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Eurovision Song Contest: Calls to ban Israel grow - piling pressure on European broadcasters (news.sky.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) says the Eurovision Song Contest isn't political, and argues that Russia's ban in 2022 was "fundamentally different".

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It's the second time politics has dominated Eurovision,

Okay, this author has not been following Eurovision for very long then. Here are some that come to mind:

1964: Stage invader protested against Spain's and Portugal's dictatorships
1969: Organised by Spain
1973: Israel debuts
1977: BBC cameramen stike right before the contest
1978: Israel wins
1990s: Yugoslav Wars and dissolution of Soviet Union, with some countries participating while at war
1998: Israel wins, with a trans performer
2003: Invasion of Iraq, UK was allowed to participate but got last place
2009: Azerbaijani government interrogates people who voted for Armenia, Georgian entry is anti-Putin
2012: Organised by Azerbaijan
2014: Start of Russo-Ukrainian war
2016: Ukraine wins over televote favourite Russia
2019: Organised by Israel
2021: Belarusian entry being government propaganda
2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine

Eurovision has always been political.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

According to Ukrainian sources a little over 500 children were killed since the beginning of Russian invasion (which was about 2 years ago). And just since October 7th over 10.000 children were killed in Gaza. So yeah. They are "fundamentally different". It's just brown kids dying in Gaza so it's ok.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

The difference is that Western media didn't question a single thing the IDF said, even as the lies were caught in 4k.

[–] prettybunnys 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honest question: is Israel considered a European state?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Eurovision is put on by the European Broadcaster Union, an organization that extends well beyond Europe itself, including Algeria, Azerbaijan, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Georgia, Armenia, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Turkey. The Arab states have generally not participated as a protest of Israel (and because it's very gay), but they are full members and are completely eligible to participate if they ever wanted to.

[–] prettybunnys 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Gotcha, I assumed it was for European countries only based on the name alone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You'd never know it today, but "Eurovision" as a term was originally coined to refer to the new broadcasting network capable of pushing the same feed to multiple counties' own networks simultaneously. That is to say, it's fully called the Eurovision Song Contest, because it's a song contest that's broadcast on the Eurovision network. The network is actually still used for a lot of stuff today, particularly live sports.

[–] prettybunnys 1 points 9 months ago

Cool, thanks for the info.