The protests against Israel's participation in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, in the shadow of the war in Gaza, seem to be an extreme example of the meddling of politics in the world's largest music competition - but in truth, politics have always been involved in Eurovision, and sometimes quite prominently.
We've enlisted the help of Forefront and Claude to come up with some examples of blatant politics at Eurovision (and no, Greece's near-automatic "doze poa" to Cyprus and vice versa doesn't count).
1978 - Who won the Eurovision Song Contest? Look, flowers!
Eurovision is also broadcast in countries that do not send songs to it - Australia, for example, is known as a country of ardent Eurovision fans even before it began to participate in it in 2015.
But our neighbors, Lebanon and Jordan, have also been broadcasting it for years.
However, the Israeli songs are censored - and so, in the year we won for the first time, 1978, the broadcast on the Jordanian channel was interrupted during Yizhar Cohen's "Avnivi", and pictures of flowers were shown in its place.
Of course, when the song won, this led to embarrassment when the entire last part of the broadcast, with the entrance to the stage and the repeat performance, was not broadcast.
1980 - The Game of Chairs
Morocco is another country that broadcasts the Eurovision Song Contest but does not participate in it, due to its refusal to broadcast the Israeli song.
However, in 1980 it identified a loophole: after the second Israeli victory in a row in 1979, the Broadcasting Authority postponed hosting the competition once again, due to the high cost and the preference to invest in the transition to color broadcasting.
The replacement host, Holland, set the date for the contest without consulting the previous winner, and so it happened that the contest was held on the eve of Memorial Day for the fallen of the IDF (as it was then called). Israel had to give up participation - and Morocco jumped at the opportunity to enter without having to allow citizens to watch and vote for the song Israeli. However, after the song she sent came in second place from the end, and Israel announced that it was returning to the competition next year, Morocco's previous king, Hassan II, announced that Morocco would never participate in the competition again. Opinions differ as to the reason - was it the apparent humiliation or the desire to avoid friction with Israel. His son, Muhammad VI, who has ruled the country for two and a half decades and signed the Abrahamic agreements, did not bother to cancel this decision of his father.
2005 - the law against music
As we mentioned, Lebanon has been broadcasting the Eurovision Song Contest for years - but almost two decades ago it decided that it also wanted to participate in it.
The song had already been chosen, the cover for the official album with the flag was already ready, and then a tiny difficulty was discovered: Lebanese law prohibits broadcasting "content that normalizes the Israeli occupation".
Yes, this includes a casual song (and apologies to Maimon songs - we have nothing against "the silence that remains". This is a casual wording to illustrate the point) in a music competition.
The Lebanese channel was forced to cancel the participation, and the European Broadcasting Union was forced to remove one flag from the album cover.
2009 - Putin is in the crosshairs
following Russia's invasion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two separatist regions of Georgia, in the summer of 2008, for Eurovision 2009, the country sent a song to Eurovision 2009 entitled "We Don't Wanna Put In" - when it is clear to every listener that the intention is not "We don't want to put in" , but "we don't want Putin". If the mere implicit mention of the president wasn't enough, the Eurovision Song Contest was held that year in Moscow, which caused a lot of tension on the subject. Finally, after the European Broadcasting Union disqualified the song and demanded that the Georgian channel send another song, the channel refused and gave up completely for participating in the competition.
2009 - did you vote? You are suspicious!
And if this is not dramatic enough for one year, in the same Eurovision, the Azerbaijani intelligence services were angered by no less than 43 citizens voting for neighboring Armenia, with which the country has a centuries-old historical conflict over the control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The European Broadcasting Union was outraged and ordered the Azerbaijani TV channel to pay a fine for the arrests.
2017 - A war criminal in a wheelchair
Even before the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were tensions between the two countries at a level that could be cut with a hairpin.
The last time Ukraine won Eurovision, 2016, it could still host it the following year in Kyiv.
Russia planned to send the singer Yulia Samoilova, who has spinal muscular atrophy and moves around in a wheelchair, to the competition - but then the Ukrainians announced that for them, the 28-year-old singer is a war criminal.
The reason: she appeared in the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and entered it directly from Russia in violation of Ukrainian law.
The Russians had to give up participation in the competition, and Samoylova received as compensation a repeat opportunity to represent the country at Eurovision 2018 in Portugal, with the song "I Won't Break" - another title that is not accidental.
2019 - Degel Yakar
The Icelandic band that represented the country in the Eurovision Song Contest held in Tel Aviv did not hide its political leanings, even from the local pre-stages.
Despite the many warnings they received, they chose to wave the Palestinian flag in the greenroom during the broadcast.
These few seconds cost the Icelandic channel a fine of 5,000 euros.
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