Sir, – Arguing against the Israeli state’s exclusion from the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar warns that “excluding their country from international life” might make it more difficult for “liberals and others in the country . . . to make the case for peace, to make the case for human rights within Israel” (”Varadkar opposed to boycott by Ireland of Eurovision over Israel’s participation”, News, December 26th).
I remember no such warnings from Mr Varadkar or his Government colleagues when the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – the company behind the Eurovision – expelled Russia in February 2022, immediately following its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. Nor did they express public concern over Fifa or Uefa’s expulsion of Russia’s national and club teams, or even, closer to home, the Dublin International Piano Competition’s exclusion of Russian competitors solely based on their nationality, and despite the explicit opposition of some to Vladimir Putin’s war.
As it stands, Palestinian fatalities in the Israeli state’s indiscriminate military onslaught have already far exceeded Ukrainian fatalities since Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Long before the latest onslaught began, the Israeli state’s status as a practitioner of apartheid made a cultural boycott morally and strategically necessary.
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In 2018, Dee Forbes, then RTÉ director general, acknowledged widely held ethical misgivings when she conceded that staff who refused to cover that year’s Eurovision, hosted in the Israeli state, would not be disciplined.
We must challenge the grotesque double standards of the EBU and other international bodies. It is nauseating to think that an Irish Eurovision team should have to share a stage with the representatives of a state that UN experts warn is committing genocide before our eyes.
If Ireland has to sit this one out, so be it. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN Ó ÉIGEARTAIGH,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.