Malta’s green party wants EuroPride organisers to withdraw an invitation to a Eurovision winner because she is Israeli.

ADPD deputy chair and MEP electoral candidate Mina Tolu said an invitation extended to Netta should be “immediately revoked”.

“EuroPride in Malta should not be a space for Israeli pinkwashing,” Tolu said, arguing that organisers should instead support Palestinian human rights defenders to attend the EuroPride Human Rights Conference and the EuroPride March instead.

“ADPD reiterates our support to Palestine, Palestinians and their struggle against the violent and illegal occupation in the Occupied Territories,” Tolu added.

The ADPD statement did not elaborate on why Netta’s presence would constitute “Israeli pinkwashing”.

Netta is an Israeli singer-songwriter who won the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. She is one of three former Eurovision winners scheduled to perform at Europride 2023, which will be held in Malta this coming September.

The musician has a strong LGBTIQ fanbase and some global critics have argued that the Israeli government has leveraged that to mask the country's treatment of Palestinians. 

When Israel hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2019 following Netta's success, some human rights campaigners called for a boycott of the festival. 

"One can say many positive things about the state of Israel; celebrating diversity is not one of them," argued Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO made up of former Israeli soldiers who seek to highlight the realities of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.