If there’s one line Eurovision’s organiser, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), loves to trot out, it’s that the song contest is an “apolitical” event that brings people across the world together with music.
They’ve gone especially hard on this narrative over the past two years, recycling the official 2023 slogan, “United by Music”, for 2024.
It’s a nice sentiment — that just so happens to be overshadowed by the EBU’s decision to allow Israel to compete in 2024 despite its ongoing conflict with Palestine. That, and Israel’s reported attempt to enter a song believed to reference the events of October 7, 2023, into the competition. (Following a request from President Isaac Herzog, the lyrics and title of Israel’s submission have since been changed.)
But this is nothing new for Eurovision, which has time and again been eclipsed by the state of the global political landscape over its 68-year history, despite any desire its Switzerland-based organiser may have for it to remain neutral.
From the boycott, to the planned protests, to the widespread artist outcry
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for the boycott of Eurovision 2024 over what it says is “the EBU’s whitewash of apartheid Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza”.
More than 50,000 people have signed a petition directed at EBU director general Noel Curran, demanding the ban of Israel from the song contest. Sweden — this year’s host following Loreen’s historic 2023 win, with Tattoo, — is preparing for multiple pro-Palestine protests in Malmö, where the event will take place.
The Nordic nation’s 2011 Eurovision contestant Eric Saade wore a keffiyeh on stage in support of Palestine during the first semi-final on Wednesday and Ireland’s 2024 entrant, Bambie Thug, tried to sneak a call for ceasefire into her performance. Belgium’s state broadcaster took things to another level during their airing of the second semi-final (that Israel competed in) on Friday, which they interrupted with a pro-Palestine message.
And droves of Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic artists have denounced the EBU’s decision over the past few months.
Australia’s former and current Eurovision entrants have been less vocal so far. Montaigne, who sang for Australia at Eurovision in 2021, is the only artist of the nine former representatives to declare their public support of the boycott.
“Such inhumanity is not part of the Eurovision spirit — it is after all, a song contest which arose from the desire to unite nations in love and cooperation. You do not get to be part of such an event when you murder civilians and children in droves,” they wrote on Instagram in January.
Australia’s 2024 entrants — Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross, who together comprise the duo Electric Fields — were vague when recently asked where they stood on the issue of the boycott by The Guardian.
“[Eurovision] is a place to increase connectivity, and we are just so focused on sharing our story,” Ross said, to which Fielding continued: “Artists pick up what gets broken by stupidity. We’re focusing on healing — because the world is pretty grim at the moment. That’s what we will do on the Eurovision stage.”
Fielding the inevitable questions
The Eurovision boycott is the definition of ‘PR nightmare’.
Not just for the EBU, but also for competing nations’ individual broadcasters and the artists, who each field countless questions on the boycott and Israel’s participation from reporters and fans.
The joint statement from Ireland, UK, Denmark, San Marino, Norway, Finland, Lithuania, Portugal and Switzerland’s 2024 Eurovision participants on March 29 is another prime example of this.
Calling for “an immediate and lasting ceasefire” and ambiguously expressing their “solidarity with the oppressed”, the nine countries’ artists — most notably including Years and Years’s Olly Alexander — said they decided to perform at the contest despite the boycott calls because of their firm belief “in the unifying power of music, enabling people to transcend differences and foster meaningful conversations and connections”.
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The top comment on the copy of the statement shared to Alexander’s Instagram reads: “Idk how much the people of Gaza want to hear about the ‘unifying power of music’ babe.”
So why is the EBU letting Israel compete, given all the backlash?
The EBU said in February it had decided to allow Israel to enter Eurovision for two highly predictable reasons. The first: “The Eurovision Song Contest is a non-political music event and a competition between public service broadcasters who are members of the EBU. It is not a contest between governments,” Curran said in a statement.
The second, he continued: “Our governing bodies … did review the participants list for the 2024 contest and agreed that the Israeli public broadcaster KAN met all the competition rules for this year and can participate, as it has for the past 50 years.”
One thing to consider is that each entrant’s state broadcaster (ours is SBS) must pay a registration fee towards the contest that collectively amounts to about 5 million euros. The fee individual countries must pay varies, depending on their overall contribution to EBU membership and the number of competing countries around to split the costs.
In 2023, after Russia’s ban from the competition, the increased figure became too much for Montenegro, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to bear, and all three nations declined to participate.
A ban on Israel’s participation in 2024 would have increased the remaining 36 countries’ registration costs, which could have led to further withdrawals.
Is there a double standard here?
In 2021, Belarussian broadcaster BTRC was expelled from the EBU and therefore Eurovision due to breaking the EBU’s press freedom rules.
The EBU banned Russia the following year, just one day after it invaded Ukraine, stating: “In light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine, the inclusion of a Russian entry in this year’s Contest would bring the competition into disrepute.”
In the years since, the EBU’s reasoning for barring Russia’s broadcaster from participating in Eurovision appears to have since shifted away from the ongoing war.
“Russian broadcasters themselves were suspended from the EBU due to their persistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service values,” Curran said in a February statement.
“The relationship between [Israel’s public broadcaster] KAN and the Israeli government is fundamentally different to the relationship that exists between those Russian members and the state, with the Israeli government in recent years threatening to close down the broadcaster,” he continued.
But this reasoning has been rejected by many people, including more than 1,000 Swedish artists such as pop icon Robyn and Saade, who signed an open letter to the EBU.
They also believe the EBU’s treatment of Israel this year reveals a “double standard that undermines the organisation’s credibility” when compared to the way it dealt with Russia and Belarus.
“The EBU justifies its position by saying that the Eurovision song contest is a competition between public service companies rather than states,” the Swedes’ letter argued.
“But the EBU chose in 2022 to exclude Russia from the competition due to the invasion of Ukraine, and in 2021 member companies from Belarus were denied entry to the competition because the country violated the EBU’s press freedom rules.
“In just under four months, around 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed, and foreign press is denied access to Gaza. It is one of the biggest attacks on press freedom in modern times.”
The EBU issued a statement to Billboard on the open letter, reiterating their stance: “We understand the concerns and deeply held views around the current conflict in the Middle East.
“As a member-led organisation, our governing bodies … did review the participants list for the 2024 Contest and agreed that the Israeli public broadcaster KAN met all the competition rules for this year and can participate as it has for the past 50 years.
“The EBU is aligned with other international organisations, including sports unions and federations and other international bodies, that have similarly maintained their inclusive stance towards Israeli participants in major competitions at this time.”
The EBU has a history of platforming Israel — and censoring pro-Palestine sentiment
This isn’t the first year large numbers of people have taken issue with Israel’s participation in Eurovision.
Lebanon pulled out of the entire competition in 2005 after the EBU would not allow it to cut Israel’s performance from its national broadcast.
The 2019 song contest, held in Tel Aviv, was also the subject of widespread boycott calls and pro-Palestinian protest amid a surge in conflict (then-Australian entrant Kate Miller-Heidke described her decision to perform in the Israeli city as a “difficult one”). As was the 2021 event, for similar reasons.
And while the EBU says it’s a “a firm advocate for freedom of speech and the right for people to express their deeply held views and opinions” and that it understands “people may wish to make their voices heard and support[s] the right of those who wish to demonstrate peacefully”, it has also said it will continue to censor references to flags, banners and symbols that the organisers consider political or religious in nature, as it has done for years. And that includes flags of disputed territories such as Palestine (also Crimea and Kosovo and many more).
This has happened in the past, most notably to 2019 Icelandic entrants, Hatari, whose act of holding up Palestine banners was cut from the official DVD recording of the event and resulted in a fine for the Iceland’s broadcaster.
The EBU did not censor Madonna’s backup dancers, who did a simultaneous reveal of Israeli and Palestinian flags on their backs at the same event, while Madge implored viewers to “wake up”. Although it did later say the Queen of Pop had been made aware Eurovision was, you guessed it, a “non-political event”.
The ABC contacted the EBU for comment.