Eurovision is the most-watched non-sports event in the world. Each year, it has more viewers than the Superbowl, Oscars and Grammys combined. It’s the only pop culture soft power that Europe has on continental scale. And yet today, Europeans (led by Germany and Austria) have committed an immense own goal – sending one of their greatest soft power assets hurtling toward collapse. And for what? To protect Israel – a country which isn’t even in Europe.
Today’s decision by the European Broadcasting Union to back Israel’s continued participation in the contest has a lot of backstory, and it begins in 2022 when Russia was kicked out of Eurovision after its invasion of Ukraine. This is supposed to be a non-political contest, and it was a big step to kick a country out for political reasons. However, at least seven Eastern European countries had threatened to quit the contest if Russia wasn’t excluded. The EBU did the math, and in the interest of coalition management they decided it was better to lose one country rather than seven.
But that crossing of the Rubicon moment had major implications two years later, when Israel’s