Ritratt: Canva ProThe Malta Entertainment Industry and Arts Association (MEIA) has joined forces with various NGOs advocating for Palestine to launch the campaign “Malta: No Music for Genocide,” calling on the government and Public Broadcasting Services to withdraw Malta’s participation from the next Eurovision Song Contest.
The campaign by MEIA, Moviment Graffitti, the Lebanese Advocates, Ġustizzja għall-Palestina and the Watermelon Warriors follows the European Broadcasting Union’s controversial decision to allow Israel to compete despite the genocide in Gaza.
While a number of countries have announced their withdrawal from the competition as a result, in a perhaps characteristic fashion, Malta proved reluctant to take a stand and is set to compete, with culture minister Owen Bonnici justifying the decision with platitudes on the importance of “dialogue.”
The campaigners, however, made the case that Israel’s participation is helping to legitimise its actions.
They observed that cultural events were inherently political, recalling how Russia was banned from participating in the song contest following its invasion of Ukraine.
At the same time, they noted that while the genocide in Gaza was ongoing, Israel allocated a record budget to its Eurovision participation, “clearly instrumentalising the competition for political ends.”
The campaigners stressed that over 70,000 Palestinians had been killed in an “extermination campaign” in Gaza, a region slightly larger than Malta with a pre-war population of over 2 million people, including through the deliberate targeting of children, journalists and healthcare workers. Moreover, Palestinians across Gaza and the occupied West Bank continued to face displacement, apartheid and systematic violence at the hands of Israel’s army and settlers, and Israel’s aggression extended beyond Palestine with attacks and illegal occupations in Lebanon and Syria.
“Allowing Israel to appear as a ‘normal’ participant in a global cultural event erases these realities, perpetuating the deadly message that Israel can act with impunity,” the campaigners maintained.
“Across Europe and beyond, artists, activists, and civil society organisations have mobilised to challenge Israel’s participation in the Eurovision. While presented as a celebration of unity and diversity, the Eurovision is in reality providing a platform for institutions to whitewash mass violence against civilians,” they said.
The Maltese government was challenge to follow up its formal recognition of the State of Palestine with concrete action, and to thus follow Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Iceland in withdrawing from the Eurovision Song Contest for as long as Israel was allowed to compete.
Artists, creative professionals, cultural organisations and civil society organisations were being urged to endorse the campaign by filling in the form on the campaign website or by sending an email to info@maltanomusicforgenocide.org.
“Malta faces a clear choice: to participate in the normalisation of genocide, or to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, dignity, and self-determination,” the campaign organisers said, adding that the campaign’s first actions would be announced in the coming days.
