Israel Allowed to Participate in Eurovision While Russia Banned

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Israel will be allowed to compete in this year’s Eurovision, organizers say. The decision contradicts the song contest’s decision to bar Russia following the launch of its military operation in Ukraine in February, 2022. The country ended up missing the contest in 2022 and 2023.

On Thursday, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)—which owns and operates Eurovision—announced that they had conducted a review and made the decision to allow Israel to participate.

“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,” the EBU director general, Noel Curran, said in a statement.

“Our governing bodies … did review the participants list for the 2024 contest and agreed that the Israeli public broadcaster Kan met all the competition rules for this year and can participate, as it has for the past 50 years,” Curran claimed.

In 2022, Eurovision banned Russia from participating in the contest. In response, Russia’s national broadcasters suspended their memberships from the EBU. At the time, the contest’s executive supervisor, Martin Österdahl, said the contest’s values stood for “basic and ultimate values of democracy” as well as “solidarity, reaching out, and uniting through music”.

Noel Curran, the director general of the EBU, said that it was not the EBU’s place to make comparisons between the two governments.

“In the case of Russia, the Russian broadcasters themselves were suspended from the EBU due to their persistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service values,” said Curran.

Eden Golan, a 20-year-old who grew up in Russia, will represent Israel in this year’s Eurovision after winning a domestic contest. The event will be held in Malmö, Sweden, in May.

In December, 2023, the Association of Composers and Lyricists of Iceland (FTT) called on the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RUV) not to participate in the 2024 Eurovision contest “unless Israel is denied participation in the competition on the same grounds as Russia in the last competition”.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that Moscow would stage its own singing contest with its “partner countries” as a replacement for Eurovision.

Israel’s attack on Hamas, first triggered by their attack on October 7, has resulted in the killings of more than 28,000 people in Gaza which has included mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.