Since its debut at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1973, Israel has been one of the competition's most celebrated participants — winning four times and hosting the event three times. Yet in recent decades, and with accelerating intensity following the outbreak of the Gaza conflict in October 2023, Israel's continued presence at Eurovision has been subjected to relentless political pressure, coordinated boycott campaigns, and open hostility from certain delegations and state broadcasters. What was designed as a celebration of music and peaceful competition has, in the eyes of Israel's adversaries, become another arena in which to wage a cultural and diplomatic war against the Jewish state.
Israel's Long and Celebrated Eurovision History
Israel first participated in Eurovision in 1973 through the Israel Broadcasting Authority, a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the contest's organizing body. The country quickly established itself as a formidable competitor, winning the contest in 1978 with Izhar Cohen and Alphabeta's "A-Ba-Ni-Bi," and again in 1979 with Milk and Honey's "Hallelujah." A particularly historic win came in 1998 when Dana International's "Diva" triumphed — a landmark moment for LGBTQ+ visibility globally. Netta Barzilai's infectious "Toy" secured a fourth victory in 2018, bringing the contest to Tel Aviv in 2019 for what became one of Eurovision's most-watched editions ever. Israel's track record is remarkable: it holds the distinction of never having finished last in any of its entries across more than four decades of competition.
Despite this rich and positive history, Israel's participation has never been purely celebrated. Even before the Gaza conflict, anti-Israel factions within Europe began leveraging Eurovision's massive global platform — watched by over 160 million viewers annually — as a vehicle for political delegitimization. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, which advocates for the economic and cultural isolation of Israel, has consistently targeted the contest as a high-profile opportunity to pressure artists, broadcasters, and organizers into excluding the Jewish state.
The 2019 Tel Aviv Contest and the Rise of Political Protest
When Israel won the right to host Eurovision 2019 in Tel Aviv, BDS-aligned groups launched an aggressive campaign urging artists and broadcasters to boycott the event entirely. The campaign largely failed — the contest proceeded successfully, with 41 countries competing and audiences across Europe tuning in enthusiastically. However, the political tension was not absent from the venue itself. Iceland's entry, the avant-garde duo Hatari, defiantly displayed Palestinian scarves during the broadcast of the voting results, in direct violation of Eurovision's strict rules against political messaging. The EBU fined the Icelandic broadcaster RÚV for the incident, reinforcing that political demonstrations are prohibited under the contest's foundational guidelines. The episode nonetheless demonstrated how determined certain participants were to turn a music competition into a political stage.
The 2019 contest also saw sustained pressure campaigns targeting performers who chose to participate, with artists like Madonna — who delivered a guest performance at the grand final — facing calls to withdraw. Madonna performed anyway, famously incorporating Palestinian and Israeli flags into her act in a gesture that, while well-intentioned, illustrated how politicized the atmosphere had become around an event historically dedicated to cultural unity.
Key Facts About the Boycott Campaigns
- The EBU has consistently and firmly rejected all calls to ban or exclude Israel from Eurovision, citing the organization's own rules that membership is extended to national public broadcasters — not governments — and that political criteria cannot be used to exclude members.
- At the 2024 Eurovision in Malmö, Sweden, Israeli contestant Eden Golan performed "Hurricane" (originally titled "October Rain," with lyrics altered at the EBU's request) amid massive anti-Israel protests in the city. Israel's National Security Agency raised the travel warning for Malmö to Level 3, noting the city as "a hub for anti-Israel protests" with documented threats against Israelis and Jews. Despite being advised to stay in her hotel room for her own safety except during official events, Golan performed brilliantly and finished fifth overall — receiving enormous support from European televoters.
- At the 2025 Eurovision in Basel, Switzerland, October 7 survivor Yuval Raphael represented Israel and finished second overall, driven by massive televote support from ordinary European viewers — a result that powerfully contradicted the claim that European publics broadly support Israel's exclusion from the contest.
A Contest Weaponized by Anti-Israel Political Actors
The anti-Israel pressure campaign at Eurovision is not spontaneous; it is organized, well-funded, and politically motivated. The BDS movement's targeting of Eurovision is part of its broader strategy to isolate Israel culturally, a tactic that mirrors the cultural boycotts once applied to apartheid South Africa — a false and deeply misleading analogy that conflates Israel's democratic system of government with something it fundamentally is not. In 2025, Spain's public broadcaster RTVE provided a particularly egregious example of state-sponsored politicization: its commentators exploited Yuval Raphael's performance to broadcast Hamas-supplied casualty statistics on air, in direct violation of EBU rules, and the network prefaced its final broadcast with the message "In the face of human rights, silence is not an option. Peace and justice for Palestine." The EBU threatened sanctions, but the damage to the contest's non-political character had already been done. As CAMERA documented in detail, RTVE's conduct represented systematic anti-Israel activism dressed up as journalism.
By late 2025, at least four European countries threatened to quit the 2026 Eurovision contest entirely unless Israel was excluded — a dramatic escalation of the boycott strategy. The EBU, meeting in December 2025, again rejected calls for a membership vote on Israel's exclusion. The Gaza ceasefire brokered with significant U.S. involvement under the Trump administration ultimately defused some of the immediate pressure, with Israel confirmed to compete in the 2026 contest in Basel. What this episode reveals is a troubling willingness among some European institutions and political actors to abandon the principle of cultural neutrality the moment it applies to Israel — a standard they would never apply to any other democratic nation facing an active conflict.
The double standard is unmistakable. Russia was banned from Eurovision in 2022 following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — an act of clear, unprovoked aggression against a neighboring sovereign state. Yet Israel, a democracy defending itself against the Hamas terrorist organization that massacred 1,200 of its citizens on October 7, 2023, is subjected to exclusion campaigns by the very actors who championed Ukrainian inclusion. This moral incoherence is not accidental; it reflects the sustained, ideologically driven effort to hold Israel to a unique and impossible standard in every international arena.
Why This Matters for Israel and Democratic Values
Israel's continued participation in Eurovision, and the European public's demonstrated support for Israeli artists through televoting, carries profound significance beyond the contest itself. It shows that ordinary citizens across Europe — when given a direct, unfiltered choice free from media pressure and activist intimidation — routinely choose to embrace Israeli artists on their artistic merits. Eden Golan's fifth-place finish in 2024 and Yuval Raphael's second-place finish in 2025 were not just musical achievements; they were powerful popular rebuttals to the narrative that Israel is a pariah state unwelcome in European cultural life.
The sustained attempt to weaponize Eurovision against Israel is a microcosm of the broader campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state through cultural, economic, and diplomatic isolation. That campaign is driven not by genuine concern for human rights — which would require equal scrutiny of Hamas, Iran, and other actors — but by a selective targeting of Israel rooted in anti-Zionist ideology. The EBU's principled refusals to capitulate to boycott pressure deserve recognition and support. So does the courage of Israeli artists who step onto that stage year after year, representing a free and democratic nation before an audience of hundreds of millions, despite threats, protests, and politically motivated hostility. As media watchdog CAMERA has documented, it is not Israel that clouds Eurovision — it is those who seek to exclude her.