I for one am totally shocked that the Eurovision Song Contest did not bring about a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine – almost as shocked as I was that the UK came bottom of the competition. What it did crystallise for me, however, is the peculiarly toxic mix of misogyny and anti-Semitism that lurks in radical politics.
Before the contest even started, there was Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie calling Madonna a prostitute and basically saying Israel shouldn’t exist, while in the same interview admiring at least two famous Jews (Bob Dylan and Karl Marx) in efforts to show he wasn’t anti-Semitic. It was a moment that was at the most moronic end of a fairly moronic spectrum.
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