Published 3 February 2024 at 16.40
Domestic. Israel's controversial displacement of the population of northern Gaza has led to calls for the country – which is not in Europe – to be excluded from Eurovision. But the Swedish participants have no opinion whatsoever on the matter.
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After 1005 artists first demanded that the EBU and SVT port Israel from Eurovision in Malmö in May, almost no one dares to have an opinion on the matter.
When SVT asks the contestants, no one has a word to say about Israel's participation.
Not even Samir Badran, a Palestinians who previously criticized the Foreign Ministry for not doing “enough” to bring Swedish Arabs from Gaza, want to comment on the matter.
– We have chosen to wait until after the break to comment on this, he says to SVT.
Lisa Ajax says she doesn't want to comment on anything political, and Adam Woods says the issue “feels private”.
– What I've realized more and more is that there are some pretty well-qualified people who can actually make a difference by saying something in the media. Unfortunately, it's not me, says Adam Woods.
The artist rebellion has involved Marit Bergman, Roshi Hoss and Christopher Wollter, among others, who accuse SVT director Hanna Stjärne of hypocrisy.
Stjärne is not usually afraid of political controversies and was, among other things, involved in porting Russia out of Eurovision 2022. A few years earlier, she gave the criminal left-wing network Researchgruppen the Golden Spade industry award for hanging Swedish private individuals who expressed opinions critical of immigration.
– When Russia was excluded from the competition, SVT's CEO Hanna Stjärne urged the EBU to do so because she believed that “Russia crossed all borders”. Isn't that what we are seeing in Gaza now? That all borders are crossed, says the actor and artist Roshi Hoss to SVT.
In an interview with Kulturnyheterna, Israel's ambassador Ziv Nevo Kulman called the Swedish artists' appeal a “gift to Hamas”.
< p>– Of course people die on both sides in war, he said then.
More specifically, 1,200 people died in the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. Since then, Israel has killed 27,000 and injured 66,500 people in various retaliatoryattacks in the Gaza Strip, most civilians, which has caused the outside world to accuse the country of genocide.