Apparently there are also countries demanding the opposite and saying they'll withdraw if Israel is excluded, including Germany: https://eurovisionfun.com/en/2025/09/iceland-some-countries-... (not the best source IMHO, but I did see it casually mentioned in a BBC News piece as well)
Germany has gone from one extreme to other extreme
danbruc · 4h ago
The German policy of more or less unconditional support for Israel is plain stupid. This policy exists because of the horrors that Germans have inflicted upon Jews but it now supports similar [1] horrors inflicted by Israelis upon Palestinians. I can not wrap my head around that. If anything, Germany should try to stop Israel with all available means to protect them from themselves. Germany should do the same as Ireland and so should everyone else.
[1] Feel free to mentally replace similar with any other word that you think more accurately compares the two scenarios.
piltdownman · 4h ago
It's very easy to wrap your head around - Germany is Israel's main arms supplier after the US.
Germany accounted for 30% of Israel's arms imports between 2019 and 2023. In 2023 it accounted for 47% of Israel's total imports of conventional arms.
Between October 2023 and May 2025, Germany greenlighted the delivery of weapons and military equipment worth €485m to Israel
They since stopped the export of weaponry 'used in gaza' but it's naive in the extreme to accept assurances from the incumbent Israeli government to the contrary.
N.B. Israel continues to illegally carry weapons through Irish airspace, and kindly refers our government agency to El Al's Legal department on inquiry.
That does not seem like nearly enough money to make a bad policy decision because of the money and that policy is probably much older than the arms deals.
alephnerd · 4h ago
> That does not seem like nearly enough money
Because that's not the reason (Israel primarily imports weaponry and munitions from the US and India [0]).
The issue is the other way around. A significant portion of Germany's ground AD and defensive systems are sourced from Israel- most notably the Arrow 3 missile shield [1] deal that recently went through. Germany is heavily dependent on Israeli cybersecurity companies as well [2]. Germany is also subsidizing Arrow 3 sales to Ukraine [3].
Protecting your nations citizens always trumps morality, and in Germany's case, it's become even more critical after what happened in Poland this week.
Yeah, but Europeans countries never miss a chance to lecture other countries about morality.
alephnerd · 4h ago
Politicians will always politick, but they do not tend to be the ones who make policy in a parliamentary system like Germany of Ireland.
Ireland basically has no army, and is entirely dependent on the UK for it's defense. As such, their politicans are free to say whatever (as long as it is not against the UK) because it's not going to come back and bite them in the behind. That said, that's now changing as the UK is trying to renegotiate the deal [0][1]
The Irish strategy is to make the pubs too attractive for any attacker to bother with armed conflict. ;)
The Irish position should not be underestimated. It tends to be a bellweather for what others will align with in the future. Ireland tends to use it's soft power very effectively at the global table.
parthdesai · 3h ago
Also, Ireland knows a thing or two about what it is like to be oppressed
alephnerd · 2h ago
> The Irish position should not be underestimated. It tends to be a bellweather for what others will align with in the future
This really overstates Ireland's position in foreign policy studies. No one at Bruegel, ECFR, Institute Montaigne, GMFUS, and the 2-3 other major EU think tanks that are the de facto voice of European policy are taking Irish policy into account. Ireland lost any chance it had of being at the table when the Eurozone crisis happened. Even Spain and Italy have barely rebuilt their credibility.
> Ireland tends to use it's soft power very effectively at the global table
How? Ireland barely comes up in most conversations aside from using IDA Ireland as a model for attracting services FDI.
piltdownman · 2h ago
Citing the Eurozone crisis as if we were analogous on an economic or policy level to Spain/Italy/Greece is just farcical in the extreme. Given our population of ~5 Million we're probably punching above our capita to the largest extent of any EU member-state. Hell, even the Asylum laws governing Europe are named after us:
We are also the only EU country where the Constitution ordains a referendum to validate ratification of any amendments that result in a transfer of sovereignty to the European Union; such as the Nice Treaty which we can prevent from passing on an EU level.
Putting aside the multiple times we have held EU Council Presidencies, how about you take our two-year term on the UN Security Council from 2021 to 2022, where we got UN Security Council Resolution 2594 passed – the first ever Resolution on UN Peacekeeping transitions.
Since 1958, Ireland has maintained a constant presence on UN and UN-mandated peace support operations to the point where many English speakers in the South Lebanon do so with an Irish accent. 86 Irish soldiers have died in service of the UN since 1960.
We also have a particular legacy regarding the IDF and war crimes - Like in 1996 UN position 6-52, near Maroun al-Ras, a platoon of 33 Irish troops was surrounded and isolated from UN headquarters by a mechanised IDF unit. Or in May of this year when Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon came under fire from Israeli forces near a bombed out village at Yaroun
We have lost almost 50 troops in Lebanon alone. Approximately 50% of our casualties have been inflicted by Islamist resistance groups such as Hezbollah – the other 50% by the IDF and their paramilitary proxies in the area.
UNIFIL and Irish peacekeepers were so effective that UNIFIL is disbanded as of next year
germandiago · 4h ago
> but it now supports similar [1] horrors inflicted by Israelis upon Palestinians
I would say that Israel is historically worried about the fact that his enemies want it to make it disappear. There are many things to criticize from them but this is the basic premise.
danbruc · 4h ago
But the solution to that is not making some other people disappear in order to make some room for Jews. And they have already stolen half of Palestine and turned it into their own state and that state is - despite its illegal origin - now internationally recognized and therefore unlikely to be undone. They just have to be satisfied with what they took and stop attempting to take the rest of Palestine, too.
germandiago · 2h ago
I did not say that. But palestinians (well, Hamas actually), painted as angels in the media, are the same people that have been making human shields with their own people.
The ones that say from the river to the...
Right? So Israel people know perfectly who they have in front of them. Poor the kidnapped people by that nest of terrorists that are Hamas (I mean the palestinians themselves here).
But that does not mean Israel will resign to disappear. I dislike sionism. I dislike Netanyahu.
I just try to see it in the most possible neutral way: they want to exterminate Israel and this has been said in all ways in the region.
Are Israel people right? I do not know. Probably no. But that does not make the other side any better.
That said, many innocent palestinians are not to be blamed. But by that measure, normal Israel citizens neither.
Also remember, and I tell you this from first hand citizens: no jewish can peacefully leave in Palestine. They just cannot. Not now. For decades.
How many palestinians went to work to Israel or lived there? Many.
Israel as a society is much more tolerant and does not make human shields with their own population.
That is what I see also. So noone should tell me how good are some and how bad the others. It seems they have a dwath battle of something with the difference that some have been raising, sacrificing and fanatizing their population since young. That is not what Israel does.
noboostforyou · 2h ago
> Israel as a society is much more tolerant and does not make human shields with their own population.
It is an objective fact that Israel has killed almost 20,000 Palestinian children since the beginning of the latest conflict (post Oct 7, 2023).
For comparison, a total of less than 1,200 Israeli's were killed. Which is also unacceptable and Hamas should be condemned. But Israel's continued slaughter of innocent children has gone beyond "defending themselves" and is just as bad, if not worse, than what they claim the other side to be.
You blame Hamas for using people as shields, but do you think Israel is justified in killing all these innocent children in the first place?
> You blame Hamas for using people as shields, but do you think Israel is justified in killing all these innocent children in the first place?
No. I do not justify it. What I say is that Hamas is literally a group that does not care even about their own people as facts show. They usually falsify the data also. So I am not sure how that data is but I acknowledge this is wild.
When I think of these things I think that governments and rulers are what they are. But I wonder if you were a palestinian being a human shield of a piece of rubbish or were an Israelian that wants to take kids to school and you see how they launch missiles from the Gaza side as a routine from schools and hospitals, what would you do? It is a very desperate thing for a civil person.
I prefer to not make criminals out of whom are not criminals. So Hamas and probably Netanyahu are both criminals. But the poor people from Palestine are basically kidnapped by their own governors to an extent that is hardly bearable IMHO. Israel people are also people like you and I and they have a reasonable fear of being smashed. It is not for fun that Israel has spent a huge amount of its GDP in military stuff. They do not do it for fun, whatever people try to convince me of.
It is a really complex situation, that's all. No innocent deserves to die in either side. I just try to make reasonable descriptions of what I see. I am mostly neutral, even with my bias.
sirfz · 4h ago
I'd say the people that are historically and actively actually being disappeared are the Palestinians, the premise is that Israel since inception wants (edit: is) to eradicate Palestinians
0points · 4h ago
It seems they no longer care if their actions make the general public sympathetic to this cause, which is rather troubling for a bystander.
No comments yet
noboostforyou · 4h ago
Do you think that historical worry justifies the tens of thousands of children they are currently killing?
It's frustrating because Israelis and Jews are distinct peoples. This unwavering support for Israel doesn't even necessarily help Jews.
piltdownman · 4h ago
The Ultra-Orthodox can't even join the IDF. The issue is that the US HR Bill passed which legally equated Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism, and the US control the narrative in the english-speaking world around the Genocide. It's Orwellian in the extreme.
conflating jews with israel is biggest anti semitic thing one can do
hn_go_brrrrr · 3h ago
This statement betrays a deep lack of imagination about other things one could do against Jews. Killing them, for instance, or putting them in concentration camps are both far worse than any association you might choose to make with Israel.
clot27 · 3h ago
right
shouldve said one of the biggest
poor wording
catlikesshrimp · 4h ago
Remember there are are radical nationalist / racist / xenophobic groups in germany / anywhere.
Such groups are so strong in Germany that Hitler used them to strenghten the power of his discourse.
Recognizing Israel / the Jews are the ones now doing Genocide would *in the sight of the extremist groups* prove their belief that Hitler was right / the Jews are the devil. (I repeat, in their regard, not mine)
Therefore, my opinion is that the official stance in Germany must be "historical responsability" mainly not for the sake of the Jews, but for the stability of the society.
tdeck · 4h ago
Don't you think there's a risk that denying a genocide everyone can see with their own eyes will feed into antisemitic conspiracy theories?
catlikesshrimp · 3h ago
Yes, they are alreading sharpening their forks and oiling their torches. I think officially recognizing it ("Jews are bad") will drive normal people to don't consider them (the extremists / nazi) conspiracy nuts anymore, because of a "they / we were right all the time" discourse.
I apologize for basically repeating myself. I just wanted to refer to the conspiracy theories you mentioned because calling them that is, ironically, constructive.
tdeck · 3h ago
Officially recognizing the genocide is not the same as saying "Jews are bad".
csomar · 3h ago
Can’t get rid of your jews if there is no place to move them to since Auschwitz is no longer an option.
lavapidgeon · 3h ago
This is a very clear example of people who never live in Germany but do strong worded sentences in the internet.
Simulacra · 4h ago
I may be a radical, but I think everyone should be allowed to participate, and if a country doesn't want to participate, so be it. The organizer should not be deciding which country attends in, which doesn't. OK fine, North Korea we can leave out.
a_paddy · 4h ago
There is precedent, Russia is currently suspended, also for committing war crimes.
alkyon · 2h ago
Other precedent was South Africa, where cultural boycott contributed to dismantling of the apartheid regime. This could also work for Israel.
piltdownman · 2h ago
Not to mention the fact that Ireland also has huge form in this area - having implemented a boycott of apartheid South Africa in 1987, becoming the first Western European state to do so. Ten young Dunnes Stores workers, aged between 17 and 24, refused to handle goods from apartheid South Africa because of how their government treated black people.
This ended up with a strike lasting two years and nine months - unimaginable in the context of today's retail environments.
All countries are equal but some counties are more equal than others?
WastedCucumber · 3h ago
Well, we can also leave North Korea out of the Eurovision Song Contest because it's not part of Europe.
AlecSchueler · 3h ago
Israel and Australia aren't part of Europe either.
ath3nd · 3h ago
Israel is currently committing a genocide in Palestine. It's like inviting the KKK or Nazi war criminals to board game night. Hard pass on anything including Israel until they stop the genocide and repay Palestine for the unspeakable horrors they inflicted and continue inflicting on them. Russia, another country headed by a war criminal, is also excluded.
graemep · 4h ago
What exactly are the criteria for participation.
Being in Europe is not one of them - Israel is not in Europe, nor a few others, and Australia is literally as far away as you can get from Europe.
US is an associate member, but so is Australia so you are right.
India, China, and Brazil are associate members too so they could all take part, potentially.
a_paddy · 4h ago
Participation is based on membership of the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of public service media broadcasters.
tialaramex · 4h ago
A thing that's maybe not obvious to Americans, and maybe even Brits is that "Public Service Broadcaster" is a category based on why it was OK for this to broadcast on the radio frequency, rather than somehow related to how it's funded.
So, NBC etc. in the US are Public Service Broadcasters, whereas a local not-for-profit that has laid their own coax in your city is not a PSB.
In the UK ITV is a PSB, as well as the BBC (which you probably think of) and Channel 4 (which is owned by the state) but if your local school media team uploads local affairs videos to Youtube that's not a PSB.
The idea is there's finite radio bandwidth, the government has decided it gets to decide who uses that bandwidth and how, and so a PSB is an entity which got licensed to use some of that finite space to do something approved. Government policies might require or forbid certain programming, for example maybe you can't advertise cigarettes or you can't swear, but you must have a news show every weekday evening.
The EBU exists because of this same bandwidth issue. Radio doesn't care about politics, so even if adjacent country A and country B hate each other and have closed their borders, the radio waves from A propagate to B and vice versa. So radio "regions" exist which try to duck the politics as much as possible to focus on practicalities. That they don't fully duck politics is how we end up with Israel in Europe but not its immediate neighbours...
dukodk · 3h ago
It’s funny how fast these kinda discussions dissapear from the front page, anyone know if there are any statistics on this?
bebna · 2h ago
Simple, they are basically spam for this platform.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
kklisura · 4h ago
> consider Israel’s presence essential.
Why, why is it essential?
alkyon · 4h ago
It adds to drama. This year Israel had a rather weak song and got very few votes from the jury. But then it almost won thanks to the majority of votes from text messages. Pure magic.
duxup · 4h ago
Eurovision is that cultural thing that I hear about but I just don't get. It probably is as simple as I think it is, but it gets attention that makes me think it is more important and I must be missing something.
piltdownman · 2h ago
It's a hyper-kitsch activity that transcends age and cultural boundaries. In Ireland in particular it's a huge event in the LGBTQ+ calendar - bizarrely enough in large part to Dana International, a pioneer of Israel's LGBTQ+ community who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998.
AlecSchueler · 3h ago
It's like the Olympics or World Cup but for cheesy pop music.
duxup · 2h ago
The Olympics kinda fits my perception, very important at the moment and folks really get into it... but everyone moves on a week later.
Yizahi · 1h ago
Meanwhile Irish President just recently met with Qatar sheikh and wished him good health and discussed cooperation and investments. Thats in full knowledge that they have orchestrated kidnapping of civilians, indiscriminate rocket bombings and other crimes.
So trading with terrorist bankers and protectors, giving them money and influence is just business as usual. While when a dozen citizen of the victim country are visiting EU it's a haram and no no. Hypocrites and terrorist friends, that's who they are.
stopthebullshit · 15m ago
HN is obsessed with Israel.
Probably led by crazy antisemites following Paul Graham's lead.
duxup · 2h ago
Like many such articles surrounding any hint of negativity and Israel, this one is inevitably flagged.
clot27 · 4h ago
Good, Israel must be boycotted.
sammy2255 · 4h ago
Why?
danbruc · 4h ago
Because the goal of the Zionists has always been to conquer all of Palestine and the State of Israel has been following those foot steps since day one. From the river to the sea. This has been declared illegal under international law more than half a century ago but Israel does not care about the law. Therefore Israel should be forced to comply, which means boycotts and sanctions or military force. And we should probably try boycotts and sanctions first before we send tanks. Which is unlikely to happen any time soon anyway as that would mean opposing the USA and we have seen in recent history what happens to people and countries supporting the Palestinians.
stopthebullshit · 16m ago
Israel agreed to the UN partition in 1947, and then Arabs started a war to kill all the Jews there.
Ireland was also the only country to send official condolences to Germany after hitler died. Nothing new under the sun.
przems · 4h ago
I am glad to see this news and I hope more countries join in.
Their efforts to sneak in pro-genocidal messaging through song lyrics, the buying of YouTube ads in most European countries to get as many votes as possible, and the ongoing attempts by EBU to silence all voices that are critical of their efforts to exterminate the people whose land they're occupying; it all makes me disgusted to see countries like Germany coming out with the opposite announcement of boycotting ESC if Israel won't be able to participate.
Of course, EBU will not disqualify Israel from Eurovision, and the reason is obvious for anyone who has checked the list of their sponsors.
Spain government trying to cover up their abundant corruption and economic mismanagement stoking some
good old anti semitism
Luckily spaniards are better than this and Israel took the popular vote in Eurovision and is generally esteemed and respected by decent spaniards
piltdownman · 4h ago
Lmfao. Israel rigged the Eurovision, and couldn't even do that properly. Hurricane wasn’t even in the top 15 streamed Eurovision songs. Yet they got 323 points from the "public", just behind Croatia.
Of course. Most voters didnt care about the songs, the festival is low class garbage.
We just went to the website and swiped the credit card for Israel.
ath3nd · 2h ago
We see an influx of green accounts like yours created literally hours ago to defend the genocide that Israel is committing and what-about it.
Israel is currently a genocider state. Nazis were a genocider state. It's as simple as that. I am sure there were and still are many nazi-apologists, you are doing the same, but for Israel. Stop the genocide.
freechoice913 · 4h ago
I didn't watch Israel's song. I didn't watch any youtube ads (thanks adblock), yet I spent 20 euros on Israel to stop the shameful anti Israel discourse.
a_paddy · 4h ago
I'm genuinely interested in hearing what you consider shameful about the current discourse about Israel?
freechoice913 · 4h ago
If it's not evident I can't do much.
The constant outpour of media content that depicts Israel as cruel and unfair despite there being no real story.
The constant conflation of Israel with antisemitic stereotypes.
The denial of Israel's right to exist in both subtle and gross ways.
European left isn't giving any path to Israel to get respect, they will attack Israel no matter what they do.
jjgreen · 4h ago
depicts Israel as cruel and unfair despite there being no real story
No real story like shooting an unarmed civilian, waiting for relatives to come to recover the body, then shooting them too?
This is only bad if you value Palestinians as people. Occasionally the media does that, despite incentives to the contrary.
Findecanor · 3h ago
In media, "Israel" refers to the current government of Israel and the actions that are done on its behalf. The evidences of war crimes are countless and irrefutable.
Nobody with half a brain conflates Israel's government with Judaism or with the Israeli people, ... but Israel's intelligence services have for a long time had the tactic to influence people to conflate them so as to be able to deflect criticism against its state as being anti-semitism — and they have been quite successful at that.
Similarly, antisemitic groups have taken advantage of the worldwide movement against what Israel is doing in Gaza and sometimes managed to insert themselves and their message among legitimate protests.
For instance, this summer an MP in my country had retweeted an image containing symbolism that she didn't understand — which caused her party to (over)react and exclude her.
I am sure that there is a lot of misleading propaganda going left and right within Israel as well.
It is important to be careful and identify things for what they are.
a_paddy · 4h ago
What conflation of Israel with antisemitic stereotypes?
Is murdering 10's of thousands of women and children an antisemitic stereotype?
Does expressing that Palestinian people are entitled to civil/human rights and self-determination some how deny Israel's right to exist?
0points · 4h ago
The sooner you stop seeing this as a "right vs left" debate and start seeing it as a human catastrophe, the sooner you will start to understand why some people take issue in what Israel is currently doing.
> there being no real story.
Ok, dude. I cannot educate you if you actively refuse to follow the news.
No comments yet
crikeykangaroo · 4h ago
Yet, you've mentioned in your other comment that the festival is garbage...
Pathetic. But not surprising from genocide supporters.
sim7c00 · 4h ago
its a rich mans world...
0points · 4h ago
For those of us who dabble in history, it's not far fetched to see why the Irish people isn't sympathetic towards an occupying force.
> efforts to exterminate the people whose land they're occupying
Just because activists say a thing doesn't make it true. You should make more objective factual claims instead of ambiguously defined or made up ones.
grimblee · 40m ago
There's plenty of evidence that fact is true, it's not even worth discussing at this point
przems · 4h ago
Sure, here's an objective factual claim.
Over 65000 people were killed by the Israeli "Defense" Forces in Gaza since October 7th.
31% of them were children.
JumpCrisscross · 4h ago
> Over 65000 people were killed by the Israeli "Defense" Forces in Gaza since October 7th. 31% of them were children
When “roughly half” of Gaza’s population “are under the age of 18,” your statistic actually describes discretion [1]. As for total kills, the data I’ve seen on CCRs put the IDF’s actions in the precedents range of guerrilla wars.
The way the IDF is conducting the war is, unfortunately, normal. What is not normal is the restriction of food, detention conditions and Netanyahu joining the Russia/China/Turkey club (along with Trump) on throwing out international law.
Thank you. That's much more constructive and you can see from another reply that people are now able to evaluate and challenge them because they're claims of fact.
jacooper · 4h ago
Amnesty and The International Association of Genocide Scholars both called it a genocide.
The Un has announced that it's a human made famine.
And the ICJ put an arrest Warren against the occupations leader.
But sure all of them are wrong and you are right.
tdeck · 4h ago
Let's not forget Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
But many Israel supporters live in a reality distortion field where they're eternal victims and therefore can do no wrong. No amount of well documented war crimes or obvious lies from the Israeli government will make a dent, because Palestinian lives have exactly zero value to them.
foxglacier · 4h ago
Honestly, they could be. Have you read those sources? Here's something I found from Amnesty International.
6.1.1 DIRECT ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS OR INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS
It lists 15 cases of air strikes which it uses to support its claim of killing/harming members of a group which is part of the definition of genocide. However, all/nearly all of them say "Amnesty International did not find any evidence of a military objective.". So it seems possible Amnesty just doesn't know the secret military information and Israel didn't disclose it to them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Do you believe there can't possibly have been any military objectives that make those air strikes legitimate?
If a state attacks, just for example, civilian hospitals (which typically do not contain valid military targets) then, in my view, the burden of proof lies on the attacking state.
Leaving aside, of course, the fact that attacking a civilian hospital, even one that has some military targets in it (say wounded combatants), would also certainly mean killing or injuring many invalid targets, and at that point you should really provide not just evidence of a military target but also evidence that you couldn't attack the target in any other way and that the target is valuable enough to justify the deaths of innocent people.
Which Israel has not done, and really, can't do. Because there really aren't many targets worth bombing a hospital for.
tdeck · 3h ago
> So it seems possible Amnesty just doesn't know the secret military information and Israel didn't disclose it to them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Do you believe there can't possibly have been any military objectives that make those air strikes legitimate?
We don't know for sure that Hind Rajab wasn't planning attacks when she was supposed to be learning the alphabet either.
Maybe she was leading a Hamas cell with a crayon, but the intelligence is too crucial to share!
This style of argument is absurd.
myth_drannon · 4h ago
Not surprised, Ireland was never friendly to Jews/Israel. The only country who officialy expressed condolonces to Germany on Hitler death. Jailed Irish citizens who went fighting against Nazis in Europe. IRA (with KGB) trained PLO terrorists. Irish PM when 9 year old Hamas hostage Emily Hand (Irish national) was returned to Israel said she was found in Gaza after sho got "lost" in Gaza. So I never visited Ireland and don't know the people but this place looks absolutely evil. Together with Spain that was a fascist dictatorship until recently and collaborated with Nazi Germany, Europe has two places dark places that we are going to hear a lot from in the coming years.
P.S. Last year Ireland gave top score to Israel. So by leaving the competition, their elites will not be so embarrassed that the population has a completely different opinion. So possibly the Irish people are not the ruling elites, and it's just the politicians that are nasty ( as usual)
piltdownman · 4h ago
Re: Emily Hand - This was immediately clarified as Eli Cohen taking offense at common phraseology to make anti-semitic strawmen as per usual.
The rest is just Zionist alternate-reality ranting, but I'll sign-off by pointing out that our Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence from 2011 to 2014 is Jewish and worked in Kibbutz' in Israel during his teens
Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, his father and a fluent Irish speaker, was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, 1921 to 1936. From 1936 until his death in 1959, he was Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, and subsequently Israel after its creation in 1948.
And finally the protagonist of James Joyce's Ulysses - Leopold Bloom - is Jewish, in what is effectively our national narrative.
myth_drannon · 2h ago
A list of Irish jews, and? Einstein was a German Jew so suddenly Nazi Germany is ok? Half of Israel's initial PMs and Presidents were from Russia, does it make it a heaven for Jews?
a_paddy · 3h ago
The Irish were actually supportive of the founding of the State of Israel as there was a common bond as persecuted people. The Irish state did caution against the partition of Palestine due to the lived effect of the relatively recent partition of Ireland. It was only when the persecution of those that identified as Palestinian began, that Irish opinion swung against the actions of the State of Israel.
https://www.theirishstory.com/2013/01/23/a-long-and-oddly-in...
myth_drannon · 2h ago
Interesting article that is peppered with half-truths to drive some sort of agenda on Irish nationalism. I see parallels with Ukrainian nationalism, fighting for independence from Russia/USSR they sided with Nazis and as it common with national movements blamed Jews for everything and proceeded to slaughter Jews during WWII. Irish after fighting against British sided with Arab colonialism and are helping slaughter jews everywhere.
a_paddy · 2h ago
Sorry, what?! Everywhere? If you're referring to October 7th, the Irish do not condone what happened and were appalled. And to be clear, the Irish have only ever blamed the British for what the British did in Ireland.
sillyfluke · 4h ago
What ridiculously self-serving drivel. By that logic there is hardly any place in Europe you should be visiting since most at one time or another were led by fascistic governments. Spain fought a civil war to get rid of that garbage. Your opinion is probably not shared by many Jews who recently obtained Spanish citizenship as descendents of those who fled the country in the past.
Wait till you find out about the American stance to Jewish refugees during World War 2.
throw8924389 · 5h ago
And yesterday the Munich Philharmonic was uninvited from an event in Brussel, because their conductor is from Israel.
It's antisemitism, plain and simple.
For instance, nobody would ban a US pop star from an international event just because many disagree with the current policies of the US government.
Compare to the countless global conflicts we have seen in the last decades, including the reactions and overreactions and including wars and military force and ask yourself, why Israel is singled out and moreover why individual jews that are living abroad are singled out.
giraffe_lady · 2h ago
The same munich philharmonic that fired their last conductor because of his unwillingness to denounce putin? Very interesting development!
> because their conductor is from Israel
I believe the issue is not that he is "from israel" but that he is currently the music director of the israeli philharmonic orchestra.
grimblee · 41m ago
Anti-sionisme*
ath3nd · 2h ago
We ban Russian athletes because Russia is waging a war on Ukraine and the Russian head of state is a wanted war criminal.
Israel should be double banned then because they are doing a proven genocide on the Palestinian population and their head of state is also a wanted war criminal.
It's like inviting Hitler supporters to a garden party.
> For instance, nobody would ban a US pop star from an international event just because many disagree with the current policies of the US government.
If and while the US conduct a new genocide on a population (their previous one to the native American population is too far in history to judge the current US populace), I hope we don't invite their pop stars to sing for us.
rashkov · 2h ago
There's nothing proven about the genocide libel. That BBC article is about an association (IAGS) where anyone with $30 can join, whether they are a scholar or not. Twitter/X had a fun time with that over the last week, signing up as genocide scholars under ridiculous names. Furthermore IAGS has around 500 members, and only 129 of them voted with 86% of those supporting the resolution.
“Genocide is the gravest offense known to humankind; to dilute its legal standards for ideological ends is a form of moral violence. It dishonors the memory of past victims, misleads the public about present atrocities, and obstructs efforts to avert future ones,” the Friday statement said.
grimblee · 29m ago
Stop bombing childrens that did nothing while promoting real estate on the rubles and we'll stop the libel.
boxed · 4h ago
Sour grapes after having Israel crush them in the competition.
oliwarner · 4h ago
Weren't there bizarre voting irregularities? A massive discrepancy between judge votes and public votes, as well as far fewer plays on Spotify ahead of voting. Belgium counted +10% votes with -50% viewers (they didn't qualify). Spain, The Netherlands and Ireland also registering similar concerns.
The insinuation being clear that Jewish diaspora were encouraged to vote heavily.
I'm not defending Ireland's performance but Israel's was objectively mediocre too. Eurovision voting is historically biased but it was weird last year.
boxed · 3h ago
> Weren't there bizarre voting irregularities? A massive discrepancy between judge votes and public votes,
That's almost always the case. And both groups were agreed that Ireland wasn't very good :P
> The insinuation being clear that Jewish diaspora were encouraged to vote heavily.
Did you just complain that people voted? Seriously?
oliwarner · 3h ago
> Did you just complain that people voted?
No, several national broadcasters did.
piltdownman · 4h ago
Ireland won the real Eurovision Song Contest in 1992, 1993 and 1994, and had the costly obligation of hosting it in 1993, 1994 and 1995. We have so little interest in winning it, that the single most famous comedy show in Irish history - our Fawlty Towers equivalent - apes our desire to lose the competition to relieve ourselves of the financial burden.
They won back when countries were required to sing in their local language. When that was lifted, they never recovered.
myth_drannon · 4h ago
yes, last year Ireland's entry was truly awful. They should definitely leave because their music is bad.
boxed · 3h ago
Ultimately I think it comes down to not having a strong local competition. Countries that don't have local competitions with similar rule sets should be expected to perform badly.
[1] Feel free to mentally replace similar with any other word that you think more accurately compares the two scenarios.
Germany accounted for 30% of Israel's arms imports between 2019 and 2023. In 2023 it accounted for 47% of Israel's total imports of conventional arms.
Between October 2023 and May 2025, Germany greenlighted the delivery of weapons and military equipment worth €485m to Israel
They since stopped the export of weaponry 'used in gaza' but it's naive in the extreme to accept assurances from the incumbent Israeli government to the contrary.
https://news.sky.com/story/germany-is-one-of-israels-stronge...
N.B. Israel continues to illegally carry weapons through Irish airspace, and kindly refers our government agency to El Al's Legal department on inquiry.
https://www.ontheditch.com/israels-national-airline-departme...
Because that's not the reason (Israel primarily imports weaponry and munitions from the US and India [0]).
The issue is the other way around. A significant portion of Germany's ground AD and defensive systems are sourced from Israel- most notably the Arrow 3 missile shield [1] deal that recently went through. Germany is heavily dependent on Israeli cybersecurity companies as well [2]. Germany is also subsidizing Arrow 3 sales to Ukraine [3].
Protecting your nations citizens always trumps morality, and in Germany's case, it's become even more critical after what happened in Poland this week.
[0] - https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs17/import/isr/show...
[1] - https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/06/09/israel-...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-s...
[3] - https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/israel-sells-missiles-to-ge...
Ireland basically has no army, and is entirely dependent on the UK for it's defense. As such, their politicans are free to say whatever (as long as it is not against the UK) because it's not going to come back and bite them in the behind. That said, that's now changing as the UK is trying to renegotiate the deal [0][1]
[0] - https://www.thejournal.ie/british-ireland-defence-agreement-...
[1] - https://www.irishpost.com/news/britain-and-ireland-to-renew-...
The Irish position should not be underestimated. It tends to be a bellweather for what others will align with in the future. Ireland tends to use it's soft power very effectively at the global table.
This really overstates Ireland's position in foreign policy studies. No one at Bruegel, ECFR, Institute Montaigne, GMFUS, and the 2-3 other major EU think tanks that are the de facto voice of European policy are taking Irish policy into account. Ireland lost any chance it had of being at the table when the Eurozone crisis happened. Even Spain and Italy have barely rebuilt their credibility.
> Ireland tends to use it's soft power very effectively at the global table
How? Ireland barely comes up in most conversations aside from using IDA Ireland as a model for attracting services FDI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation
We are also the only EU country where the Constitution ordains a referendum to validate ratification of any amendments that result in a transfer of sovereignty to the European Union; such as the Nice Treaty which we can prevent from passing on an EU level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nice#The_Irish_refer...
Putting aside the multiple times we have held EU Council Presidencies, how about you take our two-year term on the UN Security Council from 2021 to 2022, where we got UN Security Council Resolution 2594 passed – the first ever Resolution on UN Peacekeeping transitions.
Since 1958, Ireland has maintained a constant presence on UN and UN-mandated peace support operations to the point where many English speakers in the South Lebanon do so with an Irish accent. 86 Irish soldiers have died in service of the UN since 1960.
We also have a particular legacy regarding the IDF and war crimes - Like in 1996 UN position 6-52, near Maroun al-Ras, a platoon of 33 Irish troops was surrounded and isolated from UN headquarters by a mechanised IDF unit. Or in May of this year when Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon came under fire from Israeli forces near a bombed out village at Yaroun
https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-fire...
We have lost almost 50 troops in Lebanon alone. Approximately 50% of our casualties have been inflicted by Islamist resistance groups such as Hezbollah – the other 50% by the IDF and their paramilitary proxies in the area.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/15/un-pea...
I would say that Israel is historically worried about the fact that his enemies want it to make it disappear. There are many things to criticize from them but this is the basic premise.
The ones that say from the river to the...
Right? So Israel people know perfectly who they have in front of them. Poor the kidnapped people by that nest of terrorists that are Hamas (I mean the palestinians themselves here).
But that does not mean Israel will resign to disappear. I dislike sionism. I dislike Netanyahu.
I just try to see it in the most possible neutral way: they want to exterminate Israel and this has been said in all ways in the region.
Are Israel people right? I do not know. Probably no. But that does not make the other side any better.
That said, many innocent palestinians are not to be blamed. But by that measure, normal Israel citizens neither.
Also remember, and I tell you this from first hand citizens: no jewish can peacefully leave in Palestine. They just cannot. Not now. For decades.
How many palestinians went to work to Israel or lived there? Many.
Israel as a society is much more tolerant and does not make human shields with their own population.
That is what I see also. So noone should tell me how good are some and how bad the others. It seems they have a dwath battle of something with the difference that some have been raising, sacrificing and fanatizing their population since young. That is not what Israel does.
It is an objective fact that Israel has killed almost 20,000 Palestinian children since the beginning of the latest conflict (post Oct 7, 2023).
For comparison, a total of less than 1,200 Israeli's were killed. Which is also unacceptable and Hamas should be condemned. But Israel's continued slaughter of innocent children has gone beyond "defending themselves" and is just as bad, if not worse, than what they claim the other side to be.
You blame Hamas for using people as shields, but do you think Israel is justified in killing all these innocent children in the first place?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
No. I do not justify it. What I say is that Hamas is literally a group that does not care even about their own people as facts show. They usually falsify the data also. So I am not sure how that data is but I acknowledge this is wild.
When I think of these things I think that governments and rulers are what they are. But I wonder if you were a palestinian being a human shield of a piece of rubbish or were an Israelian that wants to take kids to school and you see how they launch missiles from the Gaza side as a routine from schools and hospitals, what would you do? It is a very desperate thing for a civil person.
I prefer to not make criminals out of whom are not criminals. So Hamas and probably Netanyahu are both criminals. But the poor people from Palestine are basically kidnapped by their own governors to an extent that is hardly bearable IMHO. Israel people are also people like you and I and they have a reasonable fear of being smashed. It is not for fun that Israel has spent a huge amount of its GDP in military stuff. They do not do it for fun, whatever people try to convince me of.
It is a really complex situation, that's all. No innocent deserves to die in either side. I just try to make reasonable descriptions of what I see. I am mostly neutral, even with my bias.
No comments yet
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2025/israel...
https://www.thefire.org/news/combat-anti-semitism-house-bill...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/us-house-passes-cont...
Such groups are so strong in Germany that Hitler used them to strenghten the power of his discourse.
Recognizing Israel / the Jews are the ones now doing Genocide would *in the sight of the extremist groups* prove their belief that Hitler was right / the Jews are the devil. (I repeat, in their regard, not mine)
Therefore, my opinion is that the official stance in Germany must be "historical responsability" mainly not for the sake of the Jews, but for the stability of the society.
I apologize for basically repeating myself. I just wanted to refer to the conspiracy theories you mentioned because calling them that is, ironically, constructive.
This ended up with a strike lasting two years and nine months - unimaginable in the context of today's retail environments.
https://mandate.ie/2024/07/the-day-10-workers-changed-the-wo...
All countries are equal but some counties are more equal than others?
Being in Europe is not one of them - Israel is not in Europe, nor a few others, and Australia is literally as far away as you can get from Europe.
India, China, and Brazil are associate members too so they could all take part, potentially.
So, NBC etc. in the US are Public Service Broadcasters, whereas a local not-for-profit that has laid their own coax in your city is not a PSB.
In the UK ITV is a PSB, as well as the BBC (which you probably think of) and Channel 4 (which is owned by the state) but if your local school media team uploads local affairs videos to Youtube that's not a PSB.
The idea is there's finite radio bandwidth, the government has decided it gets to decide who uses that bandwidth and how, and so a PSB is an entity which got licensed to use some of that finite space to do something approved. Government policies might require or forbid certain programming, for example maybe you can't advertise cigarettes or you can't swear, but you must have a news show every weekday evening.
The EBU exists because of this same bandwidth issue. Radio doesn't care about politics, so even if adjacent country A and country B hate each other and have closed their borders, the radio waves from A propagate to B and vice versa. So radio "regions" exist which try to duck the politics as much as possible to focus on practicalities. That they don't fully duck politics is how we end up with Israel in Europe but not its immediate neighbours...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hacker News Guidelines
What to Submit
[...]
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Why, why is it essential?
So trading with terrorist bankers and protectors, giving them money and influence is just business as usual. While when a dozen citizen of the victim country are visiting EU it's a haram and no no. Hypocrites and terrorist friends, that's who they are.
Probably led by crazy antisemites following Paul Graham's lead.
Facts don't lie, antisemites like you do.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2025/israel...
By the looks of it, besides Ireland (in OP), Iceland ( https://www.ruv.is/english/2025-09-09-iceland-may-not-take-p... ) and Spain ( https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2025/09/11/spain-thr... ) have also stated their intention to boycott.
Luckily spaniards are better than this and Israel took the popular vote in Eurovision and is generally esteemed and respected by decent spaniards
https://wiwibloggs.com/2025/05/23/eurovision-director-martin...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/may/21/eurovis...
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/eurovision/...
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/05/eurovision-fac...
We just went to the website and swiped the credit card for Israel.
Israel is currently a genocider state. Nazis were a genocider state. It's as simple as that. I am sure there were and still are many nazi-apologists, you are doing the same, but for Israel. Stop the genocide.
European left isn't giving any path to Israel to get respect, they will attack Israel no matter what they do.
No real story like shooting an unarmed civilian, waiting for relatives to come to recover the body, then shooting them too?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/09/the-gaza-famil...
Nobody with half a brain conflates Israel's government with Judaism or with the Israeli people, ... but Israel's intelligence services have for a long time had the tactic to influence people to conflate them so as to be able to deflect criticism against its state as being anti-semitism — and they have been quite successful at that.
Similarly, antisemitic groups have taken advantage of the worldwide movement against what Israel is doing in Gaza and sometimes managed to insert themselves and their message among legitimate protests. For instance, this summer an MP in my country had retweeted an image containing symbolism that she didn't understand — which caused her party to (over)react and exclude her.
I am sure that there is a lot of misleading propaganda going left and right within Israel as well.
It is important to be careful and identify things for what they are.
> there being no real story.
Ok, dude. I cannot educate you if you actively refuse to follow the news.
No comments yet
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1233395830/ireland-pro-palest...
Just because activists say a thing doesn't make it true. You should make more objective factual claims instead of ambiguously defined or made up ones.
Over 65000 people were killed by the Israeli "Defense" Forces in Gaza since October 7th. 31% of them were children.
When “roughly half” of Gaza’s population “are under the age of 18,” your statistic actually describes discretion [1]. As for total kills, the data I’ve seen on CCRs put the IDF’s actions in the precedents range of guerrilla wars.
The way the IDF is conducting the war is, unfortunately, normal. What is not normal is the restriction of food, detention conditions and Netanyahu joining the Russia/China/Turkey club (along with Trump) on throwing out international law.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206897328/half-of-gazas-popu...
But sure all of them are wrong and you are right.
But many Israel supporters live in a reality distortion field where they're eternal victims and therefore can do no wrong. No amount of well documented war crimes or obvious lies from the Israeli government will make a dent, because Palestinian lives have exactly zero value to them.
6.1.1 DIRECT ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS OR INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS It lists 15 cases of air strikes which it uses to support its claim of killing/harming members of a group which is part of the definition of genocide. However, all/nearly all of them say "Amnesty International did not find any evidence of a military objective.". So it seems possible Amnesty just doesn't know the secret military information and Israel didn't disclose it to them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Do you believe there can't possibly have been any military objectives that make those air strikes legitimate?
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/
Leaving aside, of course, the fact that attacking a civilian hospital, even one that has some military targets in it (say wounded combatants), would also certainly mean killing or injuring many invalid targets, and at that point you should really provide not just evidence of a military target but also evidence that you couldn't attack the target in any other way and that the target is valuable enough to justify the deaths of innocent people.
Which Israel has not done, and really, can't do. Because there really aren't many targets worth bombing a hospital for.
We don't know for sure that Hind Rajab wasn't planning attacks when she was supposed to be learning the alphabet either.
Maybe she was leading a Hamas cell with a crayon, but the intelligence is too crucial to share!
This style of argument is absurd.
P.S. Last year Ireland gave top score to Israel. So by leaving the competition, their elites will not be so embarrassed that the population has a completely different opinion. So possibly the Irish people are not the ruling elites, and it's just the politicians that are nasty ( as usual)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clwpz157v1go
The rest is just Zionist alternate-reality ranting, but I'll sign-off by pointing out that our Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence from 2011 to 2014 is Jewish and worked in Kibbutz' in Israel during his teens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Shatter
Chaim Herzog, sixth president of Israel from 1983 to 1993, was born in Belfast and educated in Dublin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Herzog
Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, his father and a fluent Irish speaker, was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, 1921 to 1936. From 1936 until his death in 1959, he was Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, and subsequently Israel after its creation in 1948.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_HaLevi_Herzog
And finally the protagonist of James Joyce's Ulysses - Leopold Bloom - is Jewish, in what is effectively our national narrative.
Wait till you find out about the American stance to Jewish refugees during World War 2.
It's antisemitism, plain and simple.
For instance, nobody would ban a US pop star from an international event just because many disagree with the current policies of the US government.
Compare to the countless global conflicts we have seen in the last decades, including the reactions and overreactions and including wars and military force and ask yourself, why Israel is singled out and moreover why individual jews that are living abroad are singled out.
> because their conductor is from Israel
I believe the issue is not that he is "from israel" but that he is currently the music director of the israeli philharmonic orchestra.
Israel should be double banned then because they are doing a proven genocide on the Palestinian population and their head of state is also a wanted war criminal.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_a...
It's like inviting Hitler supporters to a garden party.
> For instance, nobody would ban a US pop star from an international event just because many disagree with the current policies of the US government.
If and while the US conduct a new genocide on a population (their previous one to the native American population is too far in history to judge the current US populace), I hope we don't invite their pop stars to sing for us.
Here's 514 scholars calling for IAGS to retract: https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com/
“Genocide is the gravest offense known to humankind; to dilute its legal standards for ideological ends is a form of moral violence. It dishonors the memory of past victims, misleads the public about present atrocities, and obstructs efforts to avert future ones,” the Friday statement said.
The insinuation being clear that Jewish diaspora were encouraged to vote heavily.
I'm not defending Ireland's performance but Israel's was objectively mediocre too. Eurovision voting is historically biased but it was weird last year.
That's almost always the case. And both groups were agreed that Ireland wasn't very good :P
> The insinuation being clear that Jewish diaspora were encouraged to vote heavily.
Did you just complain that people voted? Seriously?
No, several national broadcasters did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_for_Europe_(Father_Ted)