The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) presents itself as a shimmering, sequined oasis of apolitical fun—a night where Europe and its neighbors come together to celebrate pop music, kitsch, and camp camaraderie. Its motto, “United by Music,” explicitly crafts an ontology of the event: a shared, harmonious space where cultural and political differences are suspended for the sake of entertainment. Yet, beneath this glittering surface lies a volatile political and cultural battlefield. Few phenomena expose this tension as starkly as the recurrence of antisemitic discourse that erupts whenever the State of Israel participates. This is not merely a matter of political disagreement with Israeli policy; it is the manifestation of a distinct ontological field of antisemitism—a structured, recurring pattern of perceptions, stereotypes, and logics that shape how Jewish identity, and by extension Israeli identity, is received and constructed within the contest’s symbolic space. 1. The Theoretical Framework: Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Enlightenment To understand the specific quality of antisemitism within a seemingly progressive space like Eurovision, one must turn to the insights of Critical Theory, particularly the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their seminal work, Dialectic of Enlightenment. They argue that antisemitism is not simply a relic of a pre-modern, unenlightened past, but a product of the very Enlightenment project itself. It is a “regression” that occurs within civilization, a "false projection" where the subject—feeling powerless within a complex, reified society—projects its own repressed desires and anxieties onto an object, the Jew. This framework is crucial for deconstructing the Eurovision phenomenon. The contest, with its hyper-modern staging, LGBTQ+ inclusivity, and celebration of technological progress, is a quintessential product of the Enlightenment’s promise of emancipation. It offers a vision of a world where identities are fluid, nations can compete playfully, and music transcends borders. However, as the academic Konstantin Mack notes in his study of the 2018 contest, this very atmosphere of liberation can dialectically give way to its opposite. The victory of a strong, independent, and successful Jewish woman—Netta Barzilai with her feminist anthem “Toy”—did not lead to universal celebration but triggered an eruption of regressive, myth-infused antisemitic abuse. The ontological field of antisemitism is thus activated not by failure, but by perceived success. The Jewish subject is tolerated as long as it remains the victim, the object of pity. When a Jewish artist, particularly one who is also an Israeli, achieves agency, mastery, and wins the game on a European stage, they break the assigned script. This rupture causes the underlying mythology to surface. The Jew is no longer the eternal outsider but a victor, and this inversion immediately maps onto the ancient trope of the "cunning," "controlling" Jew who cheats the system. The emancipatory moment of Netta’s win was instantly haunted by its shadow: the accusation of foul play, of undue influence, of a power that is somehow illegitimate. 2. The Historical Ontology: From the Jüdischer Kulturbund to the European Stage The current demands to exclude Israel from Eurovision are often framed as a novel, morally urgent response to the Gaza war. However, when viewed through an ontological lens, they resonate with a deeply troubling European precedent. As a recent analysis in The Jerusalem Post starkly illustrates, the instinct to remove Jewish participation from the shared cultural square is not new. In the 1930s, Jewish musicians like the conductor Bruno Walter were not merely criticized; they were systematically excluded from Germany’s concert halls and opera houses. They were told, in no uncertain terms, that they could not share the stage. Their art was relegated to the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Culture League), a segregated space where they could perform, but only for Jewish audiences. The message was clear: Jewish culture could exist, but it was not welcome in the common European public sphere. The ontological parallel in the 21st century is striking. When broadcasters from Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Slovenia declare that sharing a stage with Israel is “unconscionable,” they are not calling for a musical critique or a political debate. They are performing an act of cultural excommunication. They are declaring the very presence of the Jewish state to be a form of pollution that renders the entire event morally tainted. While the language has shifted from the crude racial biology of the Nazis to the moral lexicon of human rights and “public values,” the underlying structure of exclusion remains disturbingly familiar. The logic of the boycott is ontologically different from other forms of protest. It does not aim to engage, debate, or criticize the content of the Israeli entry. It aims to erase it. It aims to create a Judenrein cultural space. This is not to equate modern European broadcasters with Nazis, but to identify a recurring pattern in the European cultural unconscious. As the Jerusalem Post article poignantly asks, if you are willing to walk off the stage rather than allow a Jewish singer to perform, "are you not, in that moment, recreating the very logic you claim to abhor?". The ontology of the Jewish performer in Europe is thus conditional: they are a guest whose invitation can be revoked when the political climate turns, revealing a tenuous belonging that is not afforded to others. 3. The Mechanics of Myth: Conspiracy, Power, and the "Unseen Hand" A central component of the antisemitic ontological field is the conspiracy theory. In the context of Eurovision, this manifests most clearly in the reaction to Israel’s success in the public televote. In both the 2024 and 2025 contests, Israeli entries received a groundswell of support from viewers across Europe, propelling them to high finishes despite receiving comparatively low scores from professional juries. This public vote, a mechanism designed to democratize the contest, became a site of intense suspicion when it favored Israel. Dr. Susanna Kokkonen, a Holocaust scholar, observed this phenomenon firsthand in Finland following the 2025 contest, where Israeli singer Yuval Raphael finished second. Instead of accepting the result, some Finnish media and broadcasters launched a campaign to change the voting rules, claiming that Israel’s victory was not genuine but the result of a massive, clandestine campaign by "unseen people". This accusation is a textbook example of antisemitic conspiracism. It resurrects the ancient myth of a secret Jewish cabal that wields hidden power to manipulate world events for its own benefit. This trope, which finds its most infamous expression in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, operates by denying the agency and authenticity of Jewish success. The public vote cannot be a genuine expression of millions of individual Europeans liking a song; it must be manufactured, inauthentic, and controlled by shadowy forces. As Kokkonen notes, this discourse "smells of antisemitism" because it applies a different standard to Jewish success. The cheers of the crowd for another country are democracy; the cheers for Israel are a conspiracy. This mechanism of "false projection" allows the antisemitic subject to resolve a cognitive dissonance. The modern, enlightened European cannot admit to liking an Israeli song because of the political narrative surrounding the state. When millions of others do like it, rather than question their own political framing, they project the cause onto a sinister, all-powerful "other." The ontological field here is one of invisible manipulation, where the Jewish performer is not a singer but a puppet master, and the audience is not a collection of individuals but a hypnotized mob. This logic serves to delegitimize Israeli success and reframe it as a threat that must be neutralized by changing the rules of the game. 4. Case Studies: Netta’s "Toy" and Yuval’s Ballad The specific contours of this ontological field are best illuminated by examining the two most significant Israeli entries in recent years: Netta Barzilai in 2018 and Yuval Raphael in 2025. Netta Barzilai (2018): The Emancipated Woman as a Target Netta’s winning song, "Toy," was a self-declared feminist anthem about female empowerment, using kitschy, loop-based pop to deliver a message of rejecting toxic relationships and patriarchal control. Its music video featured Netta as a woman-child playing with stereotypes of cuteness and power. The victory of this quirky, body-positive Jewish woman from Tel Aviv should have been the ultimate Eurovision fairy tale. Instead, it triggered a torrent of online hate. As Mack’s research shows, the backlash was saturated with anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist imagery. Netta was depicted as a greedy, manipulative figure, often accompanied by hooked-nose caricatures and references to Jewish control of money and media. The emancipatory content of the song was completely inverted. Her very assertion of power and joy on stage was read through the lens of the "domineering" Jew. The ontological field here was one of gender and race intertwined. A Jewish woman asserting agency was doubly transgressive, violating both patriarchal norms and the unspoken rule that Jewish visibility should be modest and apologetic. Yuval Raphael (2024/2025): The Victim as a Threat The case of Yuval Raphael presents a more complex and perverse manifestation of the same logic. Yuval, a survivor of the horrific Nova music festival massacre on October 7, 2023, represented a different kind of Israeli identity on the Eurovision stage. Her ballad, "A New Day Will Rise," was a somber, powerful piece about resilience in the face of trauma, incorporating a verse from the biblical Song of Songs. One might have expected that the presence of a survivor of a terrorist attack—a young woman who hid under the bodies of her friends to survive—would evoke universal sympathy. It did not. Instead, the protest movement against her participation was arguably even more intense. This reveals a dark, paradoxical depth to the antisemitic field. The Jewish victim is only acceptable when powerless and distant. A living, breathing Jewish victim who also carries the passport of a nation capable of defending itself, and who chooses to stand on a European stage and sing, becomes an unbearable contradiction. Her very presence is a reminder of Jewish resilience, which the antisemitic worldview cannot tolerate. The protests against her were not just about Gaza; they were a refusal to allow the Jewish victim to reclaim their own narrative and their own humanity in a public space. The survivor of the Nova festival was reframed as a representative of a "genocidal" state, her personal trauma erased and subsumed into a political abstraction. In this ontological field, the Jew is trapped: damned as a victim for being weak, and damned as a perpetrator for being strong. 5. The Role of Social Media: The Unstructured, Volatile Space The contemporary ontological field of antisemitism is not confined to the statements of broadcasters or politicians; it thrives in the chaotic, unstructured space of social media. Here, the mythological tropes are reproduced, mutated, and amplified at an astonishing speed and scale. The reaction to Israel’s Eurovision participation offers a case study in how digital platforms facilitate the spread of hatred. Following both the 2018 and 2025 contests, social media platforms were flooded with content that went far beyond legitimate political criticism. This included the rapid dissemination of antisemitic memes, the use of Nazi imagery to depict Israeli singers, and coordinated harassment campaigns against journalists and fans who supported the Israeli entries. The anonymity and global reach of these platforms create a perfect environment for what Adorno called the "authoritarian personality" to flourish—individuals who, feeling powerless and resentful, latch onto simplistic, conspiratorial explanations for complex realities. The ontological field on social media is one of absolute fluidity. Here, the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism becomes entirely porous. A post criticizing Israeli military policy can, within seconds, devolve into a comment thread filled with classic antisemitic slurs and calls for violence against Jews everywhere. The image of Yuval Raphael, a girl who escaped a massacre, is shared alongside accusations that she is a "liar" or a "Zionist occupier." The logical contradictions are irrelevant; the goal is the destruction of the Jewish subject’s symbolic legitimacy. This digital ecosystem acts as the id of European public discourse, giving voice to the mythological urges that are repressed in polite society.