Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, after Israel was allowed to compete.
They were among a number of countries who had called for Israel to be excluded over the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza, and accusations of unfair voting practices.
Despite calls for a vote on Israel’s participation, members instead approved a new set of rules intended to protect the integrity of the contest.
Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE said it felt that its “participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk.”
In a statement, Dutch broadcaster Avrotros said that “participation under the current circumstances is incompatible with the public values that are essential to us”.
Spanish broadcaster RTVE added: “The board of directors of RTVE agreed last September that Spain would withdraw from Eurovision if Israel was part of it.”
“This withdrawal also means that RTVE will not broadcast the Eurovision 2026 final… nor the preliminary semi-finals.”
Continue reading here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde6d8wyp79o
If only Israelis had the capacity to feel shame
hard to feel shame when you are always told you belong to god’s chosen people
This is antisemitism. Don’t do it, don’t upvote it, don’t spread it. Israeli ethnonationalism is not reducible to the Jewish religion. There is nothing in Judaism that deterministically leads to apartheid and genocide. Many Jews see the “chosen people” story as an intergenerational responsibility to unfuck the world (Tikkun Olam). Many Jews are antizionists precisely because of their Judaism.
But it’s also the central conceit of Zionism. Things can be more than one thing at the same time.
There is nothing unique about Zionism in how it weaponizes religion. Same as “Christian nationalism” in the US, like Hindutva in India, like all kinds of Islamism, like Francoism or like any other clerical fascism. We should be better than to accept the weaponized forms of religions. Unless you consider something as silly as “Mohammed was a pedophile” as a useful counter to Daesh, which is terminally unserious.
Can’t we just hate all religion equally?
Zionism is NOT Judaism… Zionists are NOT followers of Judaism… they are no different to literal Nazis and you cannot be antisemetic towards Zionists.
It’s also worth noting the semetic people are NOT just jewish, they are ALL people from the region across multiple religions, including Palestinians.
WTF are you talking about. It is of course possible to be antisemitic towards Zionists.
And the «semitic» argument is bullshit, it is basically rehashing 19th century white supremacist pseudoscientific racism. The term is currently basically only used to describe language families similar to the term «indo-european».
The word antisemitism has a precise meaning: the «discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).»
The problem with this statement is both outlooks are true. Some jews see the chosen people story as an intergenerational responsibility to unfuck the world. While others see it as inheriting the world and all that is on it.
even though the theology of it is a lot more like “that is your god, and you belong to his people. it’s a lot of responsibility, he throws tantrums a lot”
I understand that about half do. Unfortunately, like the US, they aren’t the half that count
82% of them are happy to expel all Gaza’s Palestinian residents, that doesn’t sound like people who experience shame for their governmeng killing ~40k civilian women and children over the last few years.
A further 56% favour expelling all Israeli citizens with Palestinian bloodlines and a lovely 47%…
https://archive.is/nNzq4
I’m not seeing much conscience or shame in those numbers.
Well - conscienc and shame are just emotions that make us adhere to social rules.
After a pogrom in the 13
thcentury the citicens of my city repented formally and build a church on the ground of the former Jewish quarter. They repented for having the Jews allowed to live in the city.It’s very probable that a good portion of the 93 percent of Jewish Israelis who agreed that the commandment to erase Amalek’s memory remains relevant today are indeed ashamed that they haven’t managed to erase the memory of Palastine yet.
If the comittment to genocide a neighbour is this deeply engrained in a culture I’m sort of desperate. All genocides I recall that were not (mostly) successfull were only stopped by external military intervention.
I’d like to know how Israelis as a whole respond to these questions, since this sounds like it surveyed only religious conservatives.
The nation was founded by and for religious extremists
No, it wasn’t founded by and for extremists. But extremists do seem to be the only group represented in Netanyahu’s
bid to stay out of prison(ahem) “government”Zionism is and always has been a terrorist movement
My understanding is it’s way less than half