Noa Kirel performs the song "Unicorn" at the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 final in Liverpool, England/Corinne Cumming/EBU/Kan 11
After a former French representative attacked Israel and called for a boycott, singer Montaigne, who represented Australia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, joins the call. In a post on her Instagram, she stands alongside Le Zara, who will represent France at Eurovision 2023, and announced that she has attached her name to a petition calling for a boycott of Israel from this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden.
"The competition worked against Russia when it invaded Ukraine and therefore there is no reason not to do the same with Israel, a country that has committed brutal atrocities not only since October 2023 but since the Nakba in 1948," Montaigne wrote. "We are now witnessing a second Nakba in real time. Such inhumanity is not part of the spirit of Eurovision. It is a competition designed to unite countries in cooperation and love. You can't take part in that when you're murdering civilians and children in droves."
Montaigne/Screenshot, YouTube
During the pre-Eurovision Song Contest held in Norway on Saturday, a protest against Israel was recorded by one of the spectators who burst from the audience onto the stage, wrapped in a Palestinian flag and wore a shirt that read "Boycott Israel." The stunned moderators were speechless and unresponsive. After a few seconds, she walked off the stage and the competition continued as usual.
A few days earlier, singer Le Zara, who represented France in the last Eurovision Song Contest in which she competed alongside Noa Kirel, called for Israel to be eliminated from the contest because of the war in Gaza. "During my participation in Eurovision, I had the privilege of meeting an extraordinary audience, made up of passionate and loving people. We were all united by the music, and we conveyed a message of peace and love, both from the participants and the audience. As expected, the whole nation supported Ukraine, and Russia was eliminated from the competition," the French-Canadian singer, whose real name is Fatima Zahra Hafadi, wrote on Instagram.
"Unfortunately, we are witnessing once again a massacre, a genocide of Palestinians, alongside attacks in the West Bank and Lebanon. We are witnessing a calculated and deliberate attempt to take over the area," she added. "Eurovision is a political contest, and I'm aware that artists are very afraid to express themselves. In any case, the public has the power to move mountains if it so desires. The audience I met was imbued with love and strength, which is why I am addressing you. Let's exclude Israel from this competition, just as Russia was ousted because of the atrocities it commits," she concluded.
Le Zara at the last Eurovision Song Contest/Sarah Louise Bennett / EBU
La Zara's triple finger at Eurovision/Screenshot, Twitter screenshot
Le Zara finished 16th in the competition, in which she participated with the song "Évidemment" ("Obvious"). She received fifty points from the jury and perhaps expected the audience to save her, but it did not happen - she received only 54 points from him, finishing with 104 points that placed her in an unrespectable 16th place. Immediately after the announcement of this at the Eurovision broadcast, the camera focused on her, and the musician reacted to her defeat in an unusual way - a triple finger directly into the camera to show the audience what she thought of him.
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