Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, after Israel was allowed to compete.
They were among a number of countries who had called for Israel to be excluded over the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza, and accusations of unfair voting practices.
Despite calls for a vote on Israel’s participation, members instead approved a new set of rules intended to protect the integrity of the contest.
Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE said it felt that its “participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk.”
In a statement, Dutch broadcaster Avrotros said that “participation under the current circumstances is incompatible with the public values that are essential to us”.
Spanish broadcaster RTVE added: “The board of directors of RTVE agreed last September that Spain would withdraw from Eurovision if Israel was part of it.”
“This withdrawal also means that RTVE will not broadcast the Eurovision 2026 final… nor the preliminary semi-finals.”
Continue reading here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde6d8wyp79o
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I think its great that countries are excluding themselves on this basis.
However, im not surprised that the contest has remained agnostic and that israel has not withdrawn.
We will not be watching and I’ll be sharing all the better alternatives to it. Like not supporting murder, genocide, state supported rapes, starving children, burning aid and many many more.
Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, and Slovenia should make their own Eurovision
With hookers, and blackjack!
Forget about the euro vision and the blackjack
The fact that this was up for debate, the fact that there are countries that choose to boycott as a result, the fact that this is news: these are wins people. The cracks have formed and it’s starting to buckle. It is now normal and mainstream to talk about boycotting the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime. Even the German apartheid-apologist institutions are forced to say they respect the decisions of non-apologist ones. Don’t take this as reason for cynicism and disappointment, it’s quite the opposite! Apartheid South Africa didn’t get boycotted, isolated and forced to recon with its crimes all at once, it was a process. KEEP PUSHING!
🇵🇸 #FREEPALESTINE 🇵🇸 #FREEPALESTINE 🇵🇸 #FREEPALESTINE 🇵🇸
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You forgot the “from Hamas” part.
That’s step 2
The boycotting countries should stay in and sing about how israeli’s are genocidal murderers.
Political songs are not allowed
Except for all those times when Israel made songs about heroically blowing up children
Ah yes, Israel, the European
countrysettler colonialist state.The main sponsor of the show, Moroccanoil, is an Israeli company. This was obvious.
Moroccan Oil is an Israeli company?
Yeah they make hair products.
I hope more broadcasters drop out. Either it’ll force their hand to expel all genocidal nations or make Eurovision a joke and viewership crashes.
If only Israelis had the capacity to feel shame
hard to feel shame when you are always told you belong to god’s chosen people
This is antisemitism. Don’t do it, don’t upvote it, don’t spread it. Israeli ethnonationalism is not reducible to the Jewish religion. There is nothing in Judaism that deterministically leads to apartheid and genocide. Many Jews see the “chosen people” story as an intergenerational responsibility to unfuck the world (Tikkun Olam). Many Jews are antizionists precisely because of their Judaism.
But it’s also the central conceit of Zionism. Things can be more than one thing at the same time.
There is nothing unique about Zionism in how it weaponizes religion. Same as “Christian nationalism” in the US, like Hindutva in India, like all kinds of Islamism, like Francoism or like any other clerical fascism. We should be better than to accept the weaponized forms of religions. Unless you consider something as silly as “Mohammed was a pedophile” as a useful counter to Daesh, which is terminally unserious.
Can’t we just hate all religion equally?
Zionism is NOT Judaism… Zionists are NOT followers of Judaism… they are no different to literal Nazis and you cannot be antisemetic towards Zionists.
It’s also worth noting the semetic people are NOT just jewish, they are ALL people from the region across multiple religions, including Palestinians.
WTF are you talking about. It is of course possible to be antisemitic towards Zionists.
And the «semitic» argument is bullshit, it is basically rehashing 19th century white supremacist pseudoscientific racism. The term is currently basically only used to describe language families similar to the term «indo-european».
The word antisemitism has a precise meaning: the «discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).»
The problem with this statement is both outlooks are true. Some jews see the chosen people story as an intergenerational responsibility to unfuck the world. While others see it as inheriting the world and all that is on it.
even though the theology of it is a lot more like “that is your god, and you belong to his people. it’s a lot of responsibility, he throws tantrums a lot”
I understand that about half do. Unfortunately, like the US, they aren’t the half that count
82% of them are happy to expel all Gaza’s Palestinian residents, that doesn’t sound like people who experience shame for their governmeng killing ~40k civilian women and children over the last few years.
A further 56% favour expelling all Israeli citizens with Palestinian bloodlines and a lovely 47%…
agreed that “when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua’s command – killing all its inhabitants.” Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek’s memory remains relevant today.
I’m not seeing much conscience or shame in those numbers.
Well - conscienc and shame are just emotions that make us adhere to social rules.
After a pogrom in the 13
thcentury the citicens of my city repented formally and build a church on the ground of the former Jewish quarter. They repented for having the Jews allowed to live in the city.It’s very probable that a good portion of the 93 percent of Jewish Israelis who agreed that the commandment to erase Amalek’s memory remains relevant today are indeed ashamed that they haven’t managed to erase the memory of Palastine yet.
If the comittment to genocide a neighbour is this deeply engrained in a culture I’m sort of desperate. All genocides I recall that were not (mostly) successfull were only stopped by external military intervention.
I’d like to know how Israelis as a whole respond to these questions, since this sounds like it surveyed only religious conservatives.
The nation was founded by and for religious extremists
No, it wasn’t founded by and for extremists. But extremists do seem to be the only group represented in Netanyahu’s
bid to stay out of prison(ahem) “government”Zionism is and always has been a terrorist movement
My understanding is it’s way less than half
They made a choice. Let’s see how they handle the consequences
What consequences? That they won’t win this year either?
Oh, you mean the EBU probably. One of the Big 5 leaving is really something. I can’t imagine Spain leaving the EBU itself though.
Iceland, Belgium, and Portugal are likely to leave as well, with the Polish Culture minister calling for a boycott if Israel participates a few months ago. The more countries that drop, the more expensive it will be to participate for the remaining countries as well.
the more expensive it will be to participate for the remaining countries as well.
I don’t think the boycotting countries will leave the EBU or stop paying for their membership.
No, but the participants still have to pay a lot towards the show. They don’t just get to piggy back off of the host amd Big 5. There are participation fees that cover the EBU expenses. Those have to be covered in by the participation fees
The point of ESC is to get around 9 hours of content for much cheaper than broadcasters can normally do.
So for example, at the highest end of participation in the big 5, the BBC pays a fee of £300,000, and about the same again for production costs such as delegation hotels. That’s about the price of 2 hours’ worth of EastEnders. Per hour, its the cost of a mid-range game show.
In total, the fees reach around £5 million. The host nation’s broadcaster is then on the hook for the rest of the cost, which is usually an additional £8-18m. Effectively, unless everyone quits and there’s no-one to compete, ORF will be expected to cover any shortfall caused by the boycott.
One of the Big Five (they are the largest financial contributors) leaving is, financially, indeed something.
As the ESC is only one part of the EBU (yet the most prominent one for the public) beside sharing of media, news and technical collaboration, leaving the EBU completely over the israeli participation at the ESC would give that occassion way too much relevance.leaving the EBU completely over the israeli participation at the ESC would give that occassion way too much relevance.
whilst i agree, i think it’s also important to acknowledge that non-participation in ESC isn’t about non-participation in ESC… it’s not like they’re not participating because they don’t like israel’s songs; it’s about a principal. if the decision was made about israel to do with ESC it says something about the EBUs values and how it’s being run
non-participation isn’t meant as a punishment, and it’s not even really about ESC: it’s meant to be a statement to the EBU as a whole: we don’t support this and won’t support anyone who does
rip Eurovision
1956-2026
good run.
Maybe not, the Olympics survived a genocide so maybe Eurovision will get through this somehow
Several genocides in fact
the Olympics survived a genocide
Did they? There will also be an official Eurovision Sing Contest, but will it be the ESC?
Did they?
Yes, they’re still very popular despite being hosted by the OG Nazis in 1936.
i may be misinterpreting but i think the other poster is saying the olympics ceased to be what they had been up to that point and what we have now is a zombie masquerading as the olympics
The Olympics used to be for amateurs only and athletes who were professional and earned their living from a sport weren’t allowed to compete. I remember reading about the UK’s Torvil & Dean figure skaters who after their win at the olympics in the 80’s went pro… and a couple of olympics later there was massive debate and changes to rules to allow them to compete again.
All the modern olympics of the last 30-40yrs are about is faux national pride and money… same for the bodies of all sports… they’re all corrupt and they’re all about stockpiling as much cash as they can for bribes and kickbacks… some of them like FIFA have hundreds of millions of cash reserves… But they don’t pay countries to host the world cup, the countries pay them, pay for the construction, pay for the infrastructure and FIFA reaps in the sponsorship and TV money.
Boooo!
Rubbish! Slime! Muck! Filth! Booo!
Cowards
They should have their own contest with blackjack and hookers
