Eurovision’s Israel debate heated up to the point of death threats, EBU appeals on behalf of the artists

Eurovision the organizing European Broadcasting Union EBU wants to curb the discussion on social media surrounding Israel’s Eurovision representation. In the most extreme comments, death threats have been made to Israel’s parliamentarian.

Tuesday night in his giving in the bulletin The EBU appeals to the public to leave the artists participating in the competition alone.

“All decisions regarding participation are the responsibility of the EBU management, not the artists,” the release says.

The EBU had once rejected Israel’s participation in the five-final due to the considered political text of the representative song, but discussed the issue again and boat in early March to accept Israel’s participation after the lyrics of the song were changed.

Because of the war in Gaza, Israel’s participation in Eurovision has attracted strong criticism. The Jerusalem Post according to this year’s representative of Israel Eden Golan has received death threats on Instagram.

March at the end, the Eurovisa representatives of nine countries issued a joint statement in which they announced that they are not comfortable being silent about issues related to Israel and the Gaza war.

In their statement, the artists justified their own participation by saying that their task is to promote the possibility of communication and discussion through music.

The signatories of the statement were, among others, Finland Windows95manof Britain Olly Alexander and Norway Riddle. Olly Alexander published a statement on the messaging service X.

A group called Queers for Palestine asked after the statement was released, Alexander and other artists to reconsider their decision.

Before his election as Britain’s Eurovision representative, Olly Alexander had characterized Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.