United by Music, Divided on Campus |
Last year, conversations about Eurovision on UK university campuses stopped being about celebrating music and became a platform for anti-Israel hatred. It seems that this year won’t be very different.
As president of my university’s Eurovision Society, I found myself in a lonely position ahead of the 2025 contest in Basel. Across the country, Eurovision societies signed a petition calling for Israel’s exclusion, and some actively encouraged turning off the broadcast during Israel’s performance. The message was clear: an Israeli artist had no place in spaces supposedly dedicated to celebrating international music and culture. Ours was the only society we knew of that refused to sign. We kept the TV on, watched every act, and judged the songs on their merit.
This wasn’t about taking a side in the complex realities of the Middle East. It was about defending the principle that gave Eurovision its name: “United by Music.”
Since my peers seem to have forgotten, the Eurovision Song Contest was created in the aftermath of World War II to foster connection and shared cultural experience when politics had torn the........