Member's statement: Eurovision Song Contest: Israel
Member's statement by Mrs Sinéad Ennis on .
- MLA
- Mrs Sinéad Ennis
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 8 December 2025
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Eurovision Song Contest: Israel
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5284124
Read the official Assembly record
Text
While the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was making its mind up as to whether 20,000 dead Palestinian children was quite enough to remove Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands acted under the weight of their own conscience and took the morally correct decision to withdraw from Eurovision and not allow themselves to be used to normalise and sanitise Israel and its crimes. It is wholly unconscionable that it has been left to national broadcasters to be the moral compass of the competition in the face of the abject cowardice and hypocrisy shown by the EBU. In 2022, Russia was, rightly, expelled from the competition following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The EBU said at the time that Russia had brought the contest into disrepute. No such consensus was reached about Israel on the genocide in Gaza. Somehow, the starvation, the mass graves, the 70,000 dead Palestinians — 25,000 of them children — the bombed-out hospitals, the dozens of murdered journalists, the flattened neighbourhoods and the live-streamed horror of a people being annihilated does not bring the contest into disrepute. That death toll continues to rise by an average of seven people a day, despite a ceasefire. We know, because it has been documented, that Israel uses Eurovision as a soft-power tool to sanitise its image and to deflect from its atrocities in Gaza. Eurovision is, essentially, a branding exercise to repackage its apartheid reality as progressive, LGBTQ-friendly, multicultural and fun. When it hosted Eurovision in 2019, Israel erased Palestinians entirely, fined a contestant for holding a Palestinian flag and, much like the Education Minister, showcased illegally occupied territories as Israeli land. Audiences are no longer buying it, however, and broadcasters, artists and viewers across Europe are confronting the obvious fact that Eurovision has become a platform for laundering Israeli state crimes. I read over the weekend that the deputy First Minister thinks that boycotts do not work. Deputy First Minister, they do work, and I am quite sure that Emma Little-Pengelly is familiar with South Africa. If she does not believe me that boycotts work, maybe she will listen to a South African caller to LBC radio on Friday, who, when asked whether boycotts work, said:
"The boycotts worked. Every one of us ... knew that we were not accepted ... because our laws and our actions were unacceptable from a global perspective."
The withdrawal of the Irish, Spanish, Dutch, Slovenian and now Flemish broadcasters was a human response and an act of resistance, and I call on the BBC to follow their example. If the contest is to survive, we, the fans, need to stop it being used as an apartheid talent show. We cannot be complicit in the cultural artwashing that exists to distract from a genocide that Europe continues to arm, fund, excuse and sanitise.
474 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Not flagged on a second assessment, because Jev’s answers did not settle it. The reasons are given below.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.33 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.51).
- Subject area: Another identity-related subject.
- The answers did not meet either automatic threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Second assessment
Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works
- Verdict
- Not flagged
- Public interest or divisiveness
- Mainly advances the public interest
Against the published rubric
The statement takes a strong side on a foreign conflict, condemning the Israeli state's conduct in Gaza and calling on the BBC to follow other broadcasters in withdrawing from Eurovision. Its hostility is aimed at a state and its government ("Israel and its crimes", "laundering Israeli state crimes") and at the European Broadcasting Union, not at Jewish people or any faith or community as a group. It does not map the conflict onto communities in Northern Ireland. The references to the Education Minister and the deputy First Minister criticise their specific actions and stated views on boycotts, not a community or tradition. The published rubric expressly treats taking a side on a foreign conflict in this way as not culture-war activity.
Public interest or divisiveness
The main function is political advocacy on a humanitarian and international question, comparing the treatment of Israel with Russia's 2022 expulsion and urging a boycott by a public broadcaster. The language is heated, and the side-swipes at local ministers are partisan point-scoring, but they concern policy positions rather than identity. It does not stir hostility towards any group in Northern Ireland, so it is closer to substantive, if one-sided, public advocacy than to identity-based division.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.39 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.22 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.36 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.23 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.55 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.18 | No |
| Overall judgement | 0.33 | Between thresholds |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing | 0.32 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.17 |
| Adopts it (chosen) | 0.51 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers | 0.55 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.17 |
| Sport (including the GAA), the arts and cultural bodies | 0.13 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.05 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.04 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:08 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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