Austria\u2019s Chancellor Christian Stocker has come out strongly against calls to exclude Israel from the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, which Austria is set to host in 2026.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the German news agency dpa, published Sunday on Austria\u2019s National Day, Stocker stated, \u201cI would consider it a fatal mistake to exclude Israel.\u201d <\/p>\n
He added, \u201cBased on our history alone, I would never be in favor of that,\u201d referencing Austria\u2019s shared responsibility for crimes committed during the Holocaust in World War II.<\/p>\n
The Eurovision Song Contest has faced mounting pressure over Israel\u2019s participation in the contest due to its military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
Public broadcasters in several European countries – including Spain<\/a>, Ireland, and the Netherlands<\/a> – have threatened to withdraw from the competition if Israel is allowed to participate in the contest scheduled to take place in Vienna next May.<\/p>\n Organizers of Eurovision had planned to vote on Israel\u2019s participation in November but cancelled the meeting<\/a> after a US-brokered ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas. A decision is now expected in December.<\/p>\n In April, shortly before the 2025 Eurovision contest held in Basel, formal requests to ban Israel were submitted by several countries, including Iceland and Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n The calls grew after Israel\u2019s entry, \u201cNew Day Will Rise\u201d performed by Yuval Raphael, came in second<\/a> behind the Austrian winner, though Israel only received 60 points from the juries. The remaining 297 points came from the public, which overwhelmingly favored Israel\u2019s entry over any other country.<\/p>\n Those results led broadcasters from Spain, Iceland, Belgium, Finland, and Ireland<\/a>, to either request audits of their national televoting results or question the current methodology.<\/p>\n The Austrian winner of this year\u2019s contest, JJ, called for Israel to be suspended<\/a> from Eurovision, though he later walked back<\/a> those comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austria\u2019s Chancellor Christian Stocker has come out strongly against calls to exclude Israel from the upcoming Eurovision Song…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8247,66341,10495,10570,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-99976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-austria","tag-christian-stocker","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\/99976","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=99976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}