![\"Israeli](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/3775656d13af2fa2f328f74163da76e3.jpeg\"\/)
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Israeli singer Noam Bettan pictured at Tuesday’s Eurovision semi-final via Associated Press<\/p>\n
Eurovision bosses have confirmed that audience members were removed from the competition\u2019s first live semi-final after political chants were heard during the broadcast of the Israeli act\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, singer Noam Bettan represented Israel at the semi-final with his song Michelle, where he was chosen to go through to the next stage of the song contest at the weekend.<\/p>\n
During the opening moments of the performance, chants of \u201cstop the genocide\u201d could be heard coming from the audience, particularly towards the beginning of the song.<\/p>\n
BBC journalist Callum Rowe later shared a joint statement from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Austria\u2019s national broadcaster ORF<\/a> about the incident.<\/p>\n \u201cAs previously announced, ORF is broadcasting a clean audio feed live from audience microphones before and during every performer\u2019s song,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne audience member, close to a microphone, loudly expressed their views as the Israeli artist began his performance, and during the song, which was heard on the live broadcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey were later removed by security for continuing to disturb the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n It was also confirmed that three more audience members \u201cwere also removed from the arena by security\u201d for what the EBU and ORF described as \u201cdisruptive behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n Notably, Eurovision\u2019s YouTube upload of Israel\u2019s semi-final performance does not include the \u201cstop the genocide\u201d chant.<\/p>\n Controversy over Israel\u2019s presence at Eurovision is nothing new<\/a>, but the competition has faced even more scrutiny in the last few years due to the country\u2019s continued participation<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the end of last year, discussions took place among EBU members about whether Israel should be invited back to Eurovision in 2026, with five nations withdrawing from the contest<\/a> following the news that Israel would remain part of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the lead-up to this year\u2019s competition, many critics \u2013 including several prolific musicians \u2013 backed calls for a boycott of Eurovision in solidarity with Palestine, while reigning winner JJ and his predecessor Nemo<\/a> have both expressed their feelings that Israel should be excluded from taking part in the contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n MORE EUROVISION:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli singer Noam Bettan pictured at Tuesday’s Eurovision semi-final via Associated Press Eurovision bosses have confirmed that audience…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[38461,38462,3743,26026,37],"class_list":["post-111335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-audience-member","tag-audience-members","tag-european-broadcasting-union","tag-eurovision","tag-israel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116566028741285341","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}