Europe’s Hateful Boycotting of Israel’s Music
‘Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel
Born is the King of Israel.’
The First Noel, Traditional English Christmas carol
Last week Iceland became the fifth nation to boycott Eurovision 2026 due to Israel’s participation.
We might remember that Iceland chose to be represented in Eurovision 2019, hosted in Tel Aviv, by the band Hatari (meaning ‘Hater’) with a song titled ‘Hatred will prevail’, with lyrics, ‘Hate will prevail… Europe’s heart impale’. And Hatari makes no secret of its hatred of Israel.
‘Hate will prevail’ is not music. It is discordant spewing of hatred. It is anti-music that seems to appeal to cohorts of the West’s Red-Green alliance that hate Judeo-Christian civilization.
Since God named his people ‘Israel’, no anti-Israel movement has endured. Jews have suffered horrendously at the hands of anti-Israelists and antisemites in many epochs, but none of the empires or caliphs that have occupied Israel and attempted to appropriate Hebron and Jerusalem have endured. They’ve all gone: Canaanites, Edomites, Assyrians, Hellenes, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Mamluks, Ottomans… Today’s anti-Israelist movements such Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and, here in the UK, the Socialist Worker Party, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain… will too all be gone, pray in our lifetime. This seems to be a law of metaphysics, and, indeed, God of Israel’s laws of harmony and music, to which we will come.
There is no music or joy in Israel’s enemies. I have met many antisemites, but I have never met a joyful one.
Western music is overwhelmingly indebted to the Jews, ancient and modern. In Western classical and modern music, Jews – who comprise a fraction of 1% of Western population – are vastly over-represented as composers, lyricists, performers and conductors.
When we British listen to, or play or sing, classical music, not only is it likely to be music composed or performed by Jews, the music itself is likely to be about Israel and Jews, not least Jesus of Nazareth.
Appropriately, the world’s very first recording of classical music was Handel’s biblical oratorio ‘Israel in Egypt’, recorded at Crystal Palace, London in June 1888. It is just about audible on YouTube.
‘Psalm’ means ‘song accompanied by musical instrument/s’. Not only are the Psalms fundamental to Christian worship and music, they have inspired many compositions in the classical genre, and even pop music, such as the chart-topping ‘Rivers of Babylon’ (Ps 137) by Boney-M and ‘Wings of a Dove (Ps 55) by Madness. In Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, he sings of David, ‘the baffled king’, composing psalms.
Those of us who partake in communal Christian worship sing or chant the Hebrew words ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Amen’, ‘Hosanna’, ‘Emmanuel’, and ‘Israel’. Jewish and Christian music and lyrics have been intertwined since the advent of Christianity, and in the West have evolved together inextricably for two millennia. In contrast, Islam dropped the psalms and the music from ‘the Book’. The Quran does not mention music or musical instruments. Although it speaks of David’s beautiful voice, David is not, as he is in the Bible, ‘the sweet psalmist of Israel’ (2 Samuel 23:1) who plays stringed instruments. In fact stringed instruments are Haram in some schools of Islam, including Islamism.
At Passover, Jesus and his Disciples sang, as Jewish families and communities do at Passover to this day. At the advent of the Church, music of the synagogue music combined with the Greek modal system, evolving to plainsong, which is really the foundation of all Western music, being based on the diatonic, or ‘do, re, me’, scale. This modal system, used from medieval church music to modern pop songs is thoroughly embedded in our DNA. It is what makes Western music sound Western. Of course, in Israel we hear music, including Jewish music, from traditions other than Western music, but Western music prevails, not least Hatikvah, whose melody is based on the 16th century Italian madrigal ‘La Mantovana’.
Well-known Jewish composers in the classical genre include Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Mahler, Schoenberg, Bernstein, Gershwin, Finzi, Copland… Around half of the world’s virtuoso violinists, cellists and pianists are or were Jews.
In the genre of popular songs, jazz standards, and showtunes, now known as The Great American Songbook (1920s to 1950s), Jewish influence was overwhelming. Jews were involved in composition and lyrics of three-quarters of the songs. And in Hollywood, Jewish composers have continuously excelled. From 1950 to 2025, well over half of the ‘Tony’ awards for best original songs and scoring have gone to Jewish composers and lyricists.
In many parts of the Bible we read that the Jews were commanded to play music and sing. Instruments are listed. Even the number of strings to be used on the harp (usually 10) is specified. God tells us that the world needs music. Psalm 150, the very last of the psalms, has the directions for the Jerusalem Temple of Jerusalem orchestra and choir in which the whole world (Ps 150:6) joins in, which would be physically possible in our technological age!
Music was also used in Jewish lament, and the Diaspora’s yearning for Zion, as in Psalm 137. This psalm is about the Jews’ not singing. When commanded by their Babylonian captors to sing, they hung up their instruments and ‘sat and wept… and remembered Zion’. We find echoes throughout the history of Jewish music of yearning to return to the Promised Land and yearning for peace in the world, as in the great visions of the Prophets. The dream for the Promised Land even enters the Great American Songbook, notably in ‘Over the Rainbow’ published in 1939, with its Zionist allusions just months before war broke out in Europe.
The Jewish homeland was realized in 1948. But the world has hated Israel since its reformation. Israel is a tiny peace-loving nation in a region of the world with deranged, warring nations and clans with ideologies – be they rooted in Islamism, Communism or both – dependent on the eradication of Israel. And of course, Christian antisemitism lives on, and even allies with Islamism against Israel, despite the fact that Christians of the Middle East have, since the turn of the millennium, have suffered genocide levels of persecution.
Despite the many attempts to destroy Israel, she has miraculously thrived, and some of her world-leading innovations are today indispensable. Even in her present wars, Israel continues to innovate. Ironically, people that join ‘boycott Israel’ campaigns on social media are holding in their hands devices whose core technology came out of Israel’s R&D.
In Eurovision 2024, Israel’s Yuval Raphael sang A New Day Will Rise, which won first place in the public vote. She is a survivor of the Supernova music festival of October 7 2023, who ran into a shelter with 50 other youngsters. Although Yuval sustained injuries from grenades thrown into the shelter, she was one of 11 survivors who remained hidden under dead bodies for eight hours. She sings of resilience and hope, and sing in Hebrew a line from the Song of Songs about unquenchable love. It is the divine antidote to Iceland’s hatred.
Love will prevail.
