Drink! Feck! Boycott! RTÉ to show Father Ted instead of Israel-tainted Eurovision

There’s only one choice this May for a national broadcaster wanting to show they’re not a racist now (Father) — no screening of Eurovision while so-called ‘Israel’ is allowed to take part.

That’s the decision of Ireland’s RTÉ, which will instead broadcast legendary 90s sitcom Father Ted. According to the broadcaster:

On the night, RTÉ2 will repeat the Father Ted Eurovision episode, A Song for Europe, at 9pm, followed by The Saturday Game.

For anyone unfamiliar, that’s the episode when Fathers Ted and Dougal try to enter Eurovision and end up producing one of the worst songs ever written. Nonetheless, they still get chosen by Ireland’s selection panel, who want to ensure the country doesn’t win, thus avoiding the costly business of hosting the event.

No such worries in 2026, as Ireland withdrew its participation in the song contest back in December 2025. At the time, RTÉ said:

RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk.

RTÉ remains deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza during the conflict and the continued denial of access to international journalists to the territory.

As the Canary’s Rachel-Charlton-Dailey reported, Father Ted creator, Graham Linehan, is a notorious transphobe and Zionist.

However:

While many are criticising RTÉ’s decision to air a show created by a known Zionist, airing a show that will make him no money and have him apoplectic with rage for days is an absolute chef’s kiss move by the Irish broadcaster.

Eurovision swapped for Palestinian films in Slovenia

Five countries are refusing to participate as a result of the European Broadcasting Union’s pathetic decision to allow the Zionist entity’s entry. They are Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain. Slovenia and Spain will join Ireland in refusing to screen the event.

The absolute legends at Slovenia’s RTV broadcaster will instead be screening films on Palestine. Quoted in the Associated Press, RTV director, Ksenija Horvat, said:

We will not be broadcasting the Eurovision song contest. We will be airing the film series Voices of Palestine, featuring Palestinian documentaries and feature films.

Spain will:

…run its own musical special, The House of Music, instead of this year’s Eurovision.

Human rights group, Amnesty International, has blasted the decision to endorse the genocidaires of Tel Aviv by allowing their inclusion. Its secretary general, Agnès Callamard, said:

The failure of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to suspend Israel from Eurovision, as it did with Russia, is an act of cowardice and an illustration of blatant double standards when it comes to Israel.

She continued:

Israeli participation in the Eurovision Song Contest offers the country a platform to try to deflect attention from and normalise its ongoing genocide in the occupied Gaza strip, and its moves towards further annexation of Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem, as well as its system of apartheid against Palestinians.

Callamard concluded by saying:

Songs and sequins must not be allowed to drown out or distract from Israel’s atrocities or Palestinian suffering. There should be no stage for Israel at Eurovision while there is an ongoing genocide.

Israel’s impunity can no longer be tolerated, and people everywhere must act in accordance with their conscience and stand up for human rights.

Isolate ‘Israel’ in a prison of its own making

Events like Eurovision represent an excellent opportunity to ostracise the land thieves who have squatted illegally in Palestine for nearly 80 years.

They also allow ‘Israel’ to continue its contrived status as Schrödinger’s settler-colony. That is, the delicate act of ‘Israelis’ passing themselves off as both Europeans who are ‘just like us’, but also somehow indigenous to the West Asian land they invaded, and have been violently hoovering up for decades.

Such events are a crucial means of “the most racist state the world has ever known” — a place that rapes Palestinians with dogs — to pass itself off as normal.

The Palestinian Campaign For The Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, emphasises how “Israeli cultural institutions” such as “music groups” have “cast their lot with the hegemonic Zionist establishment in Israel”.

The BDS insists on a cultural boycott of the Zionist entity, stating that:

As a general overriding rule, Israeli cultural institutions, unless proven otherwise, are complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, whether through their silence or actual involvement in justifying, whitewashing or otherwise deliberately diverting attention from Israel’s violations of international law and human rights.

While not carrying the same material weight as real economic sanctions on ‘Israel’, omission from international cultural and sporting events will give land thieves between the river and sea the sense of becoming increasingly isolated.

Just as with arrest warrants for Israeli Occupation Forces abroad, and admission tests for Israeli tourists, the entire genocidal society has to feel the walls close in. There must be the sense of a world shrinking around them, enclosing them in their self-constructed prison built by the apartheid walls they assembled around themselves.

Featured image via Rotten Tomatoes