{"id":446116,"date":"2026-05-13T04:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/446116\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T04:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:30:08","slug":"israel-qualifies-for-eurovision-final-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/446116\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel qualifies for Eurovision final \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The top 10 acts from each semifinal will compete on Saturday alongside last year\u2019s winner Austria, and \u201cBig Four\u201d countries France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, which automatically qualify for the final round.<\/p>\n<p>Five countries chose not to participate in this year\u2019s Eurovision contest if Israel competed,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eurovision-boycott-crisis-israel-competition-war-gaza-human-rights\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">saying<\/a>\u00a0their decision was based on Israel\u2019s war in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis it triggered. Russia was kicked out of the contest in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people in Israel, a large majority of whom were civilians, and taking 251 hostages.<\/p>\n<p>The attack prompted a major Israeli military offensive in Gaza, which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them civilians and children, displaced 90 percent of Gaza\u2019s population and destroyed buildings in wide areas. Despite a ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump in October 2025, Israel continues to strike Gaza, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eu-formally-greenlights-sanctions-against-israeli-settlers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">settler violence in the occupied West Bank<\/a> continues.<\/p>\n<p>The unprecedented boycott of Eurovision by five countries has been described as an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/crisis-eurovision-israel-gaza\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">existential moment<\/a> in the song contest\u2019s 70-year history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The top 10 acts from each semifinal will compete on Saturday alongside last year\u2019s winner Austria, and \u201cBig&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[27132,10036,269,93,1814,292,61,60,3410,102,278,282,303],"class_list":["post-446116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-austria","tag-crisis","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-italy","tag-music","tag-tv","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}