Slovenia Demands Israel's Removal From Eurovision 2025

My dutch friend who I was with, has mutual acquaintances with Joost. They were expressing concerns about how he would cope with the pressure long before the event and he clearly had clauses in his contract designed to protect him which were ultimately ignored.

So I think there's a rather complicated situation there and things happened that should not have (as per his contract) and he went boom. And the person concerned made a bigger thing of it than they should have. But ultimately when the EBU and the police looked into it, they've seen that there's no case to answer because he was put in a position he shouldnt have been and he was failed too.

I don't actually think it was really about his political views and silencing him for that reason.

Tbh in the long run it's not harmed his career. It's given him cult like status in the Netherlands and he's selling even more records. He had his dream of being at Eurovision though not competing in the final. I wouldn't be surprised if he popped up with a guest appearance in a few years time. But not next year. So like Dadi he will get his moment.

He was brilliant onstage but actually I don't think his vocals were quite up to it. He was a runner up and don't think destined to win. Either way he's now in the Eurovision Hall of legends - some of which are remembered more than the winners.

You will find that all religions and belief systems ( if they have been around long enough) have done things that are shameful and wrong.

Your final sentence sounds as if you think the Catholic Church is uniquely flawed . It smacks of prejudice and bigotry.

Nice deflection here.
I will quote whoever I want to and whenever I want to. Trying to curtail freedom of speech is in bad taste.

@Auvergne63 good for you. As long as it makes you feel good, then it's all good.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Again, Genocide is an act with the INTENT to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group through such acts as enumerated as a-e of Art. II of the Genocide Convention.

The tragedy that Palestinians face and suffer is very real. However, the culpability for placing Palestinians in harms way lies with Hamas for utilising humanitarian areas to fight from. The conduct of Hamas as a belligerent matters. Their use of civilian infrastructure to fight from has been well-documented for years. It isn't a new concept.

Honesty is an important place to start.

If you’ve killed a lot of people without that intent you have not committed Genocide.

Ireland it seems would disagree with you and your argument of intent. What Ireland’s action (in seeking to broaden the intent requirement) does highlight however, is that under the current definition of Genocide along with the interpretations from precedents, Israel is NOT committing Genocide.

You call it sanctimony, I call it uprightness.
I used to tell my pupils that to use the word "good" showed a lack of vocabulary and that there were many adjectives that were more pertinent to employ.

Actually @Auvergne63 do you find child abuse hilarious? Do you find appeasement holy

Please don't quote the pope. There's a reason people view the Catholic Church with derision and disgust

@Auvergne63 Do you find sanctimony good?

Do you find cruelty hilarious?

In the past month alone, Israel has bombed safe zones EIGHT times. You know those small pockets of areas where they forcibly herd civilians into, in small flimsy tents. And then once they are all in, then proceeds to bomb them. That is called barbarism.

Any random Joe can tell you that what Israel is doing is cruelty. More than that, it's depraved, inhumane sadism.

The pope 🤣🤣🤣🤣

When the war crimes and crimes against humanity stop, I don't see why Israel can't participate.
I apply this. btw. to any country who deliberately breaks international laws in the name of self defence, laws they signed up to.
Sorry but I find it immoral that someone can sing their heart out whilst their fellow countrymen/ women carry out, as the Pope put it, acts of cruelty.

You’re not comparing like with like. The number over the same time frame is a 10th of the number of people killed in Gaza.

Real friends tell each other when they are in the wrong. Israel is very very wrong.

This appears to have reasonable sources - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021)

Very good question as to why some people on here seem to equate criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism against Jews.

Israel is similar to many extreme rights abusing states who seek to engage in international sporting and cultural events as part of a PR strategy to make them appear democratic and rights respecting and fun. It's propaganda and it's being done in order to create a false image and so carry on with really awful abuses. I don't understand why people who love the thing itself - Eurovision, literature (in the case of the Dubai literary festival as another example) would want to collude in that.

I have never understood why they were in it in the first place? I wholeheartedly agree they shouldn't be in it now though!

It took 20yrs to reach that death toll.
The rate of civilian deaths in Gaza alone @40,000 per year is 4.5x higher.

Allowing Israel in in the first place was entirely political.

@I’m not Jewish but I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to read the rubbish spouted about Israel.

I don't believe there is any Jewish about the occupation or the current war crimes by the Israeli administration. We should all call out crimes by this government without resorting to racism and at the same time criticism of the actions of Israeli state should not be conflated with antisemitism.

Anyway I don't think either country should have been banned. Too complicated. Sets a future president.

Let them compete and let people protest and draw attention to the issues.

The UN’s ICJ…the international experts ruled that Israel practices apartheid on the basis of ethnicity against Palestinians. They researched and deliberated on it from December 2022-July 2024
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/19/world-court-finds-israel-responsible-apartheid

The reason that Israel needs to be banned from Eurovision is because continued participation in events like Eurovision, provide a fig-leaf for what's going on, which is arguably genocide, definitely collective punishment, mass killings, forced expulsion, internal displacement, etc.

Annihilating Palestinians or forcibly relocating the entire population of Gaza to the Sinai desert has been discussed openly in Israeli politics and media for years. The prospect of doing so has been part of Israel's public discourse for decades - indeed there were plans drawn up in a policy paper discussing 'relocating' the entire population of Gaza some time before the war began.

Intent at genocide is also evident in the military tactics Israel has used. They have targeted civilian infrastructure, camps for displaced Palestinians. Most disgusting was Israel's destroying of a fertility clinic which held frozen embryos for Palestinians. This is not a just war or reasonable self defence under international law.

Allowing Israel to participate in Eurovision regardless of the suffering and disregard for humanity over 14 months is a double standard.

I am Jewish and I can tell you it’s incredibly distressing for me that it might be assumed that as a Jew, I am supportive of mass killings of Palestinian people. or that I would seek to shut down uncomfortable discussions about mass killings, collective punishment, starvation and expulsion of a people by the state of Israel with arguments like the ones trotted out by the usual suspects here. Who by the way speak for themselves not a diversity of Jewish people.

but it seems to me that the likes of Australia may have wished to join the EBU as a positive action: because they share a common language and a great deal of cultural understanding with the UK and Ireland; whereas I can't help feeling that Israel would naturally have felt unwelcome in any (mainly Arab) Middle East union, and so saw the EBU and thought "That'll do instead".

@FizzyBisto so Israel is not welcome anywhere by that logic?