn’t done, or that these things shouldn’t be called out as and when they happen. In the current environment, a person can repeatedly spread antisemitism without themselves being an antisemite – that’s the core problem.

        I am massively not interested in relitigating the past and I know you don’t like it when I quote the things you’ve said that I objected to, so I will leave it there. I really don’t want to get into specifics as I sense it won’t take us anywhere good and I would like to avoid both of us ending up back on that merry-go-round. I would really prefer that you and I stay off this topic, and I hope you can respect that.

        • “the issue in the past hasn’t been that questions have been asked. It’s been that various antisemitic statements have been posted (presumably in ignorance)”

          I can only recall two examples that you have brought up with me directly in the past. One was indeed a question, the other was accompanied by a caveat along the lines of “please excuse my ignorance” (explained by the fact that living in the south of Italy the topic barely touches my radar).
          However, if you wish to discuss it no further, then yes, I can respect that.

                    • I have witnessed overheard, in my former role in the maintenance of social housing, quite a lot of antisemitic speech from people of middle-eastern origin. I have read a lot of reports, over a very long time, of antisemitic graffitti and vandalism. And I recall with horror at the time, a report some years back, of a Turkish mainstream TV chat show, where the host referred to The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion as if they were established fact.
                      My late mother, brought up as an Irish catholic, espoused a mild form of antisemitic speech, no doubt due to her convent school upbringing in the 1910s-’20s. Official catholic doctrine until relatively recently (1970s?) explicitly blamed “the jews” for the crucifixion of christ.

                      I know antisemitism exists and I know it is currently increasing and becoming more violent. I know many UK jews are very worried and fearful.

                      I find nothing in these letters linked just above that could be construed as antisemitic, however.

                    • I agree, Mike.
                      Obviously, not living in the UK (the Jewish population here in Sardinia is almost non-existent, there are precisely zero synagogues on the island) my personal experience is very different from the writers of those letters. The actions of Israel are, by far, my main concern. Nonetheless, I’m in agreement with them.

                      (Anyone who is pissed off with this discussion should simply not bother to read them. Though, whatever one may think of the opinions they express, I would have thought that anyone seriously concerned with the rise of antisemitism in the UK would be encouraging of discussion rather than trying to stifle it.)

                    • Since it seems impossible to stay off this subject I will simply do as I have done previously and post an example of your own previous contributions on the matter.

                      It may help give people a flavour of the type of discussion that is likely to unfold and whether they indeed wish to continue reading.

                      Shortly after Whoopi Goldberg described the Holocaust as “not being about race” and instead categorised it as “white on white violence” you had the following to say;

                      “Only in the sense that antisemitism can be considered a form of “racism”. But again a very discussable issue (as exemplified by the recent Whoopi Goldberg controversy)”.

                    • What on earth do you hope to achieve with that comment? I don’t even remember it, at all, but I imagine I meant it can be considered discussable in the sense that some people had discussed it; not that I personally think it isn’t racism. But whatever, why bother digging it out? Why bother trying to disparage me with it rather than talking about the issue being discussed? At that point, why even engage at all (especially straight after asking me to respect your wish to stay off the subject)? If you do want to talk about antisemitism in the UK, why not talk about antisemitism in the UK instead of talking about me?
                      Once again, I find your apparent obsession extremely weird.

                    • I asked (pretty politely) that we stay off this topic, and explained why. You’ve insisted that you want to have the discussion anyway.

                      I’m posting as further context to my previous remarks the kind of stuff that comes out when the discussion has been had in the past. I’m not even editorialising, I’m just posting your own words.

                      If you don’t like that then you can always – as you suggest yourself above – simply ignore it.

                      Here’s another previous statement:

                      “The documentary above shows evidence of an influential Jewish conspiracy against Corbyn”.

                    • You can’t seriously expect me to obey your request to stay off a topic. Whether you want to engage is completely up to you (and it’s a bit odd that you can’t control yourself), but whether I engage clearly has nothing to do with you. Rather pompous to think it should, to be honest.

                      The newest quote you’ve dug out was, IIRC, accompanied by the caveat that I wasn’t sure what term to use. Before October 7th I was – as I recall openly admitting – very unsure of what terms caused offense. Now, thanks to abundant discussion since October 7th, I am far more aware. Discussion helps. Accusation doesn’t.
                      I imagine if we were having a discussion about Northern Italian vs Southern Italian racism, you (or someone less certain) might feel a similar lack of confidence and perhaps humbly, apologetically admit as much. And I’d be happy to explain the issue, without accusation.

                      I can indeed always choose to ignore your constant, seemingly obsessive need to disparage me, but as said I find it extremely weird. Not least because your view on some of the topics (the video about Corbyn, the above letters regarding tackling antisemitism in the UK) would interest me, while your views about me personally, someone you’ve never even met, just strike me as, frankly, a bit deranged.

                    • “I imagine if we were having a discussion about Northern Italian vs Southern Italian racism, you (or someone less certain) might feel a similar lack of confidence and perhaps humbly, apologetically admit as much. ”

                      No, I’d stay off the topic altogether.

  13. Couldn’t agree more. I think it was Ian Dunt (or maybe Dorian Lynsky) who said “people using Z invariably mean J and it’s a short step from A”. Just don’t do it.

  14. ‘Pick another slogan. Use a different word. It’s not that great a cost. You can (and should) criticise Israel until the cows come home, but please at least try to find a way to do it that doesn’t make life harder for a bunch of people who in most cases having nothing to do with Israel and who are just trying to live their lives’

    Absolutely this.

  15. Just like to reiterate that these days I don’t watch or have any interest in Eurovision. It’s just another part of the banality of modern pop music, to me.
    Down to brass tacks, I’m not all that bothered if Israel is represented there or not.

    Having got that out of the way, regarding our discussions/debate on the A word, the J word and the Z word, I found this little clip to be interesting. Particularly Hislop’s last sentence.

    • It’s an interesting question – what effect does a cultural boycott have? The Venice Biennale has opened in the last few days with the usual bunfight of launch parties, queues, moaning bout the curation of the exhibition and fevered hot takes on the national pavilions. I used to go, in a former life, and for all the silliness and self-regarding pomposity on show, it was always an experience

      This year, it’s been a total shitshow. The curator died of cancer some months before opening, the national commissioner is a right wing intellectual which has caused a lot of pearl clutching and probably the most contentious factor is the inclusion of Russia and Israel, both countries welcomed back by this commissioner, the wonderfully named Pietrangelo Buttafuoco.

      Now, there have been protests non stop around both those inclusions. With their customary easygoing manner, the Israelis threatened to sue organisers if their artist was excluded from eligibility for the Golden Lion prize. The jury quit en masse when it was made clear to them that they would be personally liable should Israel see this threat through. Russia didn’t give a shit and showed up with crates of prosecco and DJs and proceeded to party their way through the opening week. Incidentally, both Russia and Israel have continues to bomb and kill innocent civilians this week as they both have been doing every week for years.

      There has been immediate action from the EU over Russia’s inclusion, in the form of a removal of a significant chunk of EU funding for the event. There has been condemnation all around and the UK really gave Putin something to think about by not sending the customary minister to Venice, in apparent protest at Russia’s inclusion. There hasn’t been any state condemnation of Israel’s inclusion (AFAIK) but that is to be expected – we are Israel’s staunch ally and we quite properly mustn’t criticise their actions, because that would be anti-semitic.

      But I fully agree Israel and Russia should be excluded. Why? Because events like this – even this event which born during Mussolini’s reign, aimed at artwashing his regime – matter. They are part of a nation’s global profile. They are platforms for soft power, where states advertise and promote themselves. (The UAE pavilion, which I was loosely connected with many years back, took this rather literally in their debut appearance and perhaps misunderstanding the brief, presented maquettes of prospective housing developments for potential investors in their inaugural pavilion).

      Being at Venice today sends a vivid message of affirmative legitimacy- that you are a cultured nation, you support and celebrate creativity, art and global brotherhood. I remember when the UAE was first included and what a big deal that was to them. Like when the UAE hosted the Expo a few years back – these anachronistic arbiters of global standing might have diminished in meaning in the West, but for nations outside the US/UK/EU, are almost seen as a badge of acceptance and parity with the global North.

      So, in excluding nations who commit state sanctioned massacres with apparent impunity and irrespective of international law, can we draw a line between those of us who, we would like to hope, uphold those laws? I know it is different in many ways, but I think of the South Africa cultural boycotts of the 1980s – and I think to some extent, they worked. Or the how the enervating, airless repression of arts and culture behind the Iron Curtain eventually loosened the foundations of the Berlin Wall.

      People everywhere, irrespective of nationality, religion, gender, whatever – all want to express themselves, their ideas, ideologies, groovy creations and wonderful works. It’s the best feeling for an artist to make connections and events such as Eurovision or Venice are global platforms representing the best a nation can offer (NOTIONALLY, in the case of the UK at Eurovision), whether Israeli, Iranian, Italian, German, British, Bangladeshi or Bolivian. But – if governments of those nations are behaving in such a way that the rest of us collectively decide not to allow that nation to our ball game, it is down to the civilians of those countries to do something about it at the ballot box. Or in Russia’s case – well, I don’t know. The repellent Putin is not indestructible – there will be a tipping point (hopefully sooner rather than later) when a critical mass in Russia will feel him to be more liability than asset.

      And so Eurovision. Silly, camp, frou-frou folderol indeed, but also in its fundamental sense, a gathering of civilised nations, coming together in music. Yet with everything going on, how can we laugh and cheer the Russians and Israelis as their contestants prance about on stage making heart shapes with their hands and tearfully bleating platitudes about love and magic when those states are doing what they are doing? I don’t think we can, nor should we. Allowing Russia and Israel to participate cheapens the bonds between us all. We should welcome them back with open arms when they have replaced their leaders with leadership that respects its neighbours, that seeks dialogue instead of doom, that values peace and global stability above destructive, reckless expansionism based on spurious, twisted logic. And so, as boycotts and exclusions such as this amass, the people of Russia and Israel will feel the cold shoulder from the rest of the world and in time, should it concern them, they might begin to consider why this is.

      This post is not intended to inflame or provoke anyone – I hope it can be read in terms of a jumble of thoughts, opinions and reflections on the situation: not an attack or condoning of an attack on any group of people!

      • Brilliantly expressed, and I’m delighted to say that your J-A-Z quotient, at a paltry 1, means that you have addressed the question in the OP with a commendably low digression level.

        I went to the Biennale in 1978, but haven’t been back since. Have I missed much?

        • Thanks – I hope it made some sense. With the exception of Okwui Enwezor’s 2015 curation which was transformative, terrific – seems a lifetime ago now in terms of optimism, plurality and positivity – I wouldn’t say you’ve missed much.

    • @mike_h
      There was an interesting article in The Independent on Friday about this very topic, the use of the Z word.
      https://www.independent.co.uk/world/zionism-meaning-antisemitism-israel-uk-b2972400.html
      I think it’s paywalled so I’ll try reproducing it here (is that allowed, with a paywalled article? I’ve no idea. I’ll give it a try.):

      Zionism, antisemitism and the weaponisation of words and meaning
      As one of thousands of Jews to sign a letter imploring the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, to intervene and stop horrendous settler attacks on Palestinian people, Nicole Lampert says that Israelis have a chance to choose a different path. But there is a deeper history to the word ‘Zionism’ that many are ignoring today

      One Green Party candidate, Tina Ion, thinks “every single Zionist” should be killed. She also describes Zionists as “vermin” and “rats”. She’s not the only person a little obsessed with Zionists. Camden Green candidate Aziz Hakimi claimed “Zionists” were responsible for 9/11, while in Bournemouth, Feda Shahin claims that “Zionists killed 20 million Christians” in the Soviet Union and that they “love genocide”. Last month, a motion was brought before the Green Party Spring conference to declare that “Zionism is racism” – failing only because they were timed out.

      But it is not just the Greens: Your Party’s Zarah Sultana has attacked Jeremy Corbyn for not being anti-Zionist enough, and a week or so ago, a Bristol cafe, which was once on the site of a church, changed its name from the “Zion Community Space” because it was “a barrier” to people coming in. This week in New York – the world’s most Jewish city outside of Israel – protesters shouted “say it loud, say it clear, Zionists are not welcome here”.

      There are movements looking to declare areas, such as parts of Leith in Scotland and university campuses, “Zionist free zones”. Meanwhile, Zack Polanski told ITV’s Robert Peston: “I don’t believe any country has a right to exist. People have a right to exist.” Adding: “Semantics about whether a country has a right to exist” was the root cause of the “mess” of the current Israel-Palestinian conflict.

      Voltaire argued, “if you wish to converse with me, define your terms”, and there are few words which have a meaning as disputed as Zionism.

      For those who identify as pro-Palestinian, Zionism is a political project associated with occupation and settlement expansion and the displacement and marginalisation of Palestinians. But for most Jews in Israel and the diaspora, Zionism remains inseparable from Jewish self-determination and safety after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. From this perspective, rejecting Zionism entirely can feel like denying the legitimacy of Jewish nationhood itself and they see anti-Zionism as a new form of hatred.

      The Oxford dictionary defines Zionism as: “A movement for (originally) the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine and (now) the development and protection of Israel.” But the recent online battle over the word on Wikipedia shows just how political this definition has become.

      Such was the controversy – and the constant silent rows between activist editors who kept changing it – that a moratorium was unusually temporarily imposed, locking the definition. It now reads using its 2024 edit saying: “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”

      Most Jews would not recognise this definition. A “return” to Zion is, for them, a core element of the religious texts Jews have read since the expulsion from Jerusalem in 70AD. The Amidah prayer, recited three times daily, emphasises the yearning to “return” to Zion, while every Passover meal ends with hope, “next year in Jerusalem”.

      Zionism started in the late 1800s as Jews were subject to pogroms and expelled from Eastern Europe with more than 100,000 – including some of my ancestors – coming to the UK. This sparked an interest in the British establishment.

      George Eliot’s 1876 novel Daniel Deronda is seen as a seminal pre-Zionist text in which Jews are portrayed as people with a culture of their own who deserve to live in freedom in their homeland. The book was one inspiration for Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, who set out his own plans to return to the Holy Land after seeing the oppressive antisemitism not only in his homeland of Hungary, but also in enlightened France where he was a witness to the antisemitism after Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of spying for Germany.

      His 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, elaborating on the visions of a Jewish homeland, attracted growing adherents as countries, including Britain, created laws to stop Jews from coming in. This was a left-wing, secular vision.

      The earliest anti-Zionists were in fact Jews, especially in Western Europe, where they were more comfortable and experienced growing emancipation. These anti-Zionists favoured assimilation. Meanwhile, the ultra orthodox have never been Zionists for religious reasons because it is a secular movement. But with Western nations closing their doors to Jews being pogromed across the Russian empire, there was a need for somewhere for them to go. Zionism became the movement to help them.

      The famous 1917 Balfour Declaration, favouring “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, was one of several conflicting promises to at least three interested parties made over the same parcel of land Britain did not yet control as it sought support for its takeover of Ottoman territory. When Britain did take control, it put limits on Jewish immigration even as the Nazi noose tightened across Europe.

      In Mandate Palestine, Zionism was an elastic band of a phrase which included different wings that did not see eye to eye over how to win self-rule. This included the Irgun and Stern Gang, a right-wing paramilitary organisation who used political violence, including the King David bombing of 1946. In these early days, Zionism was championed by the left as an anti-colonialist movement, an expression of self-determination.

      After the horrors of the Holocaust, it was clear that Europe was not safe for Jews. Many believe that after the State of Israel was declared in 1948, the word Zionism should have been put to bed. Like the suffragettes and abolitionists, the political dream of Zionism – a Jewish homeland in ancestral lands – had come true. Israel is now a country of nearly 10 million people – 80 per cent of them Jews.

      If you believe in a two-state solution and that Israel – a flawed democracy in the Middle East – should be allowed to exist, alongside a Palestinian state, then you would be a Zionist in the word’s broadest sense. But, nearly 80 years on, the word has become tarnished; in the eyes of some, “Zionists” have become a bogeyman; A people who uniquely love war, killing babies, settler colonialism and apartheid.

      Anti-Zionism is not a criticism of Israel. Many Jews – including in Israel – are profoundly unhappy with the war in Gaza – which has left 71,000 dead and whole towns and cities destroyed; the way it was fought and the extremist policies of the fascists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

      There is fury across the Jewish world at the way the extremists in the settler movement have been given free rein by security minister Itamar Ben Gvir. They have harassed and attacked Palestinian villages and burned their crops. They have an expansionist agenda and have made no secret of their desire to control all of the land in the West Bank by making life increasingly difficult for Palestinians. Horrific scenes aired on ITV this week showed school children being shot at, with one distraught teacher recalling how one teenager was shot in the head, dying in front of the school gates. We saw reports of young children waking up to barbed wire fences to stop them from getting to their primary school.

      I was one of thousands of Jews from around the world to sign a letter from the London Initiative asking the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, to intervene to stop these horrendous attacks. With an election this year, Israelis have a chance to choose a different path. The extremists pollute the early dreams of Zionism but they are not Zionism and Zionism is not them.

      But diaspora Jews have no power over the Israeli government; the priorities are not seen as the same; we are seen as spoiled and not, like them, fighting an existential war on several fronts. It’s certainly true that while my son is getting drunk at university, batting off the odd anti-Zionist jibe, the sons of my friends are starting their duty in the IDF.

      The roots of anti-Zionism, meanwhile, almost from the start, came from two directions. First, physically, with the Arab neighbours who have not been shy about their ambition to wipe Israel out. And, the second was from the USSR after it became clear that Israel – despite its socialist-style kibbutz movement and left-wing leadership – was not going to become a Soviet satellite, communism had a new enemy. Working on the bedrock of thousands of years of antisemitism became critical in a new movement called anti-Zionism.

      The 1953 “Doctor’s plot” was an early warning. It was a show trial of prominent Moscow doctors, almost all of them Jewish, in which they were falsely blamed for the deaths of communist officials at the behest of “Zionist agents”. In November 1975, buoyed by the support of the Arab world and its satellites, the Soviet sponsored Resolution 3379 was passed at the UN, determining that Zionism is “a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

      A few years later, the Soviets created a propaganda unit: The Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public. Peopled by “Zionologists”, it provided brochures, books, and newspaper articles on the evil of Israel and Zionism, often based on Nazi propaganda and older forgeries including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Africa, they described Zionists as colonialists or apartheid lovers. Zionism was blamed for the Vietnam war to get into the peace movement. For antifascists, Zionists were styled as the new Nazis and in 1969 Zionists were accused of genocide in the Middle East.

      Anti-Zionism was used as a potent weapon to attack America and Western values in the Cold War battle over hearts and minds. How could the West be the good guys they claimed when they were so entrenched with protecting Zionism? Izabella Tabarovsky, an academic who grew up in the Soviet Union before moving to America and then Israel, says: “What drove this campaign was the Soviets’ apparent belief that a vast Zionist conspiracy did, in fact, exist, and that this campaign aimed at undermining the Soviet Union and socialism itself.”

      The Zionologists’ claims were disseminated across the West in left-leaning publications. In 1970, for example, in the UK printed Soviet Weekly article defined Zionism as “imperialist machinery for the carrying out of neocolonialist policies and ideological subversion”.

      These ideas were pushed through the UN and via social justice movements. Meanwhile, a 2001 UN anti racism conference in Durban led to mass walkouts from Western nations because there was so much anti-Zionist Jew hatred.

      The communist USSR may have disintegrated some decades ago, but like seeds planted in fertile land, the poisonous ideas it sowed have taken root and sprouted. Of course, there is more to this than historical hatred. Palestinian nationalism, repeated wars in Gaza and the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians, as well as the lived realities of extremist settler violence, are also key. But put together, it is a potent mix. While most people who describe themselves as anti-Zionist are not expressing hatred towards Jews, but opposition to Israeli policy and Palestinian dispossession, increasingly, today, the term “Zionist” is being used in ways that spill into conspiracy theories and dehumanising rhetoric.

      From the far right, who rail against the power of “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government) and blame Zionists for immigration, to the far left, who spread conspiracy theories about Jewish power, the word Zionism has taken on its own meaning and, in many cases, replaced the word Jew in traditional antisemitic slurs such as controlling governments and a bloodthirsty desire to kill babies.

      The way Zionism has come to take an almost obsessive position within politics has led to antisemitism scholars, such as the UK’s Professor David Hirsh and American Adam Louis-Klein who created the Movement Against Antizionism, to argue that the non-hyphenated “antizionism” should be used, as they say it has nothing to do with the true meaning of Zionism. Louis-Klein believes it should now be regarded as a form of Jew hatred which is parallel but not quite the same as antisemitism.

      To be clear, criticising Israel, Netanyahu, the settlers, is not antisemitism or even anti-Zionism; however, demanding that this state and only this state should be destroyed, and that Zionists deserve to be killed, is. The ironic thing is that the more people attack Zionists as evil bogeymen, the more anti-Zionism becomes interchangeable with antisemitism, the more Jews feel they need Israel to exist.

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