Why is Greta Thunberg against an Israeli singer participating in Eurovision?

A young Israeli woman warned to stay in her hotel room. A baying mob on the streets outside hollering slogans and abuse. Death threats piling up. Bodyguards working round the clock to make sure no protester gets inside to where the woman has taken refuge from their fury. I’m sorry, is this a political protest or a Jew-hunt?

The most galling thing about the Malmo protests is the sight of Greta Thunberg

I am referring, of course, to the despicable scenes in Malmo in Sweden where the final of the Eurovision Song Contest takes place tomorrow. The woman is Eden Golan, a twenty-year-old Israeli-Russian who is singing for Israel. The fuming thousands, an unholy blend of leftists, Islamists and greens, want her booted out. An expulsion, if you like.

Israel’s actions in Gaza make it morally unfit for Eurovision, the mob insists. “Glitter doesn’t hide genocide,” they say. “14,000 dead children,” their placards declare, as if Golan killed them all. It has the feel of a witch-hunt, though in this case the mob pointing its sanctimonious finger at a supposedly wicked woman waves Palestinian flags rather than crucifixes. 

It really is an unsettling sight. It is bullying dolled up as protest. Thousands of people angrily agitating against the presence in their country of a young woman from overseas? You can call that “Palestine solidarity” if you like — I prefer to call it xenophobia.

It brings to mind the vile scenes at Dagestan airport in October last year when a mob went on the rampage after hearing that a flight from Israel had landed. Blind hatred for Israeli citizens is not a political position, far less a progressive one: it’s bigotry. Golan has not fought in Gaza. She is not an architect of that war. She’s just an Israeli. Raging against people on account of their national or ethnic heritage — if only there was a word to describe such behavior.

The protesters will say their only concern is with Israel’s war in Gaza and finding a way to end it. Oh shut it, hypocrites. Where were your protests against Britain’s inclusion in Eurovision when it was waging insane wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya? Back then, the right-on boogied to the pubs of Soho without a second thought for what the military forces were up to. Why Israel then? Explain yourselves.

Drag queens and others in the LGBT movement have promised to boycott Eurovision. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, one of London’s best-known gay pubs, will be closed tomorrow night. Gays forswearing Eurovision? Now that’s some serious commitment to virtue-signaling. These people have no idea how ridiculous they look up on their high horses: Israel is the only country in the Middle East where they would be able to live freely. A little gratitude for that fact would not come amiss.

Perhaps the dumbest take is the one that says Eurovision kicked out Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, so now it should kick out Israel too. “The inclusion of genocidal [sic] Israel is hypocritical,” the protesters say. Someone needs to remind these folk that it was Hamas that invaded Israel. That it was Hamas that crossed into Israeli territory and butchered a thousand of its people. That it was Hamas that started the war. Hamas, not Israel, is the Russia of this conflict.

Demanding that Israel be banned from Eurovision is the equivalent of demanding in 2022 that Ukraine be banned. Just as Ukraine was brutalized by Russia, so Israel was brutalized by the antisemitic proxies of Iran. We shouldn’t be raging against Israel’s singer — we should be voting for her in solidarity with her nation that was so obscenely assaulted on October 7 last year. That’s what I’ll be doing.

The most galling thing about the Malmo protests is the sight of Greta Thunberg there. This is someone who has spoken out against the bullying of women in the public eye. And yet now she’s grinning in a crowd that has whipped up such an ugly, febrile atmosphere that a twenty-year-old woman requires twenty-four hour police protection. Seriously, everything about this stinks.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website