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This is an expanded version of my column in The Times of London (£) today.
When the Irish Eurovision contestant, Bambie Thug, failed to bully Israel’s competitor out of the contest being staged in the Swedish town of Malmö, Thug did what today’s culture warriors feel is an appropriate reaction when they don’t get their way. The singer had a meltdown and burst into tears.
Thug, a “non-binary” individual who performed a pagan satanic routine as a kind of goblinesque Goth, had demanded that Israel’s entrant, Eden Golan, be barred from the contest because… well, because of course all Israelis everywhere should be shunned and hounded and cancelled by the entire human race because of the war in Gaza.
Asked how it had felt when Golan qualified for the contest’s final, the goblin replied, choking back the tears, “I cried with my team”.
Of course! Because the protest was all about them, to demonstrate their virtue as victims of… well, Israel’s existence, not to put too fine a point on it; and to demonstrate the frankly intolerable human cost to themselves of their principled stand of resistance. “The world has spoken!” cried Thug triumphantly, gulping back principled sobs.
Except the world hadn’t quite said what Thug — speaking from within the alternative universe where Israel’s fight for its life against a genocidal enemy is itself denounced as an act of genocide — thought the world had said.
Because in the real world people had seen something rather different. They saw a vast mob on the streets of Malmö supporting the “Palestinian resistance” — ie terrorism against Israeli Jews — and besieging a young Israeli singer to force her out of the contest.
