A bizarre alliance of Queers for Palestine and extremists who hate the gay community as much as they hate Israel are calling on Olly Alexander to quit Eurovision. There should be no place for hate in a song contest, says Nicole Lampert
Queers for Palestine have called on the UK contestant Olly Alexander to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest. Seven months after 330 young people were brutally murdered while dancing at a music festival, pro-Palestine protesters are appalled that another young Israeli woman dares to show her face and sing.
They also want to stop the rest of us watching the competition because “there can be no party with a state committing apartheid and genocide”. Several pubs have put out press releases saying they will accede to these demands.
Never mind that the show’s first trans victor, Dana International, who also happens to be Israeli, has written to the LGBTQ+ community asking: “Are you aware that if you accidentally end up on the streets of Gaza, you won’t get out of there alive?”
Palestine supporters dismiss this as ‘pinkwashing’ as though mentioning Israel’s admirable gay rights record compared to its neighbours in the Middle East is somehow a bad thing. If you hate Israel, everything that it does is not just bad but worse than any other country on the planet.
Thankfully, Eurovision chiefs have refused to bow to the demands of the Israel-haters, however many toddler tantrums they throw. They are right to treat Israel as what it is: an imperfect but free democracy which is in an existential fight with a state run by terrorists.
Israel is a Western ally which is fighting for its survival just as Ukraine is. Most Western governments recognise this. They also see there is no genocide, only the brutal and devastating impact of war. It is a tragedy for the Palestinian people who have been dragged into this war by Hamas who knew exactly what the response to October 7 would be, could only be. Hamas is willing to sacrifice its own people as martyrs for their greater cause.
We in Europe know what it is like to be victims of Islamic extremists. And we know how they target our freedoms and culture. The Manchester Arena bombing, the Bataclan shootings – these attacks were no different from the Nova Music Festival in which young people with a love of music were brutally murdered, raped and kidnapped.
But while the world mourned along with us in the UK whenever our people were killed by these extremists, there were celebrations on the streets of London on October 8. Celebrations. That’s how much Israelis are dehumanised by those driven to a frothing madness by the idea of a Jewish state.
Earlier this week I interviewed 20-year-old Eden Golan; the Israeli singer at the heart of all the hatred. There have been so many death threats aimed at her that she has been warned not to leave her hotel room unless she absolutely has to. She was putting a brave face on things – talking about the unifying power of music – but the strength of the hatred of the mob is hard to take in.
Those making the threats are an odd mix: some of them would probably march with a sparkling Queers for Palestine banner while many of the others are extremists who hate the gay community as much as they hate Israelis. We see a similar toxic mix of far left and Islamic extremism on the university campuses where there are no calls for peace; but for ‘resistance’ and ‘intifada’. The result can only be more death.
I suspect many of us don’t feel in the mood for any sort of partying. The wars both in Gaza and in Ukraine, the famine in Sudan, the rise of the far right across Europe: the world feels sadder and more dangerous than it has for decades.
But perhaps if we are going to indulge in the cheesy tunes, the ridiculous lyrics and the overblown emoting that is Eurovision then we need to put all the politics aside and enjoy it for what it is. There should be no place for death threats in a song competition.
Nicole Lampert is a freelance journalist