It’s easy to dismiss the recent news stories about the Eurovision Song Contest and Guinness World Records as frivolous; they’re not. These are just two of the platforms where there are major attempts to erase the presence of Israel; to cancel out the very existence of the Jewish state.
But first, let’s look at some “hard news”: the annual United Nations General Assembly (non-binding) resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw from “Syrian Golan” and “Palestinian Occupied Territory.” The resolutions demanding Israel withdraw to pre-1967 lines come up every year, essentially calling for the ethnic cleansing of half a million Jews from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), redividing Jerusalem, and handing Judaism’s holiest sites to Palestinian control.
The declaration regarding the Golan Heights, this year in particular, made me do a double-take. It should have made every participating country think twice.
Something fundamental has changed, but the UN is either unwilling or unable to acknowledge it. It has been exactly a year since the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad fell and was replaced by the rule of Ahmed al-Sharaa, a man who previously broke away from al-Qaeda to form his own jihadist movement, the Nusra Front, with which he managed to take over Syria.
In July, while the world focused on Gaza and libeling the Jewish state, a dreadful massacre was taking place in Sweida, Syria. It was what Druze in both Israel and their brethren over the border on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, described as “our October 7.”
Hundreds of Druze were slaughtered by local Bedouin and Syrian forces. Under Sharaa, there have also been purges of the Alawite minority (to which the Assad family belongs), Kurds, and other minorities.
The resolution calling for Israel to leave the Golan Heights passed with 123 in favor, seven against, and 41 abstentions. That means that 123 members of the body, which is ostensibly dedicated to world peace, thought it would be a good idea to either forcibly remove the 55,000 Jews and Druze who live on the Golan, or to hand them over to the control of a Syrian leader whose first year in power was marked by the massacre of Druze and other minorities.
It is telling that the UN didn’t even hesitate to raise the resolution yet again. Even when Islamic State terrorists were situated on the Syrian side of the border, the UN somehow thought it would be good for peace in the Middle East if Israel were to hand control of the strategic plateau to the jihadists.
According to the UN’s own site, when introducing this year’s text, Turkey’s representative said that Israeli authorities must “recognize that the path to lasting security cannot be built on the continued occupation of another country’s territory.” I look forward to Turkish withdrawal from Cyprus just as soon as I stop laughing from the bad joke.
The UN is not the only international stage where there’s an ongoing battle against Israel. Behind the scenes of the Eurovision, another show is going on – not a song contest, but a showdown targeting the Jewish state.
European Broadcasting Union holds meeting on Israel's Eurovision participation
Last week, the European Broadcasting Union, which runs the competition, held a meeting of all its members to vote on Israel’s participation. Ultimately, the EBU passed an amendment to the voting rules – giving national juries a greater say than the public vote – but not banning Israel.
It didn’t have to. The change to the voting system in itself was aimed at Israel, which for the last two years has fared poorly in the national votes and phenomenally well in the public vote.
Israel’s Yuval Raphael last year won such a high score in the public vote that she came in second place overall, after the Austrian song. The juries awarded Austria 258 points, while the public gave it 178. In contrast, the national juries awarded Israel just 60 points, and the public gave Raphael a whopping 297.
To their credit, several national broadcasters, including Germany and this year’s host, Austria, stood firmly by Israel on the issue, saying they would not broadcast the world’s largest music competition if Israel were banned.
Others, however, could not bear the thought of sharing the stage with an Israeli. Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Iceland have all announced they will not participate if Israel competes. This makes them bad losers in every sense.
Israel’s Dana International, who in 1998 became the first transgender Eurovision winner, blasted those countries that backed out because of Israel’s presence. While predictably taking a swipe at the right-wing government – she can’t afford to lose all her fans, after all – Dana International issued a statement saying: “Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that Israel is a country fighting for its existence, trying to balance security challenges with sanity and liberal values, things that are not well accepted in the region we live in. Hamas executes people for being gay. Almost every Eurovision winner would have been hanged in the town square in Gaza.”
As Commentary’s Seth Mandel wrote: “How should we judge the countries that stomped out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation? Harshly. A singing competition is not a diplomatic convention. Would you leave a karaoke bar because there was an Israeli Jew there? Will these folks boycott all establishments that serve Israeli Jews?
“Aside from emitting a faint segregationist stink, these Europeans are politicizing every cell in their bodies in an attempt to enforce those same artistic limits on everyone else. If rare apolitical music gatherings are impossible, it has a stunting effect on the industry and on the minds and temperaments of the people participating in their own dumbing down.”
As many have noted, it’s not just the Eurovision Song Contest. There are ongoing boycotts of Israel in sports, academia, the literary world, and cultural events (ostensibly more cultured than Eurovision.)
Guinness World Records could hold its own world record in being tone-deaf. As a spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Jerusalem Post’s Mathilda Heller last week: “We truly do believe in record-breaking for everyone, everywhere, but unfortunately, in the current climate, we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”
In case you were in any doubt, the UN relief agency clause means that Palestinians can still participate. It’s only the Jews – well, Israelis of any religion–who have been canceled.
The gaslighting of the Jewish state was revealed when the non-profit organization Matnat Chaim (The Gift of Life), which encourages altruistic kidney donations, contacted Guinness World Records regarding its planned record-breaking event scheduled to bring 2,000 Israeli kidney donors together next month for a photo in Jerusalem. Of all things to boycott!
A look at the GWR site shows some of the strange feats it has recognized, including, for example, this “brilliantly bonkers food record”: “Largest serving of chicken wings... To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Big Green Egg didn’t just throw a party – they grilled up a record! They cooked a mouth-watering 297.5 kg. (655 lb. 12.8 oz.) of chicken wings. That’s as heavy as 3 baby elephants!”
I find the comparison of thousands of devoured chicken wings to baby elephants more bizarre than bonkers, but that’s besides the point. As a vegetarian, I find the whole event in poor taste, but that’s not my beef. What do you think is healthier, educational, and life-affirming: grossly overeating chicken wings or encouraging people to donate a kidney to someone they don’t know?
As it happens, Israel is considered by some to be the highest global consumer of poultry per capita, but I’ll save my pride for the fact that Israelis, thanks largely to Matnat Chaim, lead the way in altruistic kidney donations.
Notably, Guinness World Records began its ban on Israel in November 2023, not after the October 7 Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity in which 1,200 were murdered and 251 abducted; it blocked Israel when the Jewish state began to fight back.
One thing is clear from the UN plenum, the Eurovision stage, and Guinness World Records: Israel is constantly being judged by a different standard. It’s a win for antisemitism and hatred, and a massive loss for the world.