Israel can compete in this year's Eurovision Song Contest, organisers confirmed on Thursday, again rejecting calls for it to be excluded over the Gaza war like Russia was after invading Ukraine.
On Wednesday, a group of 400 celebrities including British actress Helen Mirren, British singer Boy George and former Kiss frontman Gene Simmons published an open letter supporting Eurovision's decision to maintain Israel's participation.
The letter was issued in response to petitions calling for Israel to be kicked out of the world's biggest live music event, which is being held in Malmo, Sweden, in May.
Approached by AFP, the European Broadcasting Union said it had conducted a review and decided late last year that Israel could participate in the kitsch annual pop extravaganza.
"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," EBU director general Noel Curran said, reiterating a statement made in January.
Austrialia has earned their right to participate. For some insane reason, an absolutely massive amount of people (2.5 million+) get up at 4am to watch the broadcast from 5am.
I don't see how that in any way qualifies them. If a bunch of americans start watching it live, are we gonna get them out there too?
Idunno, probably 🤷
Get butts in seats, you get to compete..s
Capitalism always wins.
Does it harm you in some way that AUS gets to participate after two decades of millions of people getting up at 4:30am to watch the contest or do you just like huffing and puffing with your thumbs on the internet
More of the latter in all honesty, since I haven't watched it in years. I still stand by my point (which I have had as long as I can remember) of it being a weird addition, same as Israel.
fair enough!
for what its worth I'd prefer Isreal wasn't included, and the fact that they're included this year after russia was excluded for Ukraine, I feel, is shameful.
Aus really fought for their spot with the manic fandom, they're allright by me.
Why did you stop watching? Finland's entry for this year is a guy called Windows95 Man and the stage performance includes more oddly placed denim than you'd reasonably guess: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf1NS1vEhSg
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=Tf1NS1vEhSg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.