Slovenia Demands Israel's Removal From Eurovision 2025

Why should there be any sanctions during a ceasefire @mollyfolk ?

Jewish Russian dissident artist, moves to Israel. Show about Russian oppression cancelled by UK gallery last year because she won't condemn 'Zionist regime'.
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/07/exhibition-about-russian-political-prisoners-cancelled-over-israel-gaza-row/

It is a completely different situation. Of course we should not start isolating individual Russians, Israelis, Afghans, Iranians ect.. from participating in sports teams where they live. But imposing cultural and sporting isolation on countries whose governments are committing human rights abuses is an effective and peaceful way to pressure them to act differently. it is not about blaming individuals, it’s about putting pressure on the Israeli government. Surely if you care about Israel but you don’t support the current government there, you would support this type of “soft” pressure.

What would you prefer? Economic sanctions? Weapon bans? Or perhaps you’d like the Israeli government to be able to continue their atrocities with absolutely no consequences whatsoever.

Russian tennis players are competing in events and haven't been banned.

Personally, I would keep politics out of light hearted things like Eurovision & sports competitions @CrossChecking & yes that includes Russia.

I feel zero anger towards Russian citizens because of what their government did re starting a war against Ukraine.

I participate in a sport with a Russian woman and no one in the team thinks to blame her in any way for Putin’s policies. That would be wrong & clearly racist.

Of course, it's par for the course that people 'don't engage anymore' when asked questions that they can't answer. Nobody here was crying about Russian creatives not taking part in the eurovision, nobody called it terrifying, nobody here has objected to Russian sports people losing opportunies. All innocent people, all being punished because of the actions of their government. 'I have never heard it' well it must not be happening then eh or maybe it's the case like with everything else if Israel aren't involved some people don't bother reading about it. Well, we never hear of Sudan or Afghanistan or Russia blah blah, yeah mate because you have no interest in anything but Israel.

I am not engaging any more on the differences between the Russian and Israeli situation. I've gone over it so many times.

I employed a Russian freelancer myself earlier in the year and she remains on my roster, so, no they don't matter less to me than others. I have never heard of a British person with Russian heritage dealing with negative repurcussions from Russia's invasion. Every Jewish creative I know (Jewish, not Israeli, most with roots many generations long) has seen their opportunities shrink in the last 2 years.

I was questioning why people were so sure that the entrant would be Jewish, after all given the demographic make up of Israel you would think that once every 5 years at least an Israeli Arab would be representing Israel. It turns out that only once as part of a duo an Israeli Arab has represented Israel. 1 time in 50 years, that is pretty crazy given the equality of opportunity in Israel. It seems it isn't just Palestinians in Palestine being erased from the conversation.

I'm also questioning where all of these 'collective punishment' people were when Russians were being excluded from cultural events? Where was the outrage then, nobody was clutching their pearls calling that 'terrifying'. Where are the calls for Russians to be allowed to compete again? Really strange that that doesn't evoke the same depth of feeling. Do you not care about Russians and their cultural and sporting experiences as much as Israelis? Why not, there are millions of innocent Russians being punished for the actions of their government but you stayed silent, do some people matter more to you?

Its actually terrifying. And very widespread.

It’s insidious and alarming @SharonEllis the rise in anti semitism amongst people who would vehemently deny they are racist in any other context. Who profess not to agree with “collective punishment” yet wish to exclude Israelis from all these events.

A different thing to legitimate concerns & criticism of the current Israeli government with their right wing element.

People can & do criticise the Israeli government in good faith. But there’s nothing good faith about trying to cancel Jewish creatives & sportspeople just because of where they come from.

But whole countries are boycotting Eurovision because Jews are being allowed to participate in a music competition that’s supposed to be non political.

Except this isn't true no matter how many times you say it. Jewish peoplw and Israel are not the same thing. Millions of Jewish people live outside of Israel and nobody has raised any objection to any of them participating in Eurovision. This is the reason that Ireland are not participating:
""RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk. RTÉ remains deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza during the conflict and the continued denial of access to international journalists to the territory."*

You can try and erase Palestinians from the conversation as much as you like but it doesn't make it true. These countries object to how Palestinians have been treated. Slovenia says Our message is: we will not participate in the ESC if Israel is there. On behalf of the 20,000 children who died in Gaza.

Palestinian lives matter. That some people can't grasp this says more about them than it does about the countries boycotting a competition because of mass slaughter.

OK 4 countries boycott. It impacts then more than the others with their flouncing. The good thing is the number of countries standing in solidarity with Israel and I hope this continues with international sport like football. I think this era of jew hate should end personally. If Israel had been banned when would they had been let in - when they self declared itself a Zionist regime and removed itself from existence? - the whole thing is deranged.

I suppose the four countries in question will sheepishly ask to be let in next year?

There already are calls to boycott Jewish creatives and sportspeople. And much more insidious is the silent dropping of invitations, contracts, jobs etc. Talk to any Jewish writer, comedian, artist, academic, they have all had some experience of this in the last 2 years.Its happening in this country and around the world.
Oi va Voi had a gig cancelled in May
Philip Simons and Rachel Creeger cancelled at Edinburgh this year
An exhibition in Bournemouth about Jews cancelled this year due to 'safety concerns'.
There was a conference this week bringing together a range of people facing cancellation and discrimination in the arts.

Widespread calls to chuck Israel out of football competitions

Cancellations in the UShttps://www.thejc.com/opinion/cancelling-all-jews-has-become-the-latest-obsession-of-israels-enemies-in-the-us-paw41i9k

Sweden https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/17/jewish-film-festival-cancelled-in-sweden-after-cinemas-refuse-to-host-events

Its happening.

Yes but I don’t post about it obsessively do I - in fact the one time I do mention it someone gets offended and reports me.

But whole countries are boycotting Eurovision because Jews are being allowed to participate in a music competition that’s supposed to be non political. They have flounced off (to use a MN term) because they didn’t get their own way about banning Israel from Eurovision.

What next? Will there be widespread calls to boycott films if they have Jewish actors in them? A movement to stop Jewish sportspeople from competing in international competitions. Has that happened yet? How far will this go before people realise it’s wrong to penalise singers, musicians etc for things they didn’t do.

I could find many examples of Israels poor attitude to human life so we are both guilty of posting the same thing over and over and over again.

A poll of 1500 Germans taken over 10 days does not necessarily tell the whole story. Considering that the population of Germany is over 84 million people.

And the poll does not say that the German people want to "distance themselves from Israel" but rather that the majority of those polled don't agree with Germany supplying arms to Israel.

"consider antisemitic"

And there lies the ambiguity.

Bit like Ms Rachel being nominated anti semite of the year for supporting Palestinian children.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like the majority of the German public would rather distance themselves from Israel. It really doesn't seem like Israel do have a lot of German support at all.

www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/majority-of-germans-reject-military-support-for-israel-survey/3753176#

I don't criticise countries just because they are vocal in their support of Palestine over Israel in the war, which many such as France have been.

I only criticise countries for doing things that I consider antisemitic like this pathetic boycotting of Eurovision.

I'm sure countries would equally get criticised if they said let's not allow Palestinians to take part in competitions because we don't like the actions of their leaders.

So unless we discuss all 17000 children who die every day around the world (I googled it) we can't discuss the two that the IDF shot dead on the CITME board.

Ok, good to know.

No its not a strange comment. Its the crux of the matter.

Well Twiglets we can all be a little guilty on this board of excessive criticism of countries that don't share our view of the conflict can't we.

Well in the context of the discussion on this board yes that is what matters.

What a strange comment.

All I'm hearing is you want to criticise Germany now because they are coming out more strongly since the ceasefire in support of Israel.

It is to their credit (and Israel's) that despite the extremely toxic relationship between the 2 countries historically, they can now call each other friends and allies. Germany feel a special responsibility to support Israel because of their own anti semitic actions in the past, and somehow Israel are able to forgive them which is extraordinary.