More than a thousand leaders from the entertainment industry signed an open letter rejecting calls to ban Israel from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest due to the war against Hamas in Gaza, JNS reported.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s participation in this year\u2019s contest was in question but was made possible after the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) cleared it to compete<\/a>. <\/p>\n This resulted in announcements by five countries that they will not participate in the contest due to Israel\u2019s continued inclusion in the lineup following the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n The latest signatories to the letter include comedian Amy Schumer, actress Mila Kunis, singer Matisyahu, actors Anthony Edwards and Jerry O\u2019Connell, and writers Erin Foster and Matthew Weiner, the pro-Israel industry group Creative Community for Peace, which organized the initiative, said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been shocked and disappointed to see some members of the entertainment community calling for Israel to be banished from the Contest for responding to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” the letter reads.<\/p>\n \u201cThis current round of fighting is not a war that Israel wanted or started,” the signatories said. \u201cTo punish Israel would be an inversion of justice.”<\/p>\n \u201cFurthermore,” they added, \u201cwe believe that unifying events such as singing competitions are crucial to help bridge our cultural divides and unite people of all backgrounds through their shared love of music. Those who are calling for Israel\u2019s exclusion are subverting the spirit of the Contest and turning it from a celebration of unity into a tool of politics.”<\/p>\n Israel will be represented at the competition by Noam Bettan<\/a>, 28, who will perform the song \u201cMichelle”<\/a> in French, Hebrew and English in the annual contest\u2019s first semifinal in Vienna on May 12.<\/p>\n The second semifinal will be held on May 14, followed by the final on May 16.<\/p>\n Over the last two years, Israeli performers have been heckled and booed at the event, even as last year\u2019s representative, Yuval Raphael, won the televote by members of the public and finished in second place overall after she came in 14th place in the jury vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than a thousand leaders from the entertainment industry signed an open letter rejecting calls to ban Israel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37890,10495,10570,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-401350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-boycotts","tag-eurovision","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401350","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=401350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}