Spain: Left party demands Israel expulsion from Eurovision!
Left party Podemos has registered a non-legal proposal that calls for the expulsion of Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.
According to Podemos leader, Ione Belarra, “Israel should be prohibited from any international activity as a pressure tactic to stop the genocide against the Palestinian people”. This would include not allowing Israel to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Israel should be barred from any international activity as a pressure tactic to halt the genocide against the Palestinian people. All countries should call for its exclusion from Eurovision.
— Ione Belarra (@ionebelarra) January 31, 2024
Moreover, Belarra has taken one step further and asked the Spanish Congress to debate the issue. She has registered a non-legal proposal to request it.
If approved in Congress, it will urge the Government to “position itself clearly against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest”. Accordingly, it asks the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares to “promote, together with other countries of the Union”, the aforementioned expulsion. If the proposition is passed, the Congress would ask RTVE as a member of the EBU and a member of the Reference Group to “promote, together with other public broadcasters, the expulsion of Israel from the contest, in the same way that was done with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
In the explanatory statement, Podemos emphasizes that the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), “as the organizer of the event, establishes the guidelines and regulations that the participating countries must follow. Also, the values that it promotes and that inspire it are universality, diversity, equality, and inclusion. Eurovision is based on principles of cooperation and aims to unite participating countries through music, regardless of their cultural or linguistic differences.”
According to Podemos leader Ione Belarra, “these values and these objectives become incompatible with the participation of Israel”, which “has increased the systematic violation of international law and Human Rights both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip”, with a “dimension of human and material damage” that “has reached levels of violence rarely seen before”.
Podemos argues that “it is worrying that a showcase like the one represented by Eurovision serves to whitewash the Zionist State of Israel in the eyes of millions of spectators. Especially when, in 2022, the EBU decided to expel Russia from the contest after the invasion of Ukraine”.
Source: Cadena Ser
Do you think this proposal will pass in Spanish Congress? Should Spain join the boycott against Israel?
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