As anti-Israel boycotts and protests roiled this year’s Eurovision song contest in Vienna, some Israelis attending the competition have found unlikely allies: Austria’s youth Green movement and a local café that has openly embraced them.
Earlier this week, Israel’s entrant, Noam Bettan, faced “stop the genocide” chants during his semifinal performance, and the competition went on without countries that boycotted over Israel’s participation, including Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia.
But as Vienna’s police braces for a pro-Palestinian protest during the finale Saturday, some Austrians have mounted their own public shows of support for Israel.
On Sunday, the Young Greens of Austria, a youth left-wing party affiliated with the country’s Green political movement, posted a video on Instagram welcoming Bettan and condemning calls to boycott the Jewish state.
“Boycotting Israels participation in Eurovision, booing and harassing the Israeli artists will not free Palestine,” the caption of the video read. “What it will do is contribute to a hateful environment against jews that make jewish life in Europe more and more unsafe. Which is why we‘re giving zero points to antisemitism!”
In October, Austria’s right-wing government also threw its support behind Israel as calls to ban the country from the competition mounted, with the country’s chancellor, Christian Stocker, pressuring its public broadcaster and Vienna not to host the contest altogether if Israel was excluded.
But despite the shows of support, some Jewish students in Vienna said the atmosphere on the ground told a different story.
At the University of Vienna, the Austrian Union of Jewish Students said it was warned against hosting a public screening of the Eurovision finale Saturday amid safety concerns. Students say the event was only allowed to proceed with extensive security coordination and police presence.
“It’s too dangerous to be openly Jewish and to have a normal public viewing,” Milli Li Rabinovici, the co-president of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students, said in a statement.
Throughout the competition, several coffeehouses throughout Vienna pledged to host competing countries and serve food from their cultures. But when Israel was initially excluded from the list of vendors, a café in the city’s museums quarter, MQ Kantine, decided to host them.
“I read on the newspapers and in social media that all the countries have their places, only Israel didn’t. And so I was quite shocked about that and I said, ‘OK, this is something that we have to do,’” Lisa Wegenstein, the owner of MQ Kantine, told the Israeli outlet Ynet.
“I am not afraid because I think we, I mean, me and my husband, we use this Eurovision Song Contest to make a sign and to tell to the world that it’s horrible to cancel Israeli people, Israeli/Jewish people and not to open their doors for them,” Wegenstein said.
To prepare for Israeli guests, MQ Kantine added falafel, bagels with lox, and kosher wine to its menu and hung a garland with Israeli flags from the ceiling. It now also has a police presence at its door, according to the Associated Press.
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