Yuval Raphael from Israel with the title “New Day Will Rise” on stage at the second semi-final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest in the Arena St. Jakobshalle. Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa via Reuters Connect

Spanish Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun has joined Slovenia’s national broadcaster in threatening to withdraw their country’s participation in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) if Israel is not banned because of its military actions in the Gaza Strip during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Urtasun appeared Monday morning on the Spanish news show “La hora de La 1 on TVE” and reminded viewers that in May, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called on the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the ESC, to ban Israel from the international competition. Urtasun said on Monday that if Israel participated in the ESC “and we fail to expel it, measures will have to be taken,” as cited by the Spanish daily newspaper La Vanguardia. He said he believes Israel’s participation in the contest cannot be normalized and tolerated.

Urtasun, who is also a spokesperson for Spain’s left-wing alliance Sumar, additionally denied that it is antisemitic to denounce the so-called “genocide” taking place in Gaza and described Israel as a “genocidal government.” He also said he feels pride over Israel’s decision to ban Spanish Deputy Prime Minister and Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz and Minister of Childhood and Youth Sira Rego from entering the Jewish state because of their antisemitic statements and criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the sanctions early Monday against the Spanish politicians because of their “anti-Israel and antisemitic” comments and “support for terrorism and violence against Israelis.” Spain has condemned the move in a released statement. Sanchez is a longtime critic of Israel, and last year called for Israel to be excluded from all international cultural events, including the Eurovision, because of its military campaign targeting Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Spain’s national broadcaster RTVE will ultimately make the final decision regarding Spain’s withdrawal from the ESC.

Meanwhile, the director of Slovenia’s national broadcaster, RTVSLO, has announced that it will likely withdraw from the contest next year if Israel participates. Ksenija Horvat recently said that RTVE has reached out to EBU several times with concerns pertaining to Israel’s participation in the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest and next year’s competition.

RTVSLO called for the expulsion of Israel from Eurovision 2025 and Horvat sent a letter to members of the EBU’s executive board that RTVSLO shared online in May about Israel’s participation in next year’s competition.

“We sent some very specific questions and proposals, just like last year,” Horvat said recently. “Last year we were more or less ignored. This year is basically the same. So, we realistically think that we will not be able to go to the Eurovision Song Contest. If we won’t be able to reach an appropriate system of participation, we will not be there.”

Even the winner of last year’s Eurovision, Austrian singer JJ, has said that he wants Israel to be banned from the Eurovision next year. The 70th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in May 2026 at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria.

The EBU recently extended its penalty-free withdrawal deadline for broadcasters to mid-December, not long after the EBU’s General Assembly will convene and likely discuss Israel’s participation in next year’s competition.

Ahead of last year’s Eurovision, more than 70 former contestants, as well as public broadcasters around the world, called for the EBU to ban Israel from the competition. When the contest ended, and Israel finished in second place, Spain’s RTVE demanded an audit of the voting system after Israel was a favorite in the popular vote. The director of the competition and EBU’s executive supervisor of the ESC both denied accusations that voting was rigged in any way in favor of Israel.

Pro-Hamas protesters led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) demonstrate outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo: Derek French via Reuters Connect

Some college students affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Israel organization that has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, have announced that they are forming a new group, citing dissatisfaction with what they described as JVP’s insufficient efforts to “dismantle Zionism.”

The students announced on social media on Sunday the formation of the Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front, an organization which they claim will take a more adversarial stance toward Zionism on campus. 

“We work to dismantle Zionism in its entirety by confronting Zionist institutions on campus, to struggle for divestment, and to pursue the criminalization of Zionism as a white supremacist weapon of war,” the Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front wrote on Instagram.

 

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The group characterized the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel as a form of legitimate “resistance” and declared the Israeli military response as a “horrific expansion of the Zionist project” and a supposed “genocide.”

“In one month, we also mark two years of the strongest sustained resistance by the might of Palestinian journalists, doctors, men, women, and children, refusing to abandon national liberation and continuously defying vicious onslaught, backed by American dollars,” the group continued. 

The Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front claimed that it adheres to the Thawabit, a Palestinian nationalist framework that includes the so-called “right of return” for millions of Palestinians and their descendants to Israel, claims to Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, and explicit support for so-called “resistance” against the Jewish state. Palestinian leaders and activists have described the Thawabit as a set of principles aimed at eliminating Israel and establishing a Palestinian state in its place.

Critics of the organization often point out that many JVP chapters do not have a single person of Jewish faith. The organization does not require a Jewish person to found a chapter and has even helped orchestrate anti-Israel demonstrations in front of synagogues.

Demonstrators against antisemitism in London on Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: Campaign Against Antisemitism

An estimated 70,000 people participated in Britain’s March Against Antisemitism in London on Sunday, while new research revealed a surge of antisemitic attitudes among the British population — particularly manifesting among those aged 18-24, 40 percent of whom embraced bigoted views against Jews.

The British charity Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) organized the demonstration in partnership with Jewish community groups and featured speeches from Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, Deputy Leader of Reform UK Richard Tice, and journalist Jake Wallis Simons. The UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and CAA’s chief executive Gideon Falter also spoke.

The march progressed from Broadcasting House (the BBC’s headquarters,) to Parliament Square, where a rally began with Mirvis speaking first.

“These are awful times,” Mirvis said. “We have seen an explosion of hatred right across the UK. Antisemitism is rife right across the UK. You will see it. You will hear it. You will feel it. Britain, wake up now.”

Coinciding with the Sunday march, CAA released research conducted by YouGov which showed that those characterized as embracing “entrenched” antisemitic attitudes in the UK had grown to 21 percent, the highest figure on record, showing a jump from 16 percent in 2024 and 11 percent in 2021.

The poll found that nearly half of Britons (45 percent) said Israel treats Palestinians like the Nazis treated Jews, up from 33 percent last year, and with 60 percent of young adults agreeing.

Researchers also found a cohort of Hamas supporters among British young adults, with 10 percent expressing a favorable view and 14 percent rejecting classifying the perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel as terrorists. The number justifying the mass slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages by Hamas reached 19 percent.

A striking 20 percent of young voters said that Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish state, while 31 percent disagreed.

A sizable group of young Britons — 42 percent — also embraced the conspiracy theory that Israel “can get away with anything because its supporters control the media.” Among the broader UK population, 26 percent choose to believe this longstanding antisemitic trope.

“Our country is clearly at a tipping point. These are the highest antisemitism figures that we have ever recorded, having doubled in less than five years. The findings in relation to young people are nothing short of terrifying. Our young people are being radicalized into adopting hateful ideologies before our eyes. Britain will lose its soul to extremists unless the silent majority wakes up,” a CAA spokesperson said in response to the research.

“This nation will be safe, and it will be free. I don’t want a single Jewish person to feel like they have to leave,” Tice said during Sunday’s march. “The sad truth is, we shouldn’t need to be here at all. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if those marches had been banned as they had in other countries we would not have seen the increase of antisemitism in this country. We need to stand United. United as proud Britons.”

The survey showed ignorance among respondents, with 54 percent admitting not knowing the meaning of “Zionism,” while 32 percent did claim an understanding of the term as signifying support for Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel.

Falter said in his speech that “the question now is not whether we will thrive, but will British Jews thrive here.”

Speaking last, Simons, author of the upcoming Never Again: How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, said that “we didn’t ask for this, but since Oct. 7, the Jews and our allies have become the conscience of the nation. Betray the Jews and you betray Britain. Betray the Jews and you betray the west. Betray the Jews and you betray yourself. With extremism raising its ugly head above societies it’s the future of the West truly hanging in the balance. Stand up for the Jews. Stand up for the west. And for the love of God stand up for yourself.”

The CAA’s spokesperson stated that “politicians, police and prosecutors, regulators, media organizations, cultural institutions, universities, trade unions – they are all complicit in the creation of a climate of hatred in Britain. Jews may feel it most sharply now, but for all of us, this is not the country that we used to know. Soon it will be too late for our country to change course.”

The YouGov survey included 2,245 adults who provided answers online between Sept. 1-2. The researchers weighted the sample to correspond with a representation of the population in Great Britain.

The survey came after the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, published a report last month showing there were 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June of this year. It marks the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following the first half of 2024 in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded.

In total last year, CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, the country’s second worst year for antisemitism and an 18 percent drop from 2023’s record of 4,296.