My despair at all those deranged Eurovision hate pixies

THE older I get, the more I think that humans – as a species – are becoming increasingly bonkers. If not all, then quite a lot of them. Take, for example, the hysteria over Eurovision. The annual event is a silly, kitsch, largely irrelevant music competition (I use the term ‘music’ loosely) in which embarrassing, regional acts perform pale approximations of proper pop songs against a background of cheerful xenophobia.

Occasionally, a decent act slips through (Abba, Maneskin, Domenico Modugno) but mostly it’s all just overblown pyrotechnics and daft outfits.

In the case of the British entry, it’s invariably a virtue-signalling ninny in a ripped T-shirt who thinks that simulating sex with crotch-grabbing dancers dressed as rent boys and pontificating about how much he hates the British flag will compensate for lack of vocal talent.

It doesn’t, but who cares. It’s just a bit of a laugh.

Or it was until Greta Thunberg and her army of hate pixies showed up and made it all about something else. Draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, the Swede, 21, explained in her characteristically sanctimonious manner: ‘Young people are leading the way, and showing the world how we should react to this.’ If only that were the case.

Sadly, I am no longer a young person, but if I were I’d like to think that my reaction – and that of my peers – to the brutal rape, murder and mutilation of hundreds of young people at the Nova music festival last October 7 by a group of Hamas terrorists funded by Iran’s totalitarian dictatorship that imprisons, tortures and murders girls like me would be absolute solidarity with those victims.

Instead, at Eurovision and elsewhere,

there is sympathy for the supporters of those terrorists and their vile actions, blind hatred for Israel for daring to defend itself and its citizens – and an attempt to mobilise thousands of others to bully and intimidate Israel’s entry, Eden Golan, whose only crime (apart from her awful fake nails) is her nationality. The 20-year-old was booed for performing a song about survival in the face of suffering. She was forced to lock herself in her hotel room for fear of being attacked. She’s been treated as if she was responsible for decades of conflict in the Middle East.

I’ve always thought Thunberg was a bit odd, but I didn’t realise she was nasty, too.

But the insanity doesn’t stop there. A Brighton-based group calling itself ‘Queers for Palestine’ (they do know, don’t they, what

A VICAR armed with a chisel tries to break the protective glass on the Magna Carta as part of a Just Stop Oil protest. A vicar. The Church of England really is a joke.

happens to homosexuals in places run by hardline Islamic regimes such as Iran?) posted online the contact numbers of venues that were planning to host Eurovision nights, urging people to tell them ‘to reconsider’ because the organisers were ‘complicit in genocide’ for allowing Israel to participate.

Inevitably, the BBC reported this on Newsnight alongside an interview with a drag queen called ‘Crystal’ by presenter Kirsty Wark (poor woman: decades of experience as a respected broadcaster and this is what it’s come to).

Through thick mauve make-up and false lashes, Crystal said: ‘I was going to host my own screening event, with 800 people

screaming, cheering along, but decided to join the boycott because of Israel’s inclusion.’

I’m sorry Crystal’s party was ruined – but seriously, is this how low we’ve sunk – that the cancellation of a North London party is worthy of a slot on Newsnight?

And doesn’t the irony of a drag queen complaining about the inclusion of Israel – a nation where LGBT culture flourishes as almost no other, and which was the first country in the history of Eurovision to field an openly trans contestant (the fabulous Dana International in

1998) – occur to

any of these people? Or are they just too thick to see it? Young women such as Israel’s Eurovision entry Eden Golan are not the enemy of the Palestinian people. That enemy is Hamas and the terrorist network that oppresses Palestinian civilians, building a network of tunnels under their homes and hospitals, filling their heads with hatred for Jews, fuelling this endless and brutal conflict with their barbaric actions. For the record, I didn’t think much of Golan’s song (though I liked her dress). It was a second-rate, sub-Celine Dion ballad with abysmal choreography. But I defend her right to perform for the simple fact that I believe in a world where young women with silly nails can dance and sing as much as they want without being afraid.

And I defend her because the fact that so many young people across the world have been trying to stop her represents a kind of derangement I shall never, as long as I live, understand.