With the genocide in Palestine continuing by other means, and hidden from public view by the US-Israeli illegal bombing of Iran, I want to lend my full support to Palästina Solidarität Österreich, the Vienna-based NGO dedicated to advocating for Palestinian rights.

This principled organisation is planning an urgent event on 15th May (Nakba Day), entitled NO STAGE FOR GENOCIDE to oppose the complicity of the Eurovision Song Contest in whitewashing the Palestinian people’s genocide. Currently, they are working to organise a counter-concert, a worthy task that the Viennese authorities are, sadly and outrageously, trying to undermine. I trust that Palästina Solidarität Österreich will succeed in making the 15th May memorable, a day to remember as pivotal in helping Vienna reclaim its soul.

As I keep telling friends and foes, if this were 1938, the morning after Kristallnacht, we would all have one task: to protect Jewish life from the Nazis. Today, we have a duty to protect Palestinian life from Israel. Palästina Solidarität Österreich are doing precisely that in Austria. They have my full support.

“The genocide in Gaza is an irreversible turning point. The world is watching this crime in real time – silent and complicit in the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, in the destruction of their present, their past, and their future.”

Foto: © Marcus Hoehn

Eurovision 2026 in Vienna

A non-European state has been invited: an apartheid state, a state that has been committing genocide against the people of Gaza for more than two years, a state that has been waging an illegal war of aggression against Iran for over a month… and the Austrian government has no problem with this.

In 1979, Israel was invited to the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, in Brussels. Belgian activists reacted immediately: they organized a Contr’Eurovision Festival, to which a Palestinian singer-songwriter was invited as the first guest: Mustafa al-Kurd, who was celebrated there as the “Voice of Palestine,” alongside left-wing singer-songwriters from across Europe. José Afonso from Portugal deserves special mention. He became a friend of Mustafa. Sadly, both are no longer with us.

The Contr’Eurovision Festival released two albums featuring all the songs performed by the participating artists, all accompanied by interviews.

From Mustafa al-Kurd we read: „In my songs, I do not only speak to Arab peoples, who know what is happening in Palestine. I also speak to Israeli workers, so that they understand that they too are oppressed.

For me, music is a form of struggle, different from political or military struggle. Music is a weapon with one great advantage: it helps people understand why other peoples are oppressed, and above all, by whom they are oppressed.”

In Brussels, Mustafa al-Kurd sang this song for the schoolgirl Muntaha, who was run over by an Israeli tank during a demonstration in Jenin:

“During an attack by the Zionist invasion forces
Against our people in the West Bank
In Jenin
The schoolgirl Muntaha Hurani was killed
The reports said
Muntaha was crushed under the tracks
Of the advancing invasion tanks
Muntaha was seventeen years old
This is the song about Muntaha
She died a martyr’s death
And lives on
A new school in Jenin
Will bear her name
Muntaha lives on
Until the Palestinians return
As free people in their land”

(Poem: Samih al-Qassem, musical adaptation and performance: Mustafa al-Kurd)

Dr. Sami Ayad was born in Jaffa and experienced the Nakba himself as a child. He is a physician and has been involved for many years in humanitarian projects in Austria. “The genocide and the annexation are destroying the hope of the Palestinians – Israel is robbing them of all their rights.

The government in Austria is complicit in this through its support for Israel,” Sami Ayad has repeatedly criticized. Through Israel’s participation in the ESC, Austria is once again showing its support for genocide and is actively contributing to whitewashing it!