Eurovision 2024: Why is Israel entering the competition while Russia is excluded?

There has been a lot of backlash surrounding Israel’s participation in this year’s Eurovision contest, while Russia has been excluded for two years (three series of competitions).

Due to the war in Ukraine, Russia was excluded from the Eurovision music competition, which many believe will be held with Israel’s participation this year, due to the war in the Gaza Strip. However, nothing like that ever happened, and the result was that many participating countries as well as Eurovision fans reacted to this decision, a fact observed in both semi-finals.

Speaking earlier today on a program on ERT, the well-known journalist and radio producer who has presented the contest for years, Maria Kozako, explained the reasons for allowing Israel to participate normally in the Eurovision contest. “Public broadcasters, not states, participate in Eurovision“, he reported at the beginning.

Eurovision 2024: “KAN is a new body and opposes the decisions of the Netanyahu government”

“ERT, BBC, RAI are participating. Marina represents ERT. The EBU had initially excluded Belarus for reasons of lack of democratic standards in the country, but there were many issues with Russia as well. Russia’s public channels and the Public Agency operate as government agencies, and there were already protests before the invasion of Ukraine“For the independence of the media,” Maria Kozako explained about Russia’s exclusion from the competition.

“The Russian government channel is a government channel. Therefore, in this case I acted by supporting the Russian government’s initiative to invade Ukraine. The European Union said I do not support this body,” he explained to Russia, while assuring Israel that there was a different situation.

“Here we have a different situation. KAN is a new body that opposes many of the extreme decisions of the Netanyahu government, and Netanyahu attacks KAN. KAN is not exactly in opposition, but tries to maintain journalistic integrity. I imagine that this is a step of support by the European Broadcasting Union for the media’s efforts to maintain journalistic neutrality and integrity.”