Eurovision 2024

[Heid the Ba]

Fuck Eurovision's hypocrisy in binning Nederlands. Fuck the stench of Israel's genocide. Fuck the hypocrisy. Just fuck it all.

[Heid the Ba]

Clusterbombs.

[Heid the Ba]

Punitive destruction of houses of random people.

[Arneb]

Fuck Hamas', Hisbollah's, Iran's and our postcolonial youth's genocidal plans for the distruction of the Middle East's one and only democracy, and the one and only place where you aren't assured humiliation, violation, torture and/or death when you break with the prevailing sexual morals or ordered-from-above political mainstream. Fuck the hypocrisy.

[Heid the Ba]

I must have missed the Hamas entry.

[Richard A]

Interesting - I was going to start a thread on Eurovision 2024, but then didn't as I remembered from last year that most people on here weren't really into it. Had I done, it would have been on which entries I most liked. My favourite, narrowly, was Austria - the A family all liked that - closely followed by Ukraine. Strange that Austria did so astonishingly badly - good to see Ukraine came in 3rd. Though yeah, Croatia did deserve its 2nd place. That Ireland did as well it did just shows that Eurovision is weird. Good to see Finland only came 19th, though - the A family's unanimous reaction to that was: WTF? Happily surprised that Armenia and Portugal did so well - I liked them both but thought they would tank.

But to what Heid and Arneb have posted. I don't know enough about what Joost Klein did or did not do to comment. I've seen what the security guard has said and what the Dutch team have said, but something must have happened sufficient for the police to be still investigating. I think that the principle, if you get yourself arrested during the competition, you don't compete, is a fair one. It wouldn't harm to apply it to other events.

And to Israel. I'm with Heid on this one. The message from the Israeli government to the rest of the world has been clear and consistent: Stand With Israel! One spokesperson said explicitly, you either stand with Israel, unconditionally, or you stand with Hamas. If you inserts ifs and buts, you stand with Hamas. He presumably takes the view that Joe Biden now stands with Hamas. I don't accept that. That Hamas committed atrocities against Israel is clear. And Israel's response in October was reasonable. If going further had meant taking out the Hamas leadership in Qatar - which Israeli certainly has the capacity to do - that, too, would have been fair enough. But I'm with Heid that the disproportionate bombing of Gaza is unacceptable. "What about what the British did to Dresden? Fucking hypocrisy!" Arneb may say. I have always acknowledged that that was a war crime - Arneb and I are agreed that the late Queen being pelted with eggs when she visited Dresden was unsurprising, even fair enough. But Arneb, note: Israeli spokespersons have cited the bombing of Dresden in support of their actions - they've said that in war, civilians get killed and that's how it is. If they equate Gaza with Dresden, that cuts both ways.

Commentators here have drawn parallels with Northern Ireland. As Heid knows well, the IRA committed atrocities against civilians: Bloody Friday is a particular example. They bombed chip shops where families went for a takeaway. They bombed a disco where teenagers were dancing. They shot through fences on the basis that whoever was hit would be a Protestant. But if the British government had responded by flattening the Bogside, an air strike on the Divis block of flats and calling on the population of South Armagh to move from one town to another to another while they levelled the ones evacuated, there would have been international outrage. And rightly so.

But as well as the bombing of hospitals, the cluster bombs, the use of white phosphorus, the high proportion of kids that have been killed, there is, for me, something else: the narrative of the Israeli government and its supporters. Cabinet ministers have spoken at conferences calling for the expulsion of the Palestinian population of Gaza - "if the world is concerned for them, the world should take them in" - and kept their jobs. The Israeli government propaganda machine has been putting out not one but several videos saying that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people and has never been a Palestinian nation, in contrast to the nation of Israel which existed millennia ago. Ironically similar to Putin's narrative on Ukraine; there was no Ukrainian state before 1991 and hence the current one is illegitimate - what calls itself "Ukraine" is what has been part of the Russian nation for a millennium. The guns handed out to settlers in the West Bank supposedly for their self-defence have instead been used to drive Palestinians out of their homes - and no one seriously doubts that that was the plan.

Anyone who doubts this, look at Netanyahu dismissing out of hand the idea of the Palestinian Authority - whose representatives Hamas shot when they took power - being the post-war administration. "Neither Hamasstan nor Fatahstan!"

And I agree with Heid that that qualifies a country for exclusion from a song contest. I feel for Eden Golan: a 20 year old confined to her hotel room under armed guard for her own safety when this should have been one of the high points of her life. And it was a good song - better than a lot of Israeli entries in years that were less controversial. But the actions of governments have consequences for their citizens, even more for their representatives.