After the attacks on October 7th, many people are wondering if Israel will be punished similarly to Russia, with one of those punishments being the country’s involvement in Eurovision 2024.
Eurovision is a lot of things: camp, funny, ridiculous, and beloved internationally, fans travelling across the globe for a chance to experience the song contest in person. It’s a celebration of people coming together with the power of music and it most certainly is not a political event, according to the European Broadcasting Union.
You could also consider Eurovision as a load of rubbish. Which, you probably, most definitely do if you’re from the UK, who usually get absolutely dogpiled on by the rest of Europe’s voters and the Eurovision jury (regardless of Sam Ryder’s near win in 2022) Poor 2023 entry Mae Muller. She deserved better.
However, Eurovision’s… tomfoolery, and the fact that it is undeniably run by an organisation with a shoddy backbone, can be attributed to two particularly pertinent reasons.
Music for Peace?
The Eurovision Song Contest was never created after the Second World War during the rise of live broadcast television to be a call to peace for all Europeans to join hands and sing together, returning life to normal with the power of love and music, like the presenters seem to enjoy reminding audiences each year. Instead, the song contest was simply a ploy to try and get viewers from all across the continent to view a live broadcast; it was a mere experiment.
Another thing that seems to go unremembered – at least by British audiences who don’t pay particularly close attention to the contest’s history, or the average watcher – there’s obvious bias from the juries and voters alike when it comes to choosing their winner. Countries often vote for neighbours or historic allies, whilst the public chooses their favourite that year (usually) – regardless of musical talent or song enjoyability.
Enter: the Easten Bloc
So, it’s not really all about peace and loving thy neighbour. It’s rife with mild to moderate xenophobia from juries and the public alike. They refuse to vote for countries they don’t like, rather than simply the contestant or a bad song. How the fallen Eastern Bloc countries were treated after joining the contest as their own nations are privy to that. People were suspicious when Serbia won in 2007. Surely, an Eastern European country couldn’t write a good song and win the contest fair and square.
All that being said about how a winner is chosen, even Eurovision’s current system of voting to decide the winner is new and has had many forms throughout the contest’s history. The show only used to have juries choosing the winners, as the voices of Europe. That was until the EBU got too many complaints about corruption and bias. So, they introduced televoting for the European public to get a say in their winner in 1997. Since then the voting system has changed a few more times. They left the televote open for longer and changed how much weight the televote had.
One additional thing to consider is the history of who was allowed to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest. This includes when they were allowed to compete, and how the juries, commentators, and public viewed and treated those performances. This leads me to discuss the Eurovision’s next pitfall:
[International War] Conflicts and Human Rights
I have spoken about some of Eurovision and the EBU’s transgressions. And I cannot neglect to mention how Eurovision is, in fact, very much so, a political event. They pick and choose what they allow to appear and whether or not it is considered political or not. For instance, Eurovision is beloved by huge numbers of LBGTQ+ people. They decorate the stands of the stadiums with pride flags year on year.
However, the song contest has a history of censoring LGBTQ+ support. One example amongst many was t.A.t.U being ‘advised’ not to kiss on stage in 2003). Only recently did they allow performers to proclaim their support on stage during the grand final. An example was Måneskin’s Damiano David proclaiming the band’s support for LGBTQ+ rights during their performance in 2021).
Here’s another example of Eurovision being unabashedly a political event. In 2022, juries and the public alike voted for Ukraine to win in response to Russia’s invasion of the country. Originally, the EBU were going to allow Russia to continue to perform in that year’s lineup. That was until they got too many complaints and eventually banned the country from performing.
Will Israel be allowed to compete in Eurovision?
Despite protests from various Eurovision watchers spanning years, Israel has still been allowed to continually compete in the contest. Even this year after their full-scale all-but-in-name proclamation of war against the Palestinian people after the attacks of 7th October 2023.
So why, then, has Israel been allowed to perform and host during the ongoing genocide of Palestinians? This year, as of the time of writing, Israel is still set to perform in this year’s contest. This, despite many threats from fans and performers alike of boycotting the event. Some broadcasting organisations threatened to pull out of the competition if the EBU failed to ban Israel from performing.
Contestants
Even some contestants have been outspoken about Israel’s involvement or the Israeli government’s abhorrent violence towards Palestine, such as the UK’s representative Olly Alexander, which angered Benjamin Netanyahu so much that he felt the need to release a statement proclaiming that Alexander was being unfair in his stance and actions should be taken towards his involvement in the song contest.
Needless to say, the EBU hasn’t cracked under pressure from multiple performers and countries set to perform this year stating that “Comparisons between wars and conflicts are complex and difficult, and, as a non-political media organisation, not ours to make” (Noel Curran for BBC News). Definitely a disappointing stance to take.
