Dutch care home cancels Jewish Eurovision winner’s concert after pro-Palestine protest
Dutch-Jewish singer Lenny Kuhr says artists openly supporting Israel face growing hostility in the Netherlands
A retirement home in the Netherlands has cancelled a concert by Eurovision-winning singer Lenny Kuhr following protests by pro-Palestinian activists at one of her performances.
Kuhr, who won the Eurovision Song Contest 1969 for the Netherlands with her song De troubadour, said the Rosa Spier House in Laren near Amsterdam had called off her scheduled appearance on 24 May after demonstrators waved Palestinian flags outside another concert.
Writing on X, the Dutch-Jewish singer said the venue “has deemed it necessary to cancel our concert ‘LICHT’ on 24 May because a few people were recently waving Palestinian flags just before our performance in Huizen”.
As reported by Jewish News Syndicate, the performance was due to form part of Kuhr’s farewell tour ahead of her retirement and planned move to Israel later this month.
Kuhr, who converted to Judaism in 1974 after marrying her Israeli first husband and has children living in Israel, has faced repeated disruptions at performances since 2024.
At one concert in Waalwijk near Rotterdam, a protester reportedly shouted that she was “a terrorist, a Zionist” before being removed from the venue.
The Rosa Spier House, a well-known cultural retirement residence where prominent Dutch performers have lived and performed, had not publicly commented at the time of publication.
The cancellation comes amid wider tensions surrounding Jewish and Israeli artists in the Netherlands since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Last year, Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall cancelled a Chanukah concert because one of the musicians was an IDF reservist, before reversing the decision following legal pressure.
Earlier this year, Dutch singer Bob Douwe withdrew from a Jewish event over what he described as “expressions of Zionism”.
Speaking to JNS, Kuhr said the latest incident reinforced her decision to relocate to Israel.
“I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult,” she said when asked about the atmosphere facing Jewish artists in the Netherlands.
“As a Jew, you can still keep working if you’re not a Zionist, or in other words, if you don’t support Israel’s right to exist. Then you’re ‘a good Jew’.”
She added: “Anyone who dares to speak positively (about Israel) and dares to come out as a Zionist, my expectation is that they’ll have an increasingly tough time booking venues.”
Alongside her post announcing the cancellation, Kuhr shared an image of a well-known anti-fascist memorial in Amsterdam bearing the words: “A people that yields to tyrants will lose more than body and property; then the light will go out.”
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