What my week at Eurovision taught me about antisemitism, Europe and Israel

There is a familiar smell in the air at the Chabad Lubavitch centre in Basel. It’s the night before the Eurovision Grand Final and rebbetzin Dvora has cooked a feast for the 20-odd blow-ins seated around the dinner table: chicken soup, gefilte fish, roasted aubergine, salmon, salad, and fluffy rolls of challah. If I close my eyes I may as well be in my grandmother’s kitchen.

But the same is probably true for the two dozen Jewish strangers around this Shabbat table, some of whom are Swiss, some Israeli, some American, most here in Basel for the Eurovision Song Contest, like me.

In this Swiss city, where Theodor Herzl chaired the First Zionist Congress and “founded the Jewish state,” as he wrote in his diary in 1897, and where some 2000 Jews currently reside, it feels only natural that I should end up at Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski and his wife Dvora’s Shabbat table.

Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, leans over the balcony of the Hotel Trois Rois during the first Zionist congress August 29, 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. (Photo by GPO via Getty Images)Getty Images

Last week Basel hosted 200,000 visitors for the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest – more than the population of the city itself – and was, at least temporarily, overtaken by two parallel attitudes. The foremost was one of joy, the sort you’d expect to find in a city celebrating the colourful, campy, unifying festival that is Eurovision, and the other was one of vociferous opposition, driven by anti-Israel activists who view the European contest as an “artwashing” platform for the "genocidal,” propaganda-pushing Israelis.

A man waves an Israeli flag in front of protestors attending a demonstration against Israel's candidate prior to the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel on May 17, 2025. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

Fortunately for Jews and Israelis in Basel, the former seemed to prevail over the latter during this year’s contest, won by Austrian singer JJ with Israel’s Nova-survivor performer Yuval Raphael coming in a close second. And according to some Jewish locals, the warm and welcoming atmosphere that many experienced in Basel despite the protests should come as no surprise.

“We in Basel are a little bit outstanding within Switzerland because we are defined by living at the crossroads of three countries,” says Steffi Bollag, Community President of The Israelite Community of Basel (IGB), one of Basel’s leading Jewish groups. “We are very open-minded.”

The IGB has existed in Basel for 200 years and, with nearly 900 members, it’s a major centre for Jewish life in Basel, encompassing the largest synagogue in the city and providing Jewish educational programmes for primary school children.

The largest synagogue in Basel. (Nicolas Janberg)[Missing Credit]

“I grew up coming to this Jewish school when I was a child, and we never had bad experiences,” Bollag says. “I grew up in this strong self-consciousness and never imagined I could go somewhere and feel afraid to say that I was Jewish.”

The IGB is itself a model of Swiss tolerance: though the synagogue adheres to Orthodox religious traditions, it welcomes Jews of all levels of observance.

“We’ve always had this democratic way of accepting different opinions, and I’m very fond of this system,” says Bollag. “I think everything is becoming more extreme, so we are a good example of how it is possible to live together.”

Another such example came along on the Friday before Eurovision, when the IGB hosted Azerbaijani representative Asaf Mishiyev for Shabbat. They were delighted when Mishiyev was accompanied to the synagogue by his bandmate Hasan Heydar, who is Muslim.

“I think that’s a wonderful sign,” Bollag says.

But Bollag and Basel’s Jewish community still live, like Jews everywhere, in a post-October 7 world; the synagogue displays an Israeli flag next to a Swiss flag within its gated entrance, publicly demonstrating the community’s allegiance to the Jewish State, but they were advised to take it down for security purposes. They didn’t.

A pro-Israel demonstrator holds a placard bearing the name of Israeli singer Yuval Raphael outside the St. Jakobshalle arena prior to the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel on May 15, 2025. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP) (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images

"Of course people are resilient, we can adapt, but the fact that there is a Eurovision Song Contest in our town and that our joy is not unlimited because we have to be careful, we have to be aware - nobody would have thought that before October 7,” Bollag says.

Sacha Eitan, a Jewish Basel resident I met during an Israel solidarity rally ahead of the second Eurovision semi-final on Thursday, is convinced that antisemitism showed its “ugly face at the ESC last year and this year” and remains a prevalent undercurrent in Switzerland.

“Since October 7, I have had issues with showing the Israeli flag,” Eitan says. “I wear my Magen David but I think about it every day depending on where I go – I'm not feeling as safe as I felt before as a Jew in Basel and as a Jew in Switzerland.”

For Jewish writer and theologian Ari Yasmin Lee, who lives between Basel and the Swiss city of Biel, it’s important that people remember modern antisemitism isn’t just apparent through the Trojan horse of left-wing anti-Zionism but on the right as well.

“My 19-year-old son received death threats two weeks ago after telling another musician in his philharmonic orchestra that he was Jewish – later, that person said he should be burned because he’s Jewish,” Lee says. “That person was a neo-Nazi, not a Palestine activist.”

I met Lee along the route of the anti-Israel protest taking place in central Basel on the evening of the Eurovision Grand Final. It is difficult to hear one another; demonstrators clap in unison and chant “Viva, viva, Palestina” and other slogans in Swiss German while we discuss, aptly, antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in Switzerland.

“When I heard Basel would host Eurovision, I was concerned about the safety of the Jewish community here and of the Israelis travelling here,” Lee says. “Having seen what was going on in Malmö, I was worried.”

Several people I meet in Basel repeat the same thing when discussing the differences between last year’s mass protests in Malmö during the 2024 Eurovision contest and this year’s relatively small-scale demonstrations, and it’s all to do with demographics.

BASEL, SWITZERLAND - MAY 15: A protestor waves the Palestinian flag and a supporter waves the Israeli flag as Yuval Raphael representing Israel performs during the rehearsal ahead of Semi Final Round 2 of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest Opening Ceremony at Messe Basel on May 15, 2025 in Basel, Switzerland. (Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images)Getty Images

While Switzerland hosts one of the largest immigrant populations in the EU, the majority of those immigrants come from neighbouring countries: France, Germany, Italy. Sweden, meanwhile, has taken on record numbers of immigrants from Muslim-majority nations over the last decade, and has struggled to integrate them into Western culture. This dichotomy may have contributed to the hostile conditions of last year’s competition.

“These parallel-running societies are really dangerous, and [the Swedish] were overwhelmed with it and they didn’t really expect it,” Bollag says. “But that’s Malmö, that’s not Switzerland.”

Bollag believes the anti-Israel sentiment expressed by local protesters is “definitely in the minority” and does not reflect the views of Swiss people writ large.

“We have protests, of course, but Basel people in general, and what we experience from non-Jewish people, they come to us and say they support us.”

This seemed to reflect the experience of the Israeli and Jewish visitors I met during my time in Basel, and certainly that of my fellow diners at Chabad Lubavitch Basel’s Shabbat dinner. As the plates were cleared and Rabbi Wishedski passed around shots of whiskey, we marveled at the wonderful week it had been, discussed our favourite Eurovision performances, and eased into a sense of familiarity probably common at Shabbat tables like this one around the globe.

Bollag puts it best when she argues that positive energy, like that found at this table, or among the happy crowds singing along to the Eurovision songs they love, always comes out strongest.

“It's a human thing to listen more to the negative things, but it doesn't help us,” she says. “I'm a very proud Basel citizen, and I wouldn’t want to read in the world that Basel was unfriendly or that the negative powers were too strong - because it’s just not true.”