{"id":9627,"date":"2025-09-11T14:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T14:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/9627\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T14:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T14:04:09","slug":"irelands-rte-threatens-eurovision-boycott-if-israel-participates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/9627\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland’s RTE Threatens Eurovision Boycott If Israel Participates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIreland will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> next year if Israel is permitted to compete, the country\u2019s public broadcaster RT\u00c9 has announced.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement released today, RT\u00c9 said that participating \u201cwould be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza.\u201d Spain, Slovenia and Iceland have made similar statements.<\/p>\n

\n\tRT\u00c9 said it was \u201cdeeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza, and the denial of access to international journalists to the territory, and the plight of the remaining hostages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRT\u00c9 plans to make a final decision on whether it will withdraw once Eurovision\u2019s organizer, the European Broadcasting Union<\/a> (EBU), decides if Israel can participate. It added that \u201ca number of EBU members\u201d had \u201craised concerns\u201d about the issue during the group\u2019s General Assembly meeting in July.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is RT\u00c9\u2019s position that Ireland will not take part in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if the participation of Israel goes ahead, and the final decision regarding Ireland\u2019s participation will be made once the EBU\u2019s decision is made,\u201d the network said in its statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tRT\u00c9 is led by Kevin Bakhurst, the former BBC News controller and Director General of British media regulator Ofcom. We have asked the BBC whether it would similarly boycott Eurovision 2026 if Israel competed.<\/p>\n

\n\tIreland is not the first European country to threaten withdrawal over Israel\u2019s participation in the event, with similar declarations coming from Iceland, Spain and Slovenia. <\/p>\n

\n\tLocal Icelandic media reported that Stef\u00e1n Eir\u00edksson, Director General of public broadcaster R\u00daV, said: \u201cIt is likely that if there is no change in EBU\u2019s position and it does not respond to these voices of concern coming from us, from Spain and Slovenia and others, then that will call for reactions from these broadcasters. But let\u2019s just wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe end of the EBU\u2019s consultation period is in November or December and a decision on Israel\u2019s participation will closely follow. Israel has competed in Eurovision 47 times despite not technically being in Europe, and has won four times, most recently in 2018.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince the bombings in Gaza began, Israel\u2019s participation has caused fractures. In 2024, its entrant, Eden Golan, finished fifth and received large public vote support, but was booed on stage and even received death threats.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this year, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the Eurovision venue in Malm\u00f6, Sweden, in protest over Israel\u2019s inclusion. The country\u2019s entrant, Yuval Raphael, who survived the massacre at the Nova festival on October 7, said she had practised rehearsing with booing sounds. She finished second.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe storm comes in another devastating week in the Middle East. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani has accused Israel of \u201cstate terrorism\u201d after an Israeli airstrike on Hamas ceasefire negotiators in Qatar killed six people. The dead included a Qatari security official.<\/p>\n

\n\tIsrael\u2019s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims the attack was \u201cfully justified\u201d as it targeted Hamas leaders who were behind the October 7 2023 massacre, which left nearly 1,200 dead, thousands more injured and more than 250 taken hostage. In retaliation, Israel began a bombing campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest next year if Israel is permitted to compete, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10569,10570,85,46,10571,61,43,10572],"class_list":["post-9627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-european-broadcasting-union","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-gaza-crisis","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-news","tag-ruv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9627","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=9627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}