{"id":169267,"date":"2025-12-05T09:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T09:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/169267\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T09:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T09:17:07","slug":"four-countries-boycott-eurovision-after-israel-allowed-to-compete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/169267\/","title":{"rendered":"Four countries boycott Eurovision after Israel allowed to compete"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a meeting in Geneva Thursday, the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU<\/a>, decided not to call a vote on Israel’s participation, saying it had instead passed new rules aimed at discouraging governments from influencing the contest.<\/p>\n

Immediately following the announcement, the Dutch, Spanish, Irish and Slovenian broadcasters said they would withdraw, meaning singers from their countries would not compete in next year’s contest, held in Vienna.<\/p>\n

Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS said that Israel’s participation “is no longer compatible with the responsibility we bear as a public broadcaster”.<\/p>\n

Both the Israeli government and opposition leaders celebrated the country’s inclusion.<\/p>\n

Golan Yochpaz, CEO of Israeli broadcaster KAN, likened the efforts to exclude Israel to a form of “cultural boycott”.<\/p>\n

Rounding on the countries withdrawing, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on X: “The disgrace is upon them.”<\/p>\n

Eurovision will ‘respect’ any boycott decisions over Israel<\/a><\/p>\n

Participation ‘unconscionable’ for Ireland<\/p>\n

The Eurovision Song Contest dates back to 1956 and reaches around 160 million viewers, according to the EBU.<\/p>\n

Israel’s participation has divided opinion in the competition that has a history of entanglement in national rivalries, international issues and political voting.<\/p>\n

Its 2025 entrant, Yuval Raphael, was at the Nova music festival, a target of the 7 October, 2023 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A total of 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage in the assault by Hamas<\/a>, according to Israeli tallies. More than 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the ensuing conflict, according to health authorities in the enclave.<\/p>\n

Irish broadcaster RTE said it felt “Ireland<\/a>‘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”.<\/p>\n

Jose Pablo Lopez, head of Spanish state broadcaster RTVE said on X: “What happened in the EBU Assembly confirms that Eurovision is not a song contest but a festival dominated by geopolitical interests and fractured.”<\/p>\n

RTV Slovenija said it together with Spain<\/a>, Montenegro, the Netherlands<\/a>, Turkey, Algeria and Iceland requested a secret vote on Israel’s participation, but it was not held.<\/p>\n

Eurovision returns amid protests over Palestine, Pride flags and parody lyrics<\/a><\/p>\n

Protecting Eurovision’s neutrality<\/p>\n

Eurovision is regularly the scene of geopolitical conflicts. Russia was excluded<\/a> following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Belarus was excluded a year earlier after the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.<\/p>\n

Other countries could boycott the next Eurovision, to be held in Vienna in May. Icelandic public broadcaster RUV said its board will make a decision on Wednesday on whether or not to participate.<\/p>\n

Germany<\/a>, a major Eurovision backer, had signalled it would not take part if Israel was barred. Germany’s culture minister Wolfram Weimer told the Bild newspaper he welcomed the decision.<\/p>\n

“Israel belongs to the Eurovision Song Contest like Germany belongs to Europe,” he said.<\/p>\n

German broadcaster backs Israel in Eurovision debate<\/a><\/p>\n

Martin Green, the contest’s director, said EBU members showed they wanted to protect the neutrality of the competition.<\/p>\n

“Eurovision was born<\/a> from the ashes of the Second World War,” he said. “It was designed to bring us together, and it will hit bumps in the road, and we have a complicated world, but we hope it’s a temporary situation, and we’ll move forward.”<\/p>\n

(with newswires)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a meeting in Geneva Thursday, the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, decided not to call a vote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74205,10569,10570,42,46,100454,43,15191,81876,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-169267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cultural-boycott","tag-european-broadcasting-union","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-headlines","tag-israel","tag-minister-gideon-saar","tag-news","tag-participation","tag-public-broadcaster","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}