by Lorenzo Canizares 5/14/25
There is a major struggle going on in Europe regarding the participation of Israel in the highly regarded music festival, Eurovision. A letter has been drafted and signed by more than 70 former participants calling for Israel to be banned from Eurovision. The letter states “[We] urge all members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to demand the exclusion of KAN, the Israeli public broadcaster, from the Eurovision Song Contest. KAN is complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the decades-long regime of apartheid and military occupation against the entire Palestinian people.”
“By continuing to platform the representation of the Israeli state, the EBU is normalising and whitewashing its crimes,” the letter continues. “The EBU has already demonstrated that it is capable of taking measures, as in 2022, when it expelled Russia from the competition. We don’t accept this double standard regarding Israel.”
“As singers, songwriters, musicians and others who have had the privilege of participating in Eurovision, we urge the EBU and all its member broadcasters to act now and prevent further discredit and disruption to the festival: Israel must be excluded from Eurovision.”
The Spanish publication. Publico, on 5/13/25 mentions that a collective of 380 prominent movie stars amongst them Pedro Almodovar, Javier Bardem, Costa-Gavras and Mark Ruffalo has denounced the genocide that is taking place in Gaza and the silence in the art world to the genocide. This denunciation was published in the French newspaper, Liberation, on May 12, 2025. The article also mentions the murder committed by the Israeli Armed Forces (IDF) of the photojournalist Fatma Hassouna, producer of the documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” a documentary that will be shown at the upcoming highly- regarded Cannes Film Festival.
Hassouma was 25 years old when she was murdered together with 10 family members, including her pregnant sister. The article further mentions Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” who was beaten up by Israeli settlers before being kidnapped by the Israeli army and allowed to go free only after major international pressure forced his release.
I don’t know if I am the first, but I will say that we are all seeing in front of our eyes is that Zionism (at least the kind practiced by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich) is equal in practice to Nazism. Nazism had the ovens; Zionism has the burning tents.
The call to oust Israel from Eurovision is a call that should be replicated in any international event that Israel is present. Zionism needs to be eradicated from any position that provides a semblance of legitimacy to their murderous acts.
Israel should be banned from the United Nations. Israel should be deprived from any sense of normalcy in the family of nations. There is nothing normal about conducting a genocide. They should not receive any weapons or bullets that allow them to carry on with their genocide. They should be banned from FIFA and next year’s World Cup. They should be banned from participating in any international event. No cheering for genocide!
The abovementioned Zionist leaders are the masterminds of accusing of antisemitism, all those who bring attendtion to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people or all those who point out that the real motivation behind this “war” being conducted against a people with no air force, or navy or tank,s is to expand Israel’s territory.
Plus, the “war” has extended to the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria who have nothing to do with Hamas. The chant has now evolved from “Death to the Palestinians” to “Death to the Arabs.”
Sadly, Israel keeps conducting its genocide thanks to the West providing them the financial backing to obtain all the armaments they need for their murderous endeavors.
People in the global south see Israel as a proxy of the past colonizer nations, doing their bidding in their quest to subjugate the Arab nations and control their natural resources, mainly oil. Not much is made of the fact that Israel knew beforehand that Hamas was planning to attack.
The State of Palestine has been recognized as a sovereign state by 147 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, i.e. by 76% of all UN members. The Palestinian state is recognized by mainly nations in the global south plus Russia, Turkey, Spain and a few other European nations. But almost every nation on the planet pays lip service to the two-state solution with its different variants.
The genocide taking place in Gaza with its daily bombings, destruction of all its hospitals, and mass starvation, is the most critical situation in the planet today. This situation needs to be tackled with the most possible sense of urgency. For us in the United States there needs to be a clamor to support the efforts of Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressives in the legislature trying to stop the flow of weapons into Israel.
Also of great importance is the support of organizations like Labor4Palestine that is doing crucial work among labor unions to gather labor’s support and create international solidarity to put an end to the genocide.
While there is a genocide taking place right in our face, humanity cannot be expected to act normally. We all know that what’s happening to the Palestinians could also be happening to any people targeted by the genocidal combo of unbridled greed and racial supremacy.
