More than 1,000 artists are calling for Israel to be excluded from the ESC. This, or something similar, has happened many times before.
There is this initially quite plausible view, often expressed and then often emphatically: The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is a non-political event. A peaceful singing competition between nations, regardless of their relationship to one another in real life. In spirit it’s a bit like the Olympic Games – only with worse music. There is, of course, a counter-opinion to this, and it essentially says that wherever states meet, competition inevitably breaks out and thus enemy images are regularly rampant. In other words: The ESC (like the Olympics) is the continuation of politics with other means.