You might think the Kan public broadcaster would breathe a sigh of relief with the news that Israel won’t be barred from next year’s Eurovision.
The looming threat of ousting Israel from the annual song contest has been removed. Or has it?
While one obstacle has been overcome, the next threat to Israel’s participation at the Eurovision is coming from inside the house.
Many anti-Israel activists have shouted online for years that Israel does not belong in the Eurovision because it isn’t even in Europe. True fans, however, understand that the criterion for partaking is not geographic, but membership in the European Broadcasting Union. (Australia, which has competed since 2015, is certainly not in Europe.)
In order to maintain EBU membership, Israel must have a functioning, independent public broadcaster that provides both news and entertainment programming. And there’s the rub.
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For a number of years, allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been making efforts to shut down or gut Israel’s public broadcaster beyond recognition. Such a move would make Israel ineligible to be an EBU member and end its 53-year run in the Eurovision.
Eden Golan of Israel enters the arena during the flag parade before the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, May 11, 2024. (AP/Martin Meissner)
While the government has not been successful so far in that goal, it took a sharp step forward this week with the establishment of an ad hoc committee designed to push through media reform legislation by circumventing the permanent committee that has stymied it.
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi – a member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party – has, since taking office in late 2022, made no secret of his desire to completely shut down Kan.
But Karhi’s efforts appeared to hit a wall in January, when fellow Likud MK David Bitan, chairman of the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee, shut down legislation that would have shuttered Kan – after it had already passed a preliminary Knesset vote 49-46 last year – declaring that “public broadcasting is necessary.”
However on Monday, the Knesset voted 59-51 – against the advice of the Knesset legal adviser – to set up a committee that would bypass Bitan and fast-track legislation giving the government significant control over broadcast media, news sites, and other media, after Bitan refused to let it advance.
While Karhi’s bill to shut down Kan is not currently on the new committee’s agenda, the ease with which he circumvented Bitan and the established path for passing laws raises a red flag for those concerned about media freedom.
Likud lawmakers (L-R) Shlomo Karhi, David Bitan and David Amsalem attend a committee meeting at the Knesset on November 20, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Even if the legislation shuttering public broadcasting doesn’t make a return, Karhi has also advanced a bill that would put Kan’s budget under direct government control and another that would sell off the channel’s news division – both of which would likely see Israel ousted from the EBU.
The EBU has taken notice of the legislative efforts. In fact, the organization has pointed to the efforts by the government to shut down Kan in its defense of allowing Israel to remain in the Eurovision in recent years, highlighting the public broadcaster’s independence.
When the Knesset voted in favor of Karhi’s bill to shut down Kan in a preliminary ballot late last year, the EBU issued a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” by the measure and sent a letter to Israeli lawmakers warning that it would “almost certainly lead to Kan’s exclusion” from the EBU. It also expressed concern that a separate bill regarding Kan’s budget would put “at risk the editorial and financial independence of public media.”
Israel has already been down this path before.
In 2017, the Knesset passed a law that would have split the news division off from the public broadcaster – a move pushed through by Netanyahu that was then temporarily blocked by the High Court.
When Netta Barzilai won the Eurovision a year later, Netanyahu ultimately backed off entirely from that plan in order to avoid derailing Israel’s ability to host the 2019 contest in Tel Aviv.
Netta Barzilai celebrates after winning the Eurovision Song Contest grand final in Lisbon, Portugal, May 12, 2018. (AP/Armando Franca)
But if the EBU had decided on Thursday to kick Israel out of Eurovision, coalition lawmakers would almost certainly have reacted with dismay, condemnation and expressions of outrage.
On Thursday night, Culture Minister Miki Zohar issued a statement saying the EBU “made the right decision in keeping Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest,” adding that “the people of Israel will continue to create, connect, and illuminate the world.”
In 2023, Zohar told Ynet that right-wing voters want to see Kan shut down entirely, and that the “problematic” portion of the public broadcaster is its “not always professional” news division, suggesting that he would keep only its scripted and cultural programming.
Zohar and other government lawmakers need to decide — do they want to keep Israel on the Eurovision stage, or do they want to end Israeli public broadcasting as we know it? Because they can’t have both.
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