At least five countries have said they will or could boycott Eurovision if Israel is included

JTA -The public broadcasters of both Ireland and the Netherlands announced this week that they won’t participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is allowed to participate.

They join several other countries in pressing the competition’s organiser, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), into excluding Israel as an act of protest against Israel’s participation because of the war in Gaza.

The EBU has until now resisted entreaties to bar Israel but now faces a crisis as Europe, both through its unified institutions and as individual countries, has sought to ramp up pressure on Israel to end the war, which began when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023.

“RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation would be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza,” the Irish public broadcaster said in a statement on Thursday, 11 September, adding that it was “deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza”. The Committee to Protect Journalists says 197 journalists have been killed during the war; Israel has said some of them were Hamas operatives.

On Friday, Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS announced that the Netherlands wouldn’t participate in the competition if the EBU admitted Israel into the competition, where it has participated since 1973, winning four times.

“AVROTROS can no longer justify Israel’s participation in the current situation, given the ongoing and severe human suffering in Gaza,” the broadcaster stated.

Broadcasters in Slovenia, Spain, and Iceland have also all signalled that they could pull out of Eurovision if the EBU doesn’t exclude Israel.

“I don’t think we can normalise Israel’s participation in international events as if nothing is happening,” Ernest Urtasun, the Spanish culture minister, told La Hora de La 1. “In Eurovision’s case, it’s not an individual artist who participates, but someone who participates on behalf of that country’s citizens.”

The contest is meant to be intensely apolitical, but for many Israelis, Eurovision is seen as something of a barometer of their country’s status on the international stage. Protests against the Israeli act are closely watched, and in the past two years, during the war, the artists selected to represent Israel have incorporated symbols of resilience into their wardrobes and lyrics.

In announcing its boycott, AVROTROS also cited the “proven evidence of interference” by the Israeli government in the 2025 competition, referencing complaints by several European broadcasters who raised questions about Israel’s victory in the contest’s audience poll in May.

Israel’s Yuval Raphael came second after being bolstered by the popular vote and drawing points from the juries in 14 countries.

The EBU rejected pressure to exclude Israel, but later opened a process to solicit feedback from the contest’s 37 participating countries over how it should navigate geopolitical tensions. Martin Green, the contest’s director, said in a statement on Friday that the process was ongoing.

“Broadcasters have until mid-December to confirm if they wish to take part in next year’s event in Vienna,” he said. “It’s up to each member to decide if they want to take part in the contest, and we would respect any decision broadcasters make.”

The director general of Icelandic broadcaster RÚV signalled that while so far the EBU had resisted entreaties to exclude Israel, he was hoping for change.

“It’s likely that if there’s no change in the EBU’s position and it doesn’t respond to these voices of concern coming from us, from Spain and Slovenia and others, then that will call for reactions from these broadcasters,” he said. “But let’s just wait and see.”