The Netherlands’ decision to boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s participation is being sold as a gesture of moral clarity. In reality, it exposes something far older and far more unsettling: a European pattern in which Jews are condemned whether they are powerless or whether they defend themselves.
And the Netherlands is not acting alone. It joins Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia, all of whom have announced simultaneous boycotts — transforming what should be a cultural celebration into a coordinated political act of exclusion aimed at the world’s only Jewish state.
These boycotts do not signal courage. They signal the return of something Europe has never fully confronted.
A Nation That Failed Its Jews — When They Needed It Most
During the Holocaust, three out of every four Dutch Jews were murdered — one of the highest Jewish death rates in Western Europe. This was no tragic accident of geography, nor simply the unavoidable consequence of German occupation. It was made possible, decisively, by Dutch collaboration:
- Dutch police and local authorities helped conduct raids, arrests, and deportations.
- The meticulous Amsterdam population registry, a Dutch bureaucratic triumph, handed the Nazis perfect lists of Jewish residents and their addresses.
- The Henneicke Column, a Dutch bounty-hunting squad, was financially rewarded for every Jew it captured — over 8,000 men, women, and children betrayed for payment.
There were pockets of courageous resistance. There were Dutch citizens who risked everything to hide and protect Jewish neighbours. But as a state apparatus, the Netherlands did not safeguard its Jewish citizens. It delivered them.
And now, in a grim modern echo, the Dutch government once again chooses not to stand with Jews targeted for annihilation but to stand against them — this time by boycotting the one Jewish state defending its people from a genocidal enemy. Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia have simply joined the chorus.
When Jews were defenceless, the Netherlands failed them.
Now that Jews have restored their sovereignty and can defend themselves, the Netherlands — along with three other European states — condemns them for doing so.
A Contagious European Moral Error
It is no coincidence that the boycotting countries share certain narratives: a fashionable anti-Israel activism, a political alignment with anti-colonial rhetoric stripped of historical context, and a willingness to make Israel a symbolic vessel for European guilt.
Spain and Ireland, in particular, frame their boycott as moral solidarity — a deeply ironic pose for governments whose own histories contain political violence, internal repression, and colonial entanglements. Slovenia, a young state born from the collapse of Yugoslavia, now positions itself as a righteous arbiter of global morality while ignoring the complexities of its own region.
What unites them is not moral courage but moral displacement: the urge to condemn Jews for actions any other sovereign state would be expected to take.
The Strange Anti-Colonialism of Former Colonial (and Post-Imperial) Powers
The Dutch campaign against Israel is wrapped in the language of anti-colonialism — language now echoed by Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia. But for the Netherlands — and for Spain, one of history’s most expansive empires — this rhetoric requires a near-total erasure of their own pasts.
For centuries, European powers exploited, extracted, and brutalised foreign populations, including:
- Dutch rule in Indonesia and Suriname
- Spanish domination across Latin America
- Ireland’s complex role as both subject of British imperialism and participant in overseas settlement
- The Balkan legacy of shifting imperial borders, ethnic cleansing, and nationalist violence
Yet these same countries now point toward Israel — a tiny state of a historically persecuted people — and declare it “colonial.”
This is not analysis. This is projection.
It takes Europe’s own historic crimes and transfers them onto the Jewish people, as though shifting the accusation can somehow cleanse European consciences.
The reality is the opposite:
- The Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel.
- Jews did not sail from Europe to the Middle East to build an empire; they originated there, thousands of years before the Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia, or Ireland existed as states.
- It was imperial powers — Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Ottoman, British — that ruled over Jewish land.
Modern Zionism is not European expansionism. It is the long-delayed reversal of European imperialism. It is decolonisation.
Calling Jews “colonisers” in their ancestral homeland is to make the victims bear the crimes of those who oppressed them.
Boycotting the Wrong Side of History — Again
Whether it is the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, or Slovenia, these Eurovision boycotts reveal the same pattern: a Europe that once condemned Jews for being vulnerable now condemns them for no longer being vulnerable.
And at every turn, it calls this condemnation “principle.”
But this is not principle. It is not courage. It is not moral leadership.
It is Europe, once again, standing in judgment of Jews rather than standing with them — whether they are powerless or empowered, stateless or sovereign, hunted or defending themselves.
And history has already shown where that road leads.
