KEEP ISRAEL OUT OF SHOPS, THE FOOTY AND THE TELLY
Football: Euro stars shooting for Palestine
The campaign to kick Israel out of world football was set back last October when the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) called off discussions of a move from the Palestine Football Association and others. Ireland, Turkey and 12 middle eastern federations support the call, but UEFA dropped it when the supposed ceasefire in Gaza was agreed.
Football fans across Europe have backed a Show Israel the Red Card’ campaign, in which blocks of fans hold large red cards above their heads. Some of the first fans to do so were at Glasgow’s Celtic in 2023. According to the group Sporting Palestine, 72 other teams across 25 countries and six continents have seen similar protests.
Footballers are strongly discouraged from political statements but in Britain in recent times they have included: Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah, who called on world leaders ‘to make sure the violence and killing of innocent people stops immediately’. He also made donations to Gaza and has been joined by club colleagues Ibrahims Konate and Jeremie Frimpong and former player Sadio Mane.
Salah’s Egyptian team-mate Mohamed Elneny, who played for Arsenal, changed his social media profile picture to the Palestinian flag, and his former Arsenal teammate and German international Mesut Ozil has worn a ‘Free Palestine’ t-shirt on the pitch.
Last year’s winner of the Golden Ball and UEFA Champions League Player of the Season, Ousmane Dembele of Paris Saint-Germain, is a public supporter of Palestine.
The boycott is biting
Farmers in Israel are warning that the country’s agricultural exports face collapse because of international outrage over the Gaza genocide.
‘They don’t want our mangos,’ a mango farmer told Israeli TV Channel Kan11. Retired general and military spokesperson Moti Almoz said the season is one of the hardest experienced by the mango growers in Israel’. The narrator on the state broadcaster said they are talking about an actual collapse’.
With 25% of the crop rotting on the ground, Almoz said: The fridge is full, the merchants have taken what they’ve ordered’. He is losing hundreds of thousands of shekels [4.27 shekels to the pound]. Larger farms are losing millions. Because of the war in Gaza, they are reducing the scale of purchase from Israel.
Song contest: Winners want Israel out
Winners of the past two Eurovision Song Contests say they want Israel to be barred from this year’s event.
Nemo, the Swiss singer who won in 2024, said the country’s actions in Gaza were fundamentally at odds with the values that Eurovision claims to uphold — ‘peace, unity, and respect for human rights’.
JJ, the Austrian singer who won last year, felt it was very disappointing to see Israel still participating – ‘I would like the next Eurovision to be held in Vienna and without Israel’, he said.
This year’s contest, staged by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) but including Israel, will be in Vienna with the final on May 16.
Five nations have withdrawn in protest: Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland.
The pair of winners are far from the only artists to support the global campaign to exclude Israel from international cultural and sporting events.
Last May, 72 previous contestants signed an open letter calling for the EBU to ban Israel from taking part.
All have argued that to permit Israeli participation is inconsistent with the decision to expel Russia indefinitely in February 2022, the day after the invasion of Ukraine.
For Israel, Eurovision is war by other means. Part of the case against it is an accusation that the Israeli government used media unfairly to boost its entrant, who came second with a huge public vote.
