Eurovision is now lying about Israel and Russia. The Eurovision organiser EBU is suggesting Russia wasn’t banned due to invading Ukraine, a lie that even their own website disproves.
The EBU says the Israel situation is “fundamentally different” from Russia in 2022. They suggest they didn’t kick Russia out of Eurovision because they invaded Ukraine, they kicked Russia out of the EBU for unrelated reasons.
Except… that’s not what happened! In 2022, the EBU had announced Russia would be kicked out of Eurovision “in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine”.
The Russian broadcasters responded to being booted from Eurovision by announcing their intention to withdraw from the EBU, which the EBU reported via their website.
So why are they now saying something else happened? It’s a lie. The EBU kicked Russia out of Eurovision before the Russian broadcasters left the EBU. This is clearly an attempt to distance themselves from their (quite right) decision to remove a country from Eurovision.
But the fact is, the EBU created a precedent for themselves of removing a country due to war and now they want to pretend that never happened so they don’t have to take action against Israel.
Mahmood attends the 74th Sanremo Music Festival 2024 at Teatro Ariston on February 07, 2024 in Sanremo, Italy. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)