In a public statement to the Belgian newspaper HLN, the EBU comments on its announcement regarding the list of 37 competing countries in Eurovision 2024, with the inclusion of Israel in this list.
The announcement of the list with the 37 competing nations of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest by EBU a few days ago, was a matter of controversy on the social media, since a part of the eurofans considered that Israel should have been disqualified from the upcoming contest.
In fact, there were not a few who compared the case of Russia with that of Israel, accusing the EBU of having double standards in similar cases.
Responding to a relevant question from the Belgian newspaper HLN, the EBU comments that the list of countries that are going to compete in Eurovision 2024 has been approved by the relevant bodies of the association, while regarding Israel it replies that its participation is given, since its public television fully comlies with the competition regulations.
“The EBU’s governing bodies […] reviewed the list of participants and decided that the Israeli public broadcaster complies with all competition rules”
The EBU’s decision is reasonable at this time. It is worth reminding that the case of Russia and Belarus’ disualification are two completely different cases. Russia’s public television was expelled by the EBU due to its use by the Russian government as a propaganda tool in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, violating its territorial integrity. As far as Belarus is conserned, a temporary exclusion from the competition and from the EBU for three years was decided, as a penalty for the attempt of the country’s public television to politicize Eurovision 2021, by sending an entry with clear political lyrics.
The case of Israel has nothing to do with the above, since the war conflict did not start with its own fault on the one hand and on the other hand its war response came as a result of the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7th.
Since the question around Israel’s inclusion in the upcoming contest was solved, the only thing pending now is whether Romania will manage to be present in Malmö, in May, raising the number of the participating countries to 38.
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