{"id":141564,"date":"2025-09-16T17:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T17:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/141564\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T17:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T17:04:07","slug":"spain-becomes-fifth-country-to-threaten-eurovision-boycott-if-israel-competes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/141564\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain Becomes Fifth Country To Threaten Eurovision Boycott If Israel Competes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSpain<\/a> has become the fifth country to confirm it will not participate in the Eurovision<\/a> Song Contest next year if Israel<\/a> is permitted to compete.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpanish broadcaster RTVE<\/a> said its board had approved the measure, proposed by its president Jose Pablo Lopez, with an absolute majority in a vote on Tuesday. In a statement, it said there were 10 votes in favour, four against, and one abstention.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe move follows in the wake of threatened boycotts by Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland amid growing international condemnation of Israel\u2019s near-two-year military campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt also followed a recent call by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez for Israel to be banned from the competition.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpain is the first member of the so-called \u201cBig Five\u201d nations, who make the biggest financial contributions to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which organizes the contest, to threaten a boycott. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere has been no such move from the other big four contributors of France (France 2), Germany (ARD\/NDR), \u00a0Italy (RAI) and the UK (BBC) as yet.<\/p>\n

\n\t Israel\u2019s recent participation has been a divisive issue in Europe and its broadcasting community ever since Israel began its military campaign in Gaza Strip in late 2023, in response to the October 7 2023 Hamas terror attacks on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 251 being taken hostage. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Israeli military operation aimed at retrieving the hostages and wiping out Hamas has killed at least 64,000 people in the Palestinian territory and left much of the rest of the two million strong population homeless and on the brink of starvation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2024, Israeli entrant, Eden Golan, finished fifth in the contest but was booed on stage and even received death threats.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the 2025 edition, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the Eurovision venue in Malm\u00f6, Sweden, in protest over Israel\u2019s inclusion. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe country\u2019s entrant, Yuval Raphael, who survived the massacre at the Nova festival on October 7, said she had practiced rehearsing with booing sounds.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe finished second in the contest, which is voted on by the public via telephone or sms, even though Spotify and YouTube streaming data showed that Raphael\u2019s song was far behind other competitors in terms of popularity. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe result prompted suggestions of \u201cexternal interference\u2019 and calls for the voting system to be overhauled. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain has become the fifth country to confirm it will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,18168,59,9084,65539,640,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-141564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-eurovision","tag-gb","tag-israel","tag-rtve","tag-spain","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}