If You’re Dancing and Laughing While the Bombs Fall, We’re Through

Why Eurovision 2024 was my red line.

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This is my first ever friend cull. I’ve never before felt the need to limit my network of friends or acquaintances. The more, I believed, the merrier.

That was until Eurovision 2024 — the Genocide Special.

I have detailed here my views about what it means to watch the Eurovision Song Contest when over thirty-five thousand people have been massacred since the previous show by one of the participating countries.

So, did you tune in?

If you did, and you stand by your choice to do so, we can no longer be friends.

If Israel had been disqualified from the competition, I’d have been right there with you, laughing and joking and dancing in delight at that resplendent, joyful fountain of creativity by artists from all across Europe that is the Eurovision.

But Israel did take part, and I cannot play in children’s blood.

The Israeli state consciously uses artists as mouthpieces for their agenda, as was the case with Eden Golan. They’ve been accessing this festival of queer delight to try to normalise their destruction of the Palestinian…