Zigzagging to Eurovision
Question: What’s red and white and features a star inside a circle?
Answer: The sporting uniform of North Korean athletes. They have competed in 11 Olympics and brought home 63 medals so far – including six at the most recent Summer Games in Paris in 2024 – and amazingly, no pseudo-progressive meltdown or boycott went down.
With all due respect to Marshal Kim Jong Un, however, Iran has the edge in podium appearances – boasting a total of 88 Olympic medals to date, including 12 earned in Paris.
So it seems all is fair in international competition.
Except for Little Bad Israel taking part in Eurovision. That’s a red line for humanitarians.
The dustup over Israel’s participation is infuriating for its hypocrisy, its slander, its moral inversion. The boycotters’ self-sacrificing stance is as genuine as a Pallywood newsreel.
But is staying in the contest worth it? Do we really need this headache?
Besides all the calumny being heaped upon us, the groundswell of popular support – yes, including from Europeans – which has so often carried Israel to the top tier in Eurovision, even post-October 7, will now be blunted: The rules have uncoincidentally been changed (again) to give jury panels an almost equal vote with public viewers on who advances from the semifinals to the finals. In addition, viewers will now be limited to 10 votes per payment method. The European Broadcasting Union appears to have advanced these rule changes as an alternative to the originally planned vote on banning us altogether. So while Israel will undoubtedly shine as it traditionally has, our yet-to-be-determined singer might be shut out from the finals for reasons having nothing to do with artistic merit.
Of course, the greater the disparity between the audience and jury votes, the more the national juries’ anti-Israel bias will be laid bare – which is not a bad thing.
Some have suggested bowing out of the hate-fest and staging a parallel contest of our own. Though worth considering perhaps as a preemptive move for next year, at this stage it would open too many cans of worms, especially as some of our most valuable friendships are with countries that do not necessarily support freewheeling entertainment extravaganzas, preferring quiet, mutually beneficial cooperation.
While the list of boycotters and threatened boycotters continues to grow (to date, five countries and counting), and two past winners say they’re returning their trophies in protest – I say: Let’s bring it… but forget about the trophy.
Israel’s presence on the stage in Vienna in May should not be about our chances of winning, our audience or jury support, or lack thereof.
Showing up is the victory.
Putting on a great performance against a backdrop of blue-and-white is the victory.
Presenting an inspiring song that expresses Jewish pride and hope and vitality is the victory.
Continuing to sing loud and strong even when others boo or curse or walk out is the victory.
Cheering for our own, as we will be doing back at home, is the victory.
Giving those who support us – our courageous, clear-eyed friends who might feel banished to the shadows – something to believe in is the victory.
In Natan Sharansky’s autobiography, he relates that when he was finally released after nine years of brutal imprisonment in the Soviet Union, the KGB guards told him to walk in a straight line from the transport plane toward a waiting East German car and not to make any turns. What did Sharansky do? He zigzagged. He was a free man, and he would not be controlled by his captors any longer.
At Eurovision, let’s let our freedom sing – detractors be damned.
