Eurovision Song Contest director Martin Green affirmed in a recently published interview with Variety that there would be no further votes by countries in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on whether to exclude Israel from the competition.<\/p>\n
Green told Variety: \u201cNo, that\u2019s done. The membership spoke conclusively. Almost 70% made their decision that they believe that public service broadcasters are not responsible for the actions of their government, and that [the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation] KAN should be allowed to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following Israel\u2019s 2025 Eurovision showing, in which Yuval Raphael\u2019s performance of \u201cNew Day Will Rise\u201d came in first in the televoting and second overall, there were calls to investigate Israel for possible rules violations.<\/p>\n
When no wrongdoing was found, five countries – Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Iceland \u2013 chose to boycott Eurovision in 2026, rather than perform alongside Israel, after the EBU, at its general assembly in December, declined to put the matter of Israeli participation to a vote.<\/p>\n
Israel, represented in 2026 by Noam Bettan singing \u201cMichelle,\u201d came in second again, amid a slew of articles from publications such as The New York Times alleging cheating on Israel\u2019s part, but which provided no evidence.<\/p>\n
In the Variety interview, Green reiterated that there was no reason to doubt the validity of the results of either the jury vote or the televote this year or in past years, saying, \u201cWe had a fully validated vote again this year. We saw no evidence of undue large-scale paid promotion; we saw no evidence of anything untoward in our voting at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that the availability of [the audience each] being able to vote 10 times doesn\u2019t make any difference to the outcome,\u201d Green said. \u201cOur vote is fair and true and validated, and it\u2019s like any vote, really. If you\u2019re not that keen on the outcome, then next year, vote more and vote for something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other Eurovision news, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, has been accepted as an EBU member, meaning Canada will be able to participate in Eurovision, joining other non-European countries that take part, including Israel, Australia, Cyprus, and Armenia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eurovision Song Contest director Martin Green affirmed in a recently published interview with Variety that there would be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[2492,3248,1648,23637,388,43414,3743,26026,33211,18124,37,29388,3740,12494,1218],"class_list":["post-191050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-antisemitism","tag-armenia","tag-australia","tag-boycott","tag-cyprus","tag-divestment-and-sanctions-movement","tag-european-broadcasting-union","tag-eurovision","tag-iceland","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-israel-boycott","tag-kan","tag-slovenia","tag-spain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116867310995404948","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191050","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=191050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}