Recommendations of the Editorial team
An Instagram post from Bavarian Radio has caused outrage. The youth format “News-WG” publicly questioned Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2025-and thus left space for anti-Semitic boycott calls. After violent criticism, the BR deleted the contribution and published a revised version.
ESC post for the participation of Israel is outraged
Specifically, it was about the singer Yuval Raphael, who competes for Israel at the ESC. On October 7, 2023, Raphael survived the Hamas massacre to the Nova Music Festival, where she had to hide in a shelter for hours. In an interview with World TV she called the boycott calls against her participation “scary” – however, she had “a clear mission” to represent her country worthy and “spread love”.
The “News-WG” posted the provocative question on Instagram on Thursday (May 15th): “Should Israel be allowed to participate here?” -illustrates with the ESC logo and a photo of Raphael, which was incorrectly referred to as “Yuval Razael”. The posting made high waves on social networks.
Ahmad Mansour, German-Arabic-Israeli author, wrote on X: “This post is a shame”. Journalist Hasnain Kazim judged: “Not your seriousness.” Igor Levit also criticized: “These people don’t even manage to correctly write Yuval Raphael’s name.”
In order to expose the BR’s question, journalist Jan Fleischhauer countered sarcastically: “Should all Arabs have to leave Germany? What do you say?”
Despite a reference to the European Broadcasting Union and Minister of Culture Wolfram Weimer, who described boycott calls as “repulsive”, the broadcaster on the Internet was massive. The majority of the comments spoke out against Israel’s ESC participation-partly with comparisons to the Russian invasion of Ukraine or openly anti-Semitic messages.
The BR has now reacted and deleted the contribution. A new Instagram tile now says: “Israel’s participation in the ESC creates discussions.”
A spokeswoman for the broadcaster told “Welt” that they “wanted to show that there is a discussion about the participation of Israel in this year’s ESC”. However, this was “not differentiated enough in the first version and with sufficient sensitivity”. To do this, please apologize the “News-WG”.