Cameras caught an anti-Israel protester at Sunday’s Eurovision opening event, the “turquoise carpet,” making a throat-slitting gesture and spitting in the direction of the Israeli delegation to the competition.
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual international competition in which participating countries – most Eurovision, but also including some outliers such as Australia, Azerbaijan, and Israel – send an artist to perform an original song. A point system using both popular televotes and a professional jury determines the winner. Israel has been participating in the contest since 1973 and has won four times.
While Israel has been a staple at the flamboyant, kitschy event for decades, the surge of anti-Israeli and antisemitic sentiments in Europe in the past decade has resulted in increasingly loud and sometimes violent calls for the country’s ouster from the competition. Those calls grew following the expulsion of Russia from Eurovision in 2022 in response to that country’s full-scale invasion of another competitor, Ukraine, that year and grew to a fever pitch following the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre of civilians in Israel.
Protesters hold Palestinian flags and signs as they attend a demonstration against Israel’s participation during the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 opening ceremony in Basel on May 11, 2025. ( STEFAN WERMUTH/AFP via Getty Images)
Yuval Raphael representing Israel attends the Turquoise Carpet of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest Opening Ceremony at Messe Basel on May 11, 2025 in Basel, Switzerland. (Harold Cunningham/Getty Images)
The 2024 Eurovision contest was hosted by the 2023 winner as is tradition: Sweden, which chose the Islamic migrant hub of Malmö, as its host city.
Israel was the invaded party on October 7, but radical leftists and pro-Hamas protesters, including hundreds of artists and Israeli rivals at the contest, demanded unsuccessfully that the controlling European Broadcast Union (EBU) oust Israel.
Israel’s representative at the contest this year is singer Yuval Raphael, who was present and survived the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival on October 7, singing the song “New Day Will Rise.” The Nova festival was the site of some of the most gruesome atrocities committed by Hamas on that day, including extensive documented rape and sexual violence. Raphael’s song focuses on a message of overcoming hardship and sharing in the pain of grief to press forward toward the future.
Eurovision’s “turquoise carpet” is essentially a red carpet parade to welcome contestants to the festival. This year, the titular carpet was located in Basel, Switzerland, the homeland of last year’s winner, and was surrounded by a mob of angry anti-Israel protesters, who booed Raphael and her delegation.
The Iran-linked media outlet Al Mayadeen documented protesters loudly marching the streets of Basel accusing Israel of “genocide” and demanding its singers not be allowed to participate in Eurovision.
Raphael made her appearance on the turquoise carpet to the sound of her song and waved the Israeli flag.
She at one point appears to wave her flag in the apparent direction of protesters carrying a sea of Palestinian flags and what appeared to be one lone rainbow flag representing the gay community, which Hamas actively persecutes.
One protester at the scene wearing a keffiyeh, was caught on camera making a slashing gesture with his finger across his throat, an apparent threat to the Israeli team.
Hamas terrorists beheaded many of their civilian victims on October 7, according to Israeli law enforcement and forensics teams who shared their findings following the massacre with journalists.
The man remains unidentified at press time. The Israeli national broadcaster KAN, which organizes Israel’s Eurovision presence, confirmed on Sunday that it had filed a complaint with police asking Swiss authorities to help identify the man and take legal action to protect Raphael and her team. Swiss police have not updated the press about any new information regarding the incident at press time.
The anti-Israel protesters persisted in their protest throughout the parade of contestants, waving their flags even in the background of acts that have no overt relationship to Israel of the Middle East conflict generally. This led to some bizarre moments such as when the Swedish competitors this year, the Finnish comedy rap group KAJ, performed their signature dance on the turquoise carpet to a backdrop of Palestinian flags. KAJ are currently the frontrunners, according to bookmakers, in the tournament with their song “Bara Bada Bastu,” an homage to saunas.
The contest organizers in Basel announced in April that they would ban artists from bearing flags other than the one flag representing their competing country but allow the audience to wave any flag they want, with the exception of “flags with racist and/or discriminatory content, including symbols that incite hatred or violence; flags that may be considered offensive or defamatory; and flags with symbols of banned terrorist organizations.” This allows protesters to bring large Palestinian flags to the Europe-focused event but means that KAJ, a Finnish band, cannot wear or wave the flag of Finland as they are representing Sweden in the contest. Similarly, Sissal, the singer representing Denmark, issued a public statement lamenting that she could not bring a flag of her native Faroe Islands to the stage even though the Faroe Islands are part of Denmark because it is not the national flag of her competing country.
Raphael’s presence on the turquoise carpet was notable as her predecessor Eden Golan, who represented Israel at Eurovision in 2024, did not attend the event in response to a barrage of threats from anti-Israel and antisemitic “protesters.” The 2024 competition has already become notorious for the elevated tension and hostility among contestants and the gigantic pro-Hamas protests that flooded host city Malmö. Swedish police estimated a year ago that as many as 10,000 people gathered to demand Israel be ousted from the contest, among them the leftist activist Greta Thunberg.
Multiple contestants openly complained to media that they rejected Golan’s presence at the contest. One artist, Ireland’s Bambie Thug – whose act featured Satanic and pagan imagery – claimed to have “cried” with sadness that Golan qualified for the Eurovision final and ultimately placed highly in the Grand Final.
The anti-Israel tensions at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest occurred alongside what officials later called an unrelated incident in which the singer representing the Netherlands, Joost Klein, was disqualified from the contest shortly before performing after an alleged complaint by a “female member of the production crew” that he had been threatening. Klein denied any such threats and charges against him were ultimately dropped, but online rumors swirled linking the Israeli delegation, with no evidence, to Klein’s situation. Klein later wrote an album about his bitterness towards the experience and the EBU in particular featuring Tommy Cash, the artist representing Estonia at the contest in 2025.
