The row over

Comments

9 responses to “The row over”

1. 

   Papito

   May 13, 2026 9:05 AM

   Ireland is boycotting Eurovision because Irish people don’t hate Israel as much as Irish politicians and activists do. Irish televoters voted overwhelmingly for Israel’s entry in 2025, and they might do so again in 2026, and that’s very embarrassing for the people in charge.
2. 

   Your Name’s not Bruce?

   May 13, 2026 9:19 AM

   How long before someone in the Rainbow-Glitter Alphabet Soup “community” screams about RTÉ broadcasting something created by Notorious Unperson-to-be-shunned Graham Linehan? Did someone there not get the memo/wanted poster?
3. 

   Lady Mondegreen

   May 13, 2026 12:52 PM

   Not Bruce, I wondered about that too. Maybe Israelis (and Jews in general) are the new Unpersons, and terfs can catch a break.
4. 

   Artymorty

   May 13, 2026 6:37 PM

   I think it’s worth doing a little unpacking of various threads here. When it comes to Israel, often the cultural and the political can become tangled, and that tanglement can render the discussion hard to parse sometimes.

   The political turn against Israel across Europe and the West has been dramatic over the past few years. In terms of the respective governments of Israel and the EU clashing, I don’t think antisemitism is at the root of that. (But I do think that antisemitism is a byproduct of the political shifts around Israel. There’s no question that antisemitism on the left is ascendant, and that’s horrific. More on that in a second.)

   Regarding geopolitics, think it’s more like, Israel’s government once looked like a promising foothold of Western liberal democracy in a global region otherwise dominated by hostile-to-the-West dictators and theocrats, but now it looks as though Israel’s government has soured into far-right alignment and extreme ethno-nationalism. (Plus warmongering. So many wars waged in defiance of the urgent warnings from practically everyone, even including Trump! How many times did the Orange Turd tweet angrily at Netanyahu to stop launching missiles at Beirut and other targets because he was violating their treaties?!)

   This comes at exactly the time Europe and the political-liberal West feels deeply threatened by the rise of the far right and the nationalists.

   Over the past decade, the Netanyahu government actively aligned itself with the global far-right players like Bolsonaro, Mudi, and Orbàn, in Brazil, India, and Hungary, respectively. (Plus Trump, obviously. But it’s actually clashed with Trump’s White House a fair bit!)

   And now, with the disastrous effects of the war in Iran, Europe is fed up. France, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Ukraine… It’s far from just Ireland that’s making very big angry gestures against Israel. (Plus, with Netanyahu’s buddies Bolsonaro and Orbàn recently voted out, there’s a sense of renewed militancy among European defenders of democracy to ensure that that faction of contemporary politics gets buried for good.)

   With all that said, when the political animus between Netanyahu and the EU spills over into the cultural sphere — such as with RTE boycotting Eurovision — it’s awfully hard to see this as strictly about geopolitics. In the cultural sphere, Israel is, in addition to being a political entity, also the centre of Jewish culture. And Eurovision is a cultural product, not overtly a political one. So it’s rather difficult not to see animus against Jewish culture — Jewish people — as being unfairly punished here. One could argue it’s more than unfair, it’s at least plausible that antisemitism is a factor.

   And that confusion between Israel-the-right-wing-entho-nationalist-political-entity (as it’s currently governed) and Jewishness as a plain, matter-of-fact aspect of some people’s cultural, religious, and/or ethnic identities, has led to so much ugly antisemitism among “woke” lefties. It’s so ugly, and it’s such a sign that “wokeness” has broken off from intellectualism in a major way.

   Intellectual progressivism — as opposed to the “woke” performative knee-jerk kind — would never tolerate the kind of antisemitism we see in the UK’s Green Party, Labour, and LibDems. And the move by RTE to boycott Eurovision has too much of a whiff of performative grandstanding rather than the principled, grounded, reasoning.

   As much as I’m a defender of criticism of — and, at times, sanctions against — Israel, in this case, I call shenanigans.
5. 

   Artymorty

   May 13, 2026 6:54 PM

   Oops, I’ve crammed two sentences into one and in so doing, I’ve inadvertently reversed their intended meaning:

   “So it’s rather difficult not to see animus against Jewish culture — Jewish people — as being unfairly punished here”

   I meant something like, “So it’s rather difficult not to see animus against Jewish culture at play — that Jewish people are being unfairly punished here.”

   By mangling those two ideas I made it sound like I hold the opposite view! Ouchie! Sorry!
6. 

   Freemage

   May 13, 2026 7:14 PM

   ArtyMorty, I get where you’re coming from, and it all makes sense, and yet…

   While it’s popular for critics of Israel to compare Netanyahu’s Israel to Hitler’s Germany, I think a much stronger case can be made in comparing it to Apartheid-era South Africa. For one thing, as noted in other discussions, the Israelis aren’t trying to genocide the Palestinians, but rather brutally subjugate them. That aligns very strongly with SA’s apartheid.

   And it’s undeniable that one of the big blows in ending apartheid was the sports boycott, specifically the boycotts on South Africa’s rugby and cricket teams, which struck a deep blow to the pride of the nation, because those two sports were so integral to their culture and national identity.

   Cultural boycotts work, especially if paired with economic ones. The big difference, as you note, is that in the case of Gaza, there are two groups that would normally find one another abhorrent company, who are more than happy to put aside differences to align against a common foe–right-wing anti-Semites who want to destroy and debase the Jewish people, and left-wing activists who genuinely just want the Israeli government to stop bombing hospitals and schools. And yes, as a result, anti-Semites who are otherwise left-wing are taking full advantage of the opportunity to come out swinging, just as some progressives have decided that being a ‘trans ally’ means you get to say “bitch” and “cunt” without being accused of being a misogynist.

   Gaza, I admit, sometimes just makes me throw my hands up in despair. Part of me wants to send in troops, force everyone out, drop the Palestinians in part of Montana, the Israelis in rural Georgia, and then send in the bulldozers digging machines until Jordan is a beachfront nation.
7. 

   Artymorty

   May 13, 2026 7:57 PM

   @Freemage,

   Fair point about cultural boycotts. Point taken. Yet it definitely feels more complicated because of Israel and Jewishness being so enmeshed together, and because of 20th century history. (And 19th and 18th… etc all the way back…)

   It’s a right mess. I’m wary of getting too far into it, though. I’ve got my hands full with trans! Not the best idea to venture too far into the OTHER mega-toxic topic du jour apart from a wee dabble in this here thread… Which is to say, the Middle East is not my area of expertise nor will it ever become so. We all choose our battles and this one is just not for me. I’ve already got my hands full defending feminine gays and butch lesbians!

   I do wish G would pick his battles with more input from his blood pressure specialist, though. There’s only so much one man’s heart can physically take! Entre nous, I worry sometimes…
8. 

   Ophelia Benson

   May 13, 2026 8:36 PM

   This is why I never touch the Israel-Palestine issue. One is enough.
9. 

   Stewart

   May 14, 2026 9:47 AM

   I’m afraid my conscience won’t permit me not to react to the suggestion that Israel has anything like South Africa’s apartheid (I am not a Zionist and my nearly thirty years lived experience of Israel between 1976 and 2005 were not something I ever wished upon myself).

   Israel has Arabs and Muslims in high positions, including an Arab Christian judge (George Karra), who sentenced a former – Jewish, obviously – President of the State (Moshe Katsav) to prison. That kind of thing (of which there is plenty, though not all as dramatic as the example above) leaves comparisons to South Africa in tatters.

   Yes, both sides have their racists and religious fanatics and yes, those on the (Jewish) Israeli side have been clawing away with alarming success at gaining more political and legal power, especially in the last decade or so, but for any comparison with South Africa to hold water there must be actual laws that say “Arabs/Muslims may not” do something or that only Jewish Israelis have certain rights or privileges. Daily life in Israel is simply not like that and anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time there cannot take the apartheid accusation seriously.

   The two societies may not mix much but it’s certainly not illegal, nor are marriages between Muslims and Jews, though the Interior Ministry will only recognise those that took place elsewhere (no such thing as a civil, non-religious, marriage can take place inside the country, so mixed-religion marriages are not possible there). I remember when the suburb of Neve Yaacov on the outskirts of Jerusalem was new (my father lived there for a while) that it was unpopular with some because there were also Arab families living there. My guess, in general, would be that Jewish Israelis have a far greater fear of entering Arab-only areas than the reverse.