THERE are a few subjects where I claim some knowledge, including politics, history, cooking, decent wine, GAA, the fading memories of the glory days at White Hart Lane, and a very eclectic taste in music.
Unfortunately, with regard to the latter, my interest doesn’t extend to the Eurovision. I detest the trashy spectacle with its unintelligible dirges, which has done for music what myxomatosis did for rabbits.
Some performances are about as interesting as watching magnolia paint dry, whilst others thrive on being outrageous and offensive.
Lyrics are nonsensical tripe – who can forget ‘Diggi-Loo, Diggi-ley’, or ‘Papa penguin is going to burn his suitcase’, or ‘Your bum has feelings, your bum is part of you’.
Ireland thought so highly of the competition that it once selected Dustin the Turkey as an entrant.
Believe it or not, the original objectives of Eurovision were to “stimulate the output of high-quality songs in the field of popular music”, “unite people”, and be “non-political”. They have failed miserably.
And it was politics which brought Eurovision into the news last week, as several countries demanded that Israel should be banned from competing in the 2026 competition.
On a personal level, I never quite understood why Israel participates in any European competition, ie soccer, basketball or Eurovision, on the simple premise that the Levant/Middle East isn’t part of Europe.
The decisions the Eurovision organisers make are political – very political.
Non-European contestants have come from Armenia, Morocco, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Inviting Australia was simply taking the biscuit.
Russia is banned from participating because of the invasion of Ukraine; the latter couldn’t host the competition when it won because of the war.
Hungary and Turkey withdrew due to increasing conservatism within their national governments, which perceived the competition to be “too gay” and out of sync with their cultural values.
Voting at the Eurovision is always impacted by geopolitics, neighbouring prejudices and/or favourites.
The UK often finds itself marginalised in the voting patterns with the all-too-familiar “Royaume-uni nul point”. (Watching with the family back in the day, our sole interest was whether Ireland would finish higher up the scoreboard than the UK.)
The actions of the Israeli government under Netanyahu in Gaza have been immoral, amoral and an outrage to any country claiming to be civilised.
It would be a gross offence to share a stage at the world’s worst and most publicised karaoke night and allow Israel to sanitise its actions via the promo video which so often now accompanies the prelude to each country’s participant.
Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland have made a principled decision which should be applauded.
On the other hand, the attempt in Dublin City Council to rename, or actually de-name, Herzog Park was ill thought-out virtue signalling at its worst.
Chaim Herzog was an Irish Jewish person, born in Belfast but raised and educated in Dublin. His father Isaac was a close friend of de Valera and was known as the ‘Sinn Féin Rabbi’ because of his strong republican leanings. He was also a fluent Irish speaker.
The park in question is in an area where most of the Dublin Jewish community live and is near two Jewish schools.
Ireland in recent decades has always prided itself on being an inclusive and caring nation – living up to the 1916 Proclamation ‘to cherish all the children of the nation equally’.
Those children, even at the time of the Easter Rising, included the Irish Jewish community. Amongst them, Michael Noyk – a Jewish lawyer who was the election agent for Countess Markievicz in 1918 – set up the republican courts, and defended IRA volunteers during the War of Independence.
Robert Briscoe, later to become Lord Mayor of Dublin, was an IRA quartermaster, whilst acclaimed artist Estella Solomons was in Cumann na mBán.
Ireland’s leaders should follow the example of the taoiseach and demonstrate measured and considered actions, lest they unintentionally feed those who are antisemitic.