On February 25, 2022, just one day after Moscow’s troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EBU banned Russia, stating that allowing it to be represented “would bring the competition into disrepute”.
Critics have decried what they see as a double standard given Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The EBU says it is a competition between broadcasters and argues that, unlike Russia’s state broadcasters, Israeli broadcaster Kan is resisting the government’s efforts to privatise or shut it down, thereby positioning it as somewhat independent of the state.
It is a position that Goracak disagrees with, pointing out that it was Netanyahu’s goverment that established Kan after shutting down its predecessor, the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
Eurovision Song Contest attendees can bring and display flags of all participating countries, including Israel, as well as rainbow and pride flags, but Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian symbols are banned at the show.
It is these double standards that Palestinians, who have faced cultural genocide since the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and subsequent decades of cultural appropriation by Israel, have grown used to, Eleni Mustaklem, public relations and fundraising officer at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, told Al Jazeera.
“It’s still OK for the state perpetrating this genocide to be represented … interviews with the singer [Noam Bettan] where he talks about the love of his family … while at the same time, whole families have been wiped out and the families that are still living inside Gaza with their traumatised loved ones barely making it through this catastrophe; it’s enraging, unfair and so unjust,” she said.
The hypocrisy of a genocide having been broadcast live on the news and social media platforms for more than two years and a sense that so much of the world turned its back on it, only to tune in to see Israel’s performance broadcast on those same screens is “painful” to witness, Mustaklem said.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: aljazeera.com
