A new acronym emerged a couple of months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza: WCNSF. “Wounded child, no surviving family”. That acronym is unique to Gaza, experts like paediatrician Dr Tanya Haj-Hasan with Médecins Sans Frontières have said. Normally it’s rare for doctors to treat a child who has lost their entire family. But there has been nothing “normal” about the genocide in Gaza, where whole bloodlines have been wiped out and there are more child amputees than anywhere else in the world. Nothing normal about scores of doctors coming back from a landscape of rubble with reports of kids being deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers.
Despite a supposed ceasefire being in place, Gaza remains hell on earth. Essential medical supplies are not getting in and Amnesty International has said Israel is still committing genocide. (Israel has denied this, of course, just as it denies everything it is accused of.) But while traumatised orphans are now freezing in makeshift tent camps, there is a little heartwarming news: nothing is going to stop the Eurovision song contest from continuing with its mission of “unity and cultural exchange.” Eurovision will continue to roll out a blood-red carpet for Israel, even though at least four European countries (Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia) have now pulled out in protest. Because this is what unity looks like, folks!
Eurovision, of course, banned Russia from competing in 2022 over the “the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine”. But the crisis in Gaza (and the West Bank), it seems, is completely different. Forget the fact that Israel was accused of using unfair vote practices last year in what appears to have been an attempt to politicise Eurovision. Forget the fact that Israel is accused of killing a three-year-old girl in Gaza on Sunday. Forget the fact that settler violence and forced displacement in the West Bank have surged. Forget the fact that international journalists are still blocked from freely reporting in Gaza. None of this, it would seem, should be allowed to get in the way of Eurovision’s spirit of unity.
The contest turns 70 next year – almost double the average life expectancy of someone in Gaza now. The show may go on, but it will never be able to restore the camp joy it used to represent. A contest that once promoted peace has now become a cynical way to whitewash war.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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