Celebrated musicians including Massive Attack, Kneecap, Brian Eno, Sigur Rós, Nadine Shah, and many more have signed an open letter calling for a boycott of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in protest of Israel’s participation.
Campaign groups No Music For Genocide and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel are calling for a boycott of this year’s highly divisive Eurovision Song Contest.
More than 1,000 artists, including Massive Attack, Kneecap, Brian Eno, Sigur Rós, Nadine Shah, Mogwai and Hot Chip, have signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Eurovision 2026 in protest of Israel’s participation.
The letter calls upon the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to ban KAN – the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation – from the upcoming contest.
“For the third consecutive year,” the letter states, Israel will be “celebrated onstage despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while Russia remains banned for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
“We refuse to be silent when Israel’s genocidal violence soundtracks and silences Palestinian lives,” the letter reads. “When children in Israeli prisons endure beatings for humming a tune. When all that’s left of nearly every stage, studio, bookshop and university in Gaza is piles of rubble, under which slaughtered bodies still await recovery and proper burial.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for No Music For Genocide said: “People of conscience around the globe are fighting complicity in every industry for a free Palestine and a freer world. While many of us in the industry make light of Eurovision or doubt our own power as cultural producers, genocidal Israel’s leaders speak openly about the contest’s geopolitical value.”
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As much as I enjoy the contest, and love watching with a group of friends and having a lovely drinky poo, I have boycotted because of Israel for a few years now and will continue to.
As a tech worker, this made me wonder if there were any similar movements in my industry:
There are a few movements to boycott Israel goods from profiting and funding the genocide.
Music shouldn’t be the soundtrack of genocide
musicians - the oligarchs of, performative virtue signalling, just in time as usual to have less than no effect
Can Kid Rock please be the soundtrack of genocide?
We can get rid of both then.
Agree, but you know… since Moroccan Oil (a nazi firm) is sponsoring the festival, it’s all good. Because money.
Meanwhile, Russia can’t participate (and rightfully so) because they invaded Ucraine. I guess they didn’t have a big enough sponsor to make their war as acceptable as the genocide in Gaza from the nazis.
Its weird to think about that.
Boycotting russia plunged Europe into huge difficulties, energy crisis and whatnot… and everyone, including (most of) the politicians accepted it with not much fuss.
What would boycotting israel do? Some weapons manufacturers couldn’t make a couple of millions? Just sell the stuff to Ukraine with EU backed loans.
I don’t get whats the hold up.
There’s a lot of surveillance tech and a sh*tload of intel coming from Israel to the EU (and the US)
the value of that intel is questionable at best, but all the world’s oligarchs are addicted to assuming it may as well be true
Europeans being murdered is an atrocity that cannot be tolerated. Brown people murdered out of our sight falls somewhere between meh and good-riddance depending on how bigoted you are.
Who are also mostly Muslim with great real estate they want to build resorts on.
Yeah it probably really is that simple.
I’d add, on top of all that, another important thing: Ucraine has resources, but those poor souls on Gaza? They barely have enough to survive. The assholes on the top think about it in monetary terms: has Gaza anything that we can use? Or are they just poor brown people?
Europe is an US colony, the current european ruling class has been shaped in decades of cold war to be aligned and part of the US empire.
Difficulties and crisis are bad for people, not for the politicians who use these to get even more power.
You’re a US colony.
My country, the Netherlands is already boycotting Eurovision, i’m not used to not having to congratulate our government for being on the right side of history. Personally, i expect Israel to buy a shitload of votes again and this time win the contest, then they get to organise the whole thing and will call the countries not coming to their party antisemitic haters. Might register at polymarket to bet on that outcome. If Israel wins this year, i hope the boycotting countries will start an alternative ESC and persuade the not boycotting countries to join them instead of going to Israel.
Edit: typo
To be fair, it’s not the governement making this call, but avrotros, the broadcaster. And it looks like next year they will just go with another party that has less principles.
But yeah, quite proud about our boycott.
it’s not the governement making this call, but avrotros, the broadcaster.
Yeah quite likely the government wouldn’t have made the call. Great example of why publicly funded media should get to operate independently.
You are boycotting eurovision because of a single country that is participating (when watching it for free is giving them not a single benefit), yet at the same time have no problem pouring money into one of the most immoral gambling sites, run by US tech oligarchs? Something does not quite add up here. I could get the first part bit the second is beyond me.
I don’t use polymarket or it’s competitors, i barely ever gamble and if i wanted too i wouldn’t do it online and definitely not there. The joke i was trying to make is that i am really sure of my prediction. Thank you for telling anyone unaware that polymarket is an immoral gambling site run by US tech oligarchs. We do not disagree.
Good to hear.
I still don’t get what is funny about it even now that you say it is a joke, though. To me it sounds like jesting you’d send a donation to Palantir to celebrate whatever. But it could be also just my lack of humour.
my lack of humour
I can’t know about that, but maybe it’s just different. Don’t know why you’re getting so many downvotes. Might be that to other people it’s more obvious i didn’t meant registering at polymarket literally and understood it’s not something i seriously plan to do. Either way, don’t worry about it and take care ✌️.
I mean I wasn’t gonna watch it anyway, but…
Now I’m going to doubly not watch it.
This may happen afterall. EU now moving to end its “economic partnership” structure since 2000 over already determined human rights abuse that violate agreement and give cause for termination.
The EU won’t cancel their economic relations with Israel. Germany won’t let that happen.
78 years of human right abuses and genocide
Thank you for sharing this, OP.
Dont laugh with zio filth. Only at.
Eurodivision.
It would be kinda awesome if the boycott picks up enough steam that an alternate event gets planned and executed without Israeli participation
Why don’t the EBU just kick out or at least suspend Israel’s membership?
Good to see Sigur Ros on the right side of things. They’re like if Radiohead didn’t turn evil (maybe not all of them, but definitely Thom Yorke).
It’s a good call.
Ol’ sourpuss Brian Eno
Eurovision crisis: Massive Attack,
fucking cunts (the title of the article)
What
Read those words and my heart skipped a beat lol
Oh I see lmao, thought you were calling the band cunts
Neither Russia nor Israel are even in the EU. What are these dumb fucks even smoking
It has nothing to do with the EU.
Eurovision is nothing to do with the EU. Eurovision SC eligibility is based on membership of the EBU’s Eurovision content pooling and distribution scheme. The EBU derives its territorial extent from the ITU definition of the European region. As this is based on victorian telegraph routes and broadcast signal propagation, it includes nations on the north coast of Africa and the Levant.
Also Australia since SBS are EBU members.
ABC and SBS are EBU Associates rather than members. SBS is invited to participate in the ESC on an annual basis as an exception.
80% of Russian population lives in the European part of Russia. but only about (roughly) 25% of Russia is in Europe.
Israel just have a hold over the EBU.
They’re also in the euros (football) which is something else that they should be kicked out of.
Parts of Russia are.
Consider that Australia is participating in Eurovision.
EU European Union. You think of a continental plate
Yes but Australia.
