She underlined that the decision not to participate or broadcast Eurovision is \u201cnot any message against Jewish people,\u201d but a \u201cmessage against [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu\u2019s state, and the politics of what Netanyahu is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five countries chose not to participate in this year\u2019s Eurovision contest if Israel competed, saying<\/a> their decision is based on Israel\u2019s war in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis it triggered.<\/p>\n Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people in Israel, a large majority of whom were civilians, and taking 251 hostages.<\/p>\n The attack prompted a major Israeli military offensive in Gaza, which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them civilians, displaced 90 percent of Gaza\u2019s population and destroyed wide areas. The ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump in October 2025 led to the release of the remaining 20 Israeli hostages.<\/p>\n The boycott brings the number of countries taking part this year to its lowest in more than two decades, and has plunged the song contest into an existential crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Spain\u2019s national broadcaster RTVE has confirmed<\/a> it won\u2019t air the contest, and neither<\/a> will Ireland\u2019s public broadcaster RT\u00c9. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She underlined that the decision not to participate or broadcast Eurovision is \u201cnot any message against Jewish people,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,9881,59,791,2274,9084,3714,632,9086,18124,24965,640,642,56,54,55,636],"class_list":["post-578875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gaza","tag-gb","tag-iceland","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-slovenia","tag-society-and-culture","tag-spain","tag-the-netherlands","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578875","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=578875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}