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Queer and Trans organisations want genocidal Israel out of Eurovision, NOW!

JANUARY 2026

Eurovision has long attracted the passion and support of the LGBTQIA+ community, and Israel sees the song contest as a unique opportunity to pinkwash its war crimes, colonial violence and ethnic cleansing. “Pinkwashing” is Israel’s cynical exploitation of LGBTQ+ rights to project a progressive image, while simultaneously committing genocide.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) banned Russia from Eurovision almost immediately after its illegal invasion of Ukraine, but continues fighting to keep zionist, genocidal Israel in the competition.

The EBU’s selective moral outrage is not accidental, it’s racist. Ukrainian suffering is legible and urgent because it aligns with Europe’s white-supremacist self-image, while Palestinian suffering is made invisible, denied, and depoliticized. This is the colonial grammar of empathy: some bodies are humanized, while others are rendered disposable.

Two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza have produced engineered famine, mass displacement, cultural destruction, and deliberate targeting of civilians. To keep Israel in Eurovision while Gaza starves is to participate in a genocidal order.

The new UN-published report, “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime”, cites Israel’s participation in Eurovision as a prominent example of how “Israel has been sheltered from accountability”. By insisting on Israel’s participation in Eurovision, the EBU is complicit not only in whitewashing and pinkwashing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, but in enabling it.

Israel’s continued participation in Eurovision shows how Europe condones and colludes in settler colonial violence when the perpetrator aligns with its geopolitical interests. The EBU’s choice to include Israel in Eurovision reinforces the long-standing alliance between European institutions and the machinery of Palestinian dispossession.

The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is calling for broadcasters to withdraw from the Eurovision Song Contest if genocidal Israel is not banned. Israeli broadcaster KAN has consistently justified and incited genocide live on air.

As the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) said: “Before the current so-called ceasefire in Gaza (which Israel has repeatedly violated), the Dutch, Spanish, Irish, Icelandic and Slovenian national broadcasters indicated they would withdraw from Eurovision if Israel isn’t banned.”

At the time of writing, five broadcasters have taken the step of boycotting the contest and a former winner has returned their trophy, as the genocidal conditions created by Israel over the last two years continue to destroy Palestinian lives and livelihoods. Pressure is now needed on all participating broadcasters: to immediately and publicly commit to withdrawing from Eurovision if genocidal Israel is not banned.

Those European broadcasters who refuse to withdraw are shielding Israel from accountability, making them complicit in its genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Legally and ethically, the very least these broadcasters can do is withdraw from Eurovision immediately.

Queer liberation cannot be built on the ruins of colonized people. Any trans or queer politics that does not confront Israeli settler colonialism is merely another arm of empire.

Queer Palestinians continue to exist and resist, as they have done forever. As queer collectives from Palestine and around the world, we reject the weaponization of our identities and commit to a liberation struggle that centers the colonized, not the colonizers. There can be no queer and trans liberation without freedom, justice and decolonization for Palestinians.

In 2025, thousands of film workers, musicians, and other cultural figures publicly stated their refusal to artwash Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. Thousands of artists and hundreds of queer and trans organizations have previously called for apartheid Israel’s exclusion from Eurovision. Journalists and presenters have refused to work with Eurovision, and many screening parties have been cancelled.

Cultural boycott is a decolonial refusal, a withdrawal of consent from the racist spectacle that turns Palestinian death into background noise for European entertainment.

Boycotting Eurovision means refusing the normalization of Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians. There can be no celebration of diversity on a stage built on Palestinian graves.

With strategic, intensifying pressure, we know we can push the EBU to expel Israel from Eurovision. Decolonization demands that we dismantle every platform that normalizes settler violence, and Eurovision is no exception.

UNTIL ISRAEL IS BANNED FROM THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST, WE CALL FOR:

  • National broadcasters to withdraw from Eurovision
  • Eurovision participants to refuse to perform
  • Local venues to cancel their Eurovision screening parties
  • LGBTQIA+ organizations around the world to join the Eurovision boycott

 

LGBTQIA+ organisations: Sign our Call to Action

Sign the call now

To sign this call, click the button to fill in the form, or send an email from your organisation’s email address to queercoalitionforpalestine@riseup.net with the following information:

  • 1. Collective or organisation name (required)
  • 2. Contact email (required)
  • 3. Social Media Profile or Website Link (required)
  • 4. Endorsement: (choose up to 2 answers)
    • A: We will participate in Eurovision boycott organising and actions (can be in collaboration with local BDS groups)
    • B: We are a LGBTQIA+ organisation

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