“Friends, I'm so excited!
They just announced to me that we will be in Eurovision.
There is no doubt that they made the right decision in allowing us to participate this year.
“This year it is more important than ever that we stand on that stage and represent our country with honor.”
If the singer Eden Golan reacted this Thursday on her account on her Instagram social network, it is precisely because it was not entirely clear that she could represent Israel next May at the festival.
This week the deadline for candidatures ended and the green light was still missing from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which twice asked to change the letter of the Israeli proposal, considering it political, and which was renamed
October
Rain October, alluding to the Hamas attack on October 7
)
on
Hurricane
.
The humanitarian crisis and the more than 30,000 Gazans killed in five months of bombings with no signs of ending were also increasing calls to exclude the country from the competition this year, like the EBU last year with Russia, due to the aggression against Ukraine. .
More information
Israel will participate in Eurovision: the committee finds that the song is not “political”
In an interview with Israeli public television after hearing the news, Golan avoided uncomfortable questions and noted that she is “focused” on the competition.
On her lapel she wore the yellow ribbon to ask for the release of the more than 130 Israeli hostages in Gaza, captured in the October 7 attack.
The Israel Broadcasting Corporation will unveil the final lyrics this Sunday night, at a special gala on public radio and television.
Except for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Portugal and Sweden, all participating countries (37) have already elected their representatives.
The feeling in Israel is that a set point has been saved, but there is a lot of game left.
In Belgium, the French-speaking Minister of Culture, Benedicte Linard, and her Flemish counterpart, Benjamin Dalle, have asked for the exclusion of Israel, which has won the competition four times, the last of them in 2018, with
Toy
, by Netta.
In Spain, the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, has asked to boycott the contest.
The Israeli media assumes that there will be protests against the country in Malmö, the Swedish city where it is held, and possibly inside the venue.
The Israeli delegation will, in fact, be smaller than usual and the security deployment will be larger.
The newspaper
Yediot Aharonot
publishes this Friday that a first team from the Shin Bet, the secret services in Israel and Palestine, will soon travel to the country to study the environment.
The process has been accompanied by a mix of indignation and pragmatism.
The Israel Broadcasting Corporation initially refused to change the lyrics of
October Rain
, “even at the cost of Israel not participating in Eurovision this year.”
It contained references to “flowers” (soldiers, in military jargon) or more ambiguous phrases in apparent allusion to those killed in the attack or to those who locked themselves in the safe rooms of the kibbutzs, such as “There is no air to breathe” or “ “They were all good kids.”
Eden Golan, Israel's representative for the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest.Israel Broadcasting Corporation
At the end of February, the Minister of Culture, Miki Zohar, sent a letter to the EBU in which he defended that the lyrics should not be touched because “it is not political”, but “emotional”.
“It speaks of renewal and revival from a very fragile reality of loss and destruction, which describes the state of mind of the population in Israel these days.”
Raz Shechnick, the Media and Music correspondent for the country's most read newspaper,
Yediot Ahronot,
then wrote an opinion column in which he urged his country to withdraw from the competition rather than touch the message.
“The decision to point out the lyrics as political is correct.
Yes, Israeli artists find it difficult to write about other things today after their best friends were massacred.
Deal with it,” he said in reference to what the lyricist, Keren Peles, experienced from a distance.
However, Israel (one of the 17 countries that are not in Europe, but participate to integrate the EBU) experiences its presence in Eurovision as a platform on which it feels for a day like a country like the others and projects the image of modernity. who likes to be associated.
It happened in 1998, when Dana International was presented, the first trans person in the contest.
She won, with the famous song
Diva
.
Or two decades later, with
Toy
, another song that won the crystal microphone and whose lyrics address female empowerment with the chorus: “I'm not your toy.”
Therefore, the country's president, Isaac Herzog, convinced the Israel Broadcasting Corporation to modify the lyrics.
“It's about being smart, not about being right,” he defended, underlining the importance of “going with your head held high and raising the national flag in all world forums, this year in particular,” in which “those who hate ” to the country “they seek to separate and boycott the State of Israel from all scenarios.”
It remains to be seen what will happen at the gala.
It is celebrated in one of the Nordic countries, where Israel's participation has generated the most opposition.
In host Sweden, some 1,000 artists, including pop stars and music competition veterans, signed an open letter calling for their exclusion.
There have been similar initiatives in Finland (1,400 signatures from artists and activists), Iceland and Norway.
On the contrary, the British actress Helen Mirren (who has just played former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on the big screen), Mayim Bialik (Amy, in
Big Bang Theory
), the singer Boy George and 400 other members of the Creative Community for Peace—a nonprofit organization of creators—supported a manifesto to the contrary.
Germany's Culture Minister Claudia Roth said it would be "a scandal" if Israel did not participate in the contest.