MALMO, Sweden – Not everyone in Malmo welcomed the Eurovision Song Contest to the city.
Thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrators protested in the Swedish port city on Thursday against Israel’s participation in the pan-continental pop competition.
Protesters waving green, white, black and red Palestinian flags packed historic Stortorget square, near Malmo’s 16th-century town hall, ahead of a planned march through the city to a rally in a park several kilometers from the Eurovision site. Police estimated that between 10,000 and 12,000 people participated. Among those present was Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Singing “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” and “Israel is a terrorist state,” protesters threw sparks in Palestinian colors during a peaceful and noisy demonstration to criticize Israel and call for a ceasefire. There was a large police presence, with a helicopter hovering and officers on rooftops with binoculars.
“It’s important to be here,” said Amani Eli-Ali, a Malmo resident of Palestinian heritage. “It is not right for Sweden to organize this Eurovision and have Israel in the competition.”
Protester Saadallah Aoudi, a Swedish citizen with Palestinian roots, said “this is the wrong time” for Israel to participate in the competition.
“It’s about songs, and songs are about love. … They should be here when there is peace,” he said.
The Israel-Hamas war, which killed almost 35,000 Palestinians, brought a shocking juxtaposition to Eurovision week in Malmo. Music fans in colorful sequined outfits or draped in their national flags mingled in the streets with supporters of the Palestinian cause in keffiyeh scarves.
Palestinian flags fly from windows and balconies along a pedestrian thoroughfare that has been temporarily renamed “Eurovision Street.”
A small pro-Israel protest was also held on Thursday in a central square in Malmo.
Pro-Palestinian groups plan to march again on Saturday, the day of the Eurovision final.
The Israeli government warned its citizens about a “tangible concern”: Israelis could be the target of attacks in Malmo during the competition.
Contest organizers, who try to keep Eurovision a non-political event, have rejected calls to stop Israel from waging its war against Hamas.
But they told Israel to change the lyrics of its entry, originally titled “October Rain,” in an apparent reference to Hamas’ cross-border attack on October 7, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and sparked the war. The song was renamed “Hurricane” and Israeli singer Eden Golan was allowed to remain in the contest.
Some audience members who attended a dress rehearsal on Wednesday could be heard booing during the performance of Golan’s power ballad. But on Thursday she won enough votes from viewers to place in the top 10 of the 16 artists who competed in the semi-final and earn a spot in Saturday’s title match.
Critics of the decision to let Israel compete point out that Russia was expelled from Eurovision in 2022 following its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Belarus was expelled a year earlier due to its government’s crackdown on dissent.
“We should be united by music, but we are not united, because Israel is participating,” said Malmo resident Anders Trolle-Schultz, who took part in the protest.
“I think Malmö should have kept Eurovision, but we should have said to Israel: ‘Stay away’, or maybe even said: why don’t we invite a Palestinian musical group to participate? That would be fair.
Historian Dean Vuletic, author of “Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest,” said Eurovision has been a hotbed of political controversy. Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 led to a Greek boycott the following year. Georgia withdrew from Eurovision in 2009, a year after fighting a brief war with Russia, after organizers rejected the proposed song, “We Don’t Wanna Put In” – an obvious reference to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“Whenever countries compete against each other, things get political,” and Eurovision has always reflected the “political zeitgeist” in Europe, he said.
While competitions over the past two years have seen a groundswell of support for Ukraine, this year “we see Europe divided over the war in Gaza.”
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