I’m a passionate Zionist. But a man has his limits, and while I’ll gladly defend checkpoints, settlements and exploding pagers, I draw the line at Netta Barzilai impersonating a chicken
December 10, 2025 11:01
Not all boycotts of Israel are bad. There is one that has my firm support and that is Eurovision. I seldom find myself on the same side as the BDS mob but on this matter, hand me a keffiyeh and a megaphone: ‘From the River to the BBC, keep Noa Kirel off my TV.’
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a passionate Zionist. I love Israel and regularly stand up for it in the mainstream media. But a man has his limits, and while I’ll gladly defend checkpoints, settlements and exploding pagers, I draw the line at Netta Barzilai impersonating a chicken.
My beef isn’t with Israel but with Eurovision and everything that comes with Israel’s involvement in it. Because I hate Eurovision. Despise it. The whole endeavour is trash, and not the kind of trash that can be enjoyed as gaudy, campy fun. I don’t care what anyone says. Eurovision isn’t so-bad-it’s-good, it’s so-bad-it’s-godawful. A civilisation which has gifted humanity some of the finest music ever composed – pop, rock and classical alike – comes together once a year to elevate the naffest songwriting it has to offer.
My objection isn’t any of the common complaints about lurid costumes, limelight-hogging points-announcers, or political voting. It’s the total absence of irony. While Britons have long taken a sideways glance at the contest, in no small part thanks to the tart commentary of the late Terry Wogan, on the Continent and inside the European Broadcasting Union they take it seriously. Camp without irony is cringe.
They take it so seriously that some member countries of the EBU tried to have Israel excluded over its prosecution of Operation Iron Swords, the military response to the October 7 pogroms.
This is the same competition where Finland’s 2024 entry saw a DJ called Windows95man hatching from a giant egg and singing, “Is there something wrong with the way I look?”, to which the obvious reply was: Well, it’s the Eurovision final and you’re performing while naked from the waist down.
There’s nothing wrong with Eurovision taking an interest in international affairs — if only it would take an interest in music — but it does make me wonder if the inverse is true. Are the proceedings of intergovernmental bodies replete with motions and amendments about the state of pop music in signatory states? Could the UK be expelled from the World Trade Organisation over the continued existence of Britain’s Got Talent?
Needless to say, Ireland was one of the countries agitating for the Jewish state to be kicked out of Eurovision 2026. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the IDF’s presence in the West Bank, there is no territory as thoroughly occupied by Israel as the Irish mind.
Yet while most Israel-supporters are celebrating the EBU’s rejection of a ban, I am looking to May with foreboding. Because when you’re a pro-Israel opinion journalist, you are expected to back up the country’s Eurovision entry with the same ardour as you back up its case for keeping Iran nuclear-free. (Sit through a Eurovision final and you begin to understand the appeal of weapons of mass destruction.)
‘You don’t have to watch,’ I hear you say, but that’s the thing: I do. When writing about Israel is how you eke out a living, you don’t have the option of conscientious objection.
Not only will I have to watch, I’ll have to like the song, even if I think the song is the most unintelligible bilge to come out of Jerusalem since Itamar Ben-Gvir last stood at the Knesset podium.
I’ll have to live-tweet the damn thing and post things like, ‘The choreography symbolises the diverse nature of Israeli society. Did you know 25 per cent of Israel’s population is Arab? #SoMuchForApartheid.
I’m the one who has to field DMs from American friends who snort, ‘Lol, is this what the Europoors consider entertainment?’
I’m the one on the receiving end of Facebook messages from Israeli pals saying, ‘Nul points again? I knew they hated us but they really hate you guys.’
I’m the one who gets the WhatsApps pitching an Israeli win as a major diplomatic story, and I have to tell some PR flack at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that, no, ‘Eurovision diplomacy’ isn’t a thing and the outcome of a televised singing competition doesn’t herald a turning point in Israel’s global reputation.
And I’m the one who, after half a dozen requests from editors, and with bills to pay, will wearily agree to write 800 words on how a televised singing competition heralds a turning point in Israel’s global reputation.
I don’t begrudge a rare opportunity to tell a world suppurating with calumnies and condemnations a different story about this little flawed miracle in the desert. I begrudge the fact that none of it matters, that whatever cultural capital victory in this campaign of kitsch and cringe might bring Israel will always be fleeting.
A Europe that clucked along with Netta in 2018 squawked the slander of genocide when Israel came to defend itself in 2023. Millions voted for Nova massacre survivor Yuval Raphael in May but those votes will not translate into empathy come the next massacre and the next Israeli response. No cultural capital can buy off ancient hatreds.
It might be different if Eurovision was providing an international stage to the very best of Israeli contemporary music but many of the entries are now Westernised pop-slop in form and content. Gone are the days of Ofra Haza and Gali Atari and songs that were innately, uncompromisingly Israeli.
The EBU’s refusal to exclude Israel has prompted Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain to shun next year’s contest, but why should mediocre countries have to boycott their annual celebration of cultural mediocrity? It would be better all round, and not just for me, if Israel boycotted Eurovision instead.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.
