When four European broadcasters announce that they cannot share a glittery pop stage with the only Jewish state on earth, they probably think they are doing something brave.
Spain’s RTVE says Eurovision has become “unconscionable” with Israel in it, Ireland’s RTÉ declares that participation is “unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza,” the Dutch AVROTROS claims Israel has “crossed a boundary,” and Slovenia’s RTV chair says, “We will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) if Israel is there. On behalf of the 20,000 children who died in Gaza.”
They insist this is about “public values,” humanitarian concern, and the sanctity of children’s lives. They swear it has nothing to do with Jews.
But for anyone with even a basic memory of twentieth century Europe, this spectacle, of European cultural institutions walking away from the stage when Jews appear on it, feels depressingly familiar.
We have heard this tune before.
In March 1933, one of the greatest conductors of his generation, Bruno Walter, was scheduled to conduct in Leipzig. After Nazi threats of violence, the concert was cancelled. A few days later, a Berlin Philharmonic appearance was also cancelled under pressure. Walter, a Jewish maestro at the height of his career, was pushed off Germany’s most prestigious podiums and replaced by more “acceptable” Aryan figures, including Richard Strauss.
Soon after, the regime formalized what the mobs had already enforced. The Reich Chamber of Music, created in 1933 under Goebbels, defined who was allowed to work as a musician in Germany. Being a member was compulsory. Jewish musicians were refused membership and thus banned from the profession. The music of Jewish composers was labelled “degenerate” and driven out of concert halls, opera houses and radio.
Jews were not politely disagreed with. They were told: you cannot be here at all.
When Jews were expelled from German cultural life, the Nazi authorities permitted a segregated workaround. The Jüdischer Kulturbund, the Jewish Culture League, was founded in 1933 as a separate, Jewish only cultural federation. It hired hundreds of Jewish artists and musicians who had been fired from German institutions and allowed them to perform, but only for Jewish audiences in Jewish venues.
The message was very clear. Jewish art could exist, but it was not welcome in the shared public square of European culture.
In Fascist Italy, the story repeated itself with local variations. Mussolini’s regime initially courted Jewish participation, then in 1938, the racial laws abruptly ended the careers of Italian Jewish musicians and composers. They were removed from conservatories, orchestras and broadcasting, their names erased from programmes, their work silenced.
Fast forward less than a century. Europe will still listen to Jewish music, but now it wants it delivered without the inconvenience of a Jewish flag.
Israel is allowed to stay in Eurovision only because the European Broadcasting Union held its ground and refused to expel it, while adopting new rules on vote promotion.
So instead of removing the Jewish state, some broadcasters have chosen to remove themselves. They will not stand in the same musical room. They will not show it to their viewers. Once again, it is the Jews who are made conditional.
'Russia was banned, so Israel must be too'
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez gave the most revealing justification when he argued that if Russia was thrown out of global competitions after invading Ukraine, “then the same should happen with Israel.”
On the surface, this sounds like equality before the rules. In practice, it flattens history. Russia launched an unprovoked war of conquest against a sovereign neighbor whose existence it openly questions. Israel is fighting a war that began with the October 7 massacre, when Hamas murdered 1,200 people, raped women, burned families alive, and abducted 251 hostages into Gaza.
The death toll in Gaza is horrific, but the statistics repeatedly cited by broadcasters come from a Hamas run health ministry that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Hamas embeds in hospitals, schools and refugee camps precisely because it wants those numbers to rise. It has rejected or undermined multiple ceasefire proposals that would have ended the fighting and freed hostages.
None of this complexity appears in the statements from Dublin, Madrid or Ljubljana. There is no mention of Hamas, no acknowledgment that Israel is fighting an enemy that openly calls for another October 7. Only one side is judged unfit for the stage.
Once again, Jewish security, Jewish sovereignty and Jewish life are reduced to an aesthetic offense.
The old logic, in new language
It is important to be precise. Europe in 2025 is not Nazi Germany in 1933. There are no race laws, no state decrees expelling Jews from orchestras, no storm troopers breaking up concerts.
What we do have is the moral logic that made those laws possible, wrapped now in the soothing language of “values,” “public service” and “solidarity with children.”
When AVROTROS says that Israel’s actions have “crossed a boundary” for Dutch public values, it is not demanding that Eurovision set one consistent boundary for all wars, all occupations, all human rights abuses. It is arguing that the boundary happens to fall exactly at the Jewish state.
When RTÉ says it will not only refuse to send an Irish act but will not even broadcast the contest, it is not asking whether doing so will save a single life in Gaza. It is saying that the presence of Israel’s entry makes the entire show morally polluted.
When RTV Slovenia declares, “We will not participate in the ESC if Israel is there. On behalf of the 20,000 children who died in Gaza,” it is not lobbying for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council. It is telling a 23 year old Israeli singer that he cannot sing on a European stage because he carries the wrong passport.
Replace “Israel” with “Jewish” and suddenly the pattern looks less like radical progressivism and more like a very old reflex.
In the 1930s, the cultured people of Europe insisted they were not against Jews as such. They were against “degenerate music,” “un-German influences,” “disloyal elements.” They did not always slam doors with brownshirt boots. Sometimes they did it with official stamps and polite letters from cultural ministries.
Today, Europe’s public broadcasters do not need a Reich Chamber of Music. They can enforce the same instinct through programming decisions, slogans, and boycotts, while congratulating themselves on being on the right side of history.
A test for Europe
The European Broadcasting Union has, to its credit, held the line and kept Israel in the contest. Germany’s culture minister has already said there should be no Eurovision without Israel, and other broadcasters like Austria and the UK have backed that position.
They understand that this is about more than one song in Vienna. It is a test of whether Europe has really learned that Jews are either full participants in its cultural commons or they are once again provisional, tolerated only as long as they behave according to other people’s scripts.
If you want to criticize Israel’s government, you have every right to do so. Israelis do it daily, more loudly than any European minister. If you want to push for a different military strategy, a different hostage deal, a different long term policy for Gaza, that is legitimate debate.
But when you single out the world’s only Jewish state for cultural excommunication, when you walk off the stage rather than risk your viewers voting for a Jewish flag, you are not defending human rights. You are repeating a very old European habit, set this time to a catchy pop beat.
Bruno Walter would recognize it. So would the musicians of the Jüdischer Kulturbund and the Italian Jewish violinists whose careers ended in 1938.
Europe does not need to go back there. It is still not too late for broadcasters in Madrid, Dublin, Ljubljana and Hilversum to realize that boycotting Jewish participation in a song contest is not moral courage. It is moral amnesia.