Even before its ongoing genocide against 2.3m Palestinians in Gaza, Israel spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the global, grassroots BDS movement as a “strategic threat” and later an “existential threat” to its decades-old regime of oppression against Palestinians. Now, as it attempts to whitewash its genocidal violence, ethnic cleansing and wider regional aggression, Israel has desperately allocated hundreds of millions of dollars per year for its propaganda. At the same time, it has illegally interfered in elections, including in Europe, ramping up its bribery, bullying and manipulation to secure influence.
In the past few weeks alone, Politico revealed that Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence company, founded by former Israeli senior intelligence officers and spies, has once again engaged in “covert surveillance and wiretapping,” this time in Slovenia, to support a far-right candidate against the incumbent left-leaning Prime Minister. Another Israeli firm, BlackCore, is at the centre of an investigation over interference in French municipal elections.
Israel has ranked dead last in the Nations Brand Index for the last two years running. While Israel’s influence over most western governments is still evident, its total impunity in committing the world’s first livestreamed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, its escalating ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and its colonial, expansionist assaults against the peoples of Lebanon and Iran, among others, are eroding its status like never before among the peoples of the world, including in the US and Europe.
Viewers of the world’s biggest live music event, the Eurovision Song Contest, were therefore shocked to see Israel take second place at the final last Saturday, narrowly losing to Bulgaria. Keen observers and human rights campaigners, however, were not surprised at all. Even the New York Times, whose shamelessly biased reporting has helped enable Israel’s genocide and decades of oppression against Palestinians, has found that “Israel’s efforts to influence Eurovision’s vote were broader and started years earlier than previously known.”
Given Israel’s standard policies of intimidation, bribery and threats, it is likely that it has interfered with the Eurovision voting well beyond the money poured into it from the fascist Netanyahu government that has already been reported.
Last year, Israeli president Isaac Herzog – named in South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice for inciting to genocide – launched “an intensive, months-long diplomatic campaign that unfolded largely behind the scenes,” lobbying European broadcasters to support Israel’s inclusion in the contest. When Eurovision organisers failed to ban Israel as Russia was banned the day after launching its invasion of Ukraine, five broadcasters boycotted the contest: Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland. A sixth, Belgium’s Flemish broadcaster VRT (which alternates with Belgium’s French broadcaster), said on Saturday, “the chances are slim VRT will send an artist next year.”
The director of Eurovision, Martin Green, recently suggested that Russia could be brought back into the contest. Responding, the president of the Spanish broadcaster RTVE said this would be done simply “to justify its double standards with Israel.” As the chairman of the board of Iceland’s public broadcaster said, “the Israeli government has co-opted Eurovision.” Meanwhile, the contest, whose main commercial partner is the culturally-appropriating and complicit Israeli company Moroccanoil, lost millions of viewers this year over Israel’s participation – almost 3 million fewer in France and the UK alone, before even mentioning the cumulative losses from boycotting countries and others.
The Eurovision arena was filled with boos, jeers and hisses when apartheid Israel temporarily took the lead during the voting announcements, as many commentators and fans noted. This absurd situation – where a deeply unpopular, rogue, genocidal state can launder its reputation by manipulating the vote and supposedly place high among an audience that clearly rejects its very participation – has been enabled by every broadcaster, performer and every other participant who did not boycott the complicit and rigged contest. If any Eurovision supporter wants to save the contest from being another Israeli occupied territory, there is no choice left but to boycott it until organisers finally ban apartheid Israel.
As Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister, said about RTVE’s boycott before the contest, “in the face of illegal war and genocide, silence is not an option.”
One week before Eurovision, at the world’s largest art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, 29 of the participating national pavilions fully or partially shut down during a strike called in solidarity with Palestine and workers’ rights. This strike, the biggest in the Biennale’s history, followed a call from 239 participants demanding genocidal Israel’s exclusion. Several thousand protesters effectively blocked the main entrance to a main venue.
When Venice Biennale organisers failed to ban Israel, the jury declared it would not consider the representatives of any state whose leaders have been issued arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court – meaning Israel would not be considered. Following typical legal intimidation by the artist representing Israel, the jury resigned, with the Biennale announcing a new “visitors” award, which would be open to genocidal Israel. In response, more than 70 artists and 22 national pavilions withdrew from consideration for the awards.
In Hollywood too, Israel’s fabled influence is finally waning, leaving its fanatic, anti-Palestinian racist supporters to resort yet again to intimidation, threats, and smears. More than 5,500 film workers, including hundreds of leading Hollywood stars and many principled Jewish celebrities, have pledged to refuse to work with Israeli film companies and institutions that are complicit in whitewashing or justifying Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and underlying regime of settler-colonial apartheid.
One of the most prominent artists making the pledge, Oscar winner Javier Bardem, recently alluded to desperate measures by Israel’s supporters in Hollywood saying, “I believe that those who are drawing up the so-called blacklists will actually be exposed, and they will be the ones suffering the so-called consequences, at least on a public and social level. And this is a major change.” While the McCarthyite tactics of apartheid Israel’s cheerleaders are widely known in Hollywood and beyond, the fast growing resistance to them is unmistakable and seemingly unstoppable. Genocidal Israel's isolation in its previous Western cultural strongholds has never been so evident.
Speaking at the Cannes film festival, Bardem added: “I'm lucky enough to be able to work... I imagine there are people who are more afraid they won't get called because of [speaking out], but that's not my case. In fact, it's the opposite, they're calling even more because the narrative is changing… Instead we now understand that there are consequences when you support or justify a genocide like the one that is happening. And society knows that.”