Chief Rabbi: Keep Eurovision in Israel
THE Chief Rabbi has defended Israel’s right to host this year’s Eurovision Song Contest after calls for the venue to be changed.
Ephraim Mirvis, the Jewish community’s most senior religious figure in the UK, said anti-Israel campaigners in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement could damage ‘the cause of peace’ by calling for the 2019 event to be relocated.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Whereas peacemakers seek dialogue and common ground, for more than a decade the BDS movement has pursued a campaign of division and demonisation. Calls for the Eurovision Song Contest to be moved from Israel will ultimately harm, and not help, the cause of peace.
‘I call upon those advocating for BDS to turn their efforts towards collaboration and reconciliation.’
His intervention came just days after 50 public figures, including actors Maxine Peake, Miriam Margolyes and Julie Christie, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and film-makers Mike Leigh and Ken Loach signed an open letter calling for the contest to be moved to another country because of human rights violations. Several of the signatories are BDS supporters.
Israel won the right to host this year’s event, due to take place in May, because its act Netta Barzilai won last year. The European Broadcasting Union had hoped the choice of Tel Aviv as the host city over the more contentious option of Jerusalem would quell opposition.
But campaigners insist that holding it anywhere in Israel is counter to the spirit of the event.
In their letter, the celebrities noted the selection of Tel Aviv but said ‘this does nothing to protect Palestinians from land theft, evictions, shootings, beatings and more by Israel’s security forces’.