President Isaac Herzog comments on criticism of Israel’s participation.
The controversy surrounding Israel’s participation in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest continues. After the Israeli public broadcaster KAN announced that Israel would withdraw from the competition in the event of censorship of the participating song “October Rain” by Eden Golan, Israeli President Isaac Herzog now commented on the discussion.
“I think it is important for Israel to perform at Eurovision – and that is also a statement, because there are haters who are trying to drive us away from every stage,” Herzog told the Times of Israel. He adds that Israel’s voice should be heard from the ESC stage.
The Israeli Minister of Culture also commented on the possible censorship of the song by the Eurovision Broadcasting Union (EBU). “We all hope that Eurovision remains a musical and cultural event and not a political arena,” he said. “I call on the European Broadcasting Union to continue to act professionally and neutrally and not allow politics to influence the arts.”
The EBU is currently in the process of verifying the lyrics of the Israeli song. This allegedly contains lyrics that refer to the Hamas massacre on October 7th. However, KAN has already stated that they would reject any request to change the text.
There has been criticism of Israel’s participation not only on the Internet; over 1,000 Swedish artists wrote an open letter to the EBU, in which they called for the country to be excluded from the competition in Malmö.
It would not be the first time that a country did not take part in the contest for political reasons. Although the EBU describes itself as a “non-political member organization”, it excluded Russia and Belarus from participation in 2022. In 2009, Georgia withdrew from the competition after their entry “We Don’t Wanna Put In” was rejected because of its reference to the Russian president. So far, however, there has been no final decision on Israel’s participation.