If some European countries seek the removal of Israel from Eurovision 2026 they had better clean their own backyards and disqualify other countries too. Either way, the music industry will take a hit unseen since Napster stole its soul.

Israel as a member of the European Broadcasting Union since 1957, first participated in Eurovision in 1973 just months before the Yom Kippur War when Egypt, Syria, Iraq and a host of other Arab nations invaded Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, and lost again.

Today Netherlands, Spain, UK, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia have led calls for the removal of Israel from Eurovision 2026 at the next meeting of the European Broadcasting Union set for this December.

The EBU has asked Israel to avoid controversy instead and attend under a non-Israeli flag. Israel has been a country since 1948. It predates the EBU by two years.

The hypocrisy continues at a number of levels.

Territorial disputes

These calls come from allegations of genocide against Israel in Gaza currently at war with Hamas for having invaded Israel in 2023 and still holding over 40 Israeli hostages.

Thing is, last week the UK reminded the world that there is no genocide in Gaza, nor has the International Court of Justice ever said there was one. The claim of genocide is a pure media libel.

That said Spain, is currently withholding freedom from Catalan.

Netherlands is withholding freedom from Flanders.

UK is withholding freedom from Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic couldn’t care.

UK remains in a territorial dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands a world away from to Britain.

Slovenia maintains a territorial dispute with Croatia.

And Iceland is still peeved that its government sold its birthright in the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 to Wall Street.

The right to participate

Why is Australia in Eurovision? It’s not in the EBU? But it does have a long history of European immigration.

By all fairness if Israel is forced to withdraw, Australia holds no bona fides to remain.

Morocco, on the other hand, while also not a European country, at least participates as an actual member of the EBU. Yet, it too is denying freedom, in its case to Western Sahara.

And let’s end this saga with Russia. Once a Eurovision participant, it was banned in 2022. Why? Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine did not invade Russia, nor kidnap Russian men, women and children as hostages.

Israel is not Russia. Nor is Israel Turkey.

Turkey withdrew from Eurovision in 2013 because it didn’t like phone voting and objected to the participation of a drag queen from Austria in 2014.

The EBU has opened a can of racism here, and Europe indeed needs to clean its own backyard by December.

These hypocritical European countries are not just endangering the arts and creative fraternity, they’re rendering Eurovision and the celebration of European culture irrelevant, and it’s a purely prejudiced agenda.

© 2025 Adam Parker.

Picture credit: Iceland’s Eurovision 2015 entrant, the brilliant Maria Olafs. The Eurovision Song Contest has launched and cemented the careers of numerous artists and their countries’ music industries. I always thought that Iceland should have won in 2015. Ironically it is now one of the countries fomenting the competition’s demise. © 2015 European Broadcasting Union, Eurovision TV.

I wrote about Maria Olaf’s Eurovision performance at this link: The Unbroken Maria Olafs.