Why Israel might not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest after all

The Eurovision Song Contest will take place this coming May in Sweden, and the songs from the countries are slowly being revealed. Always exciting for the artist to see how the song is received by the country they represent; it went quite wrong for us last year. Dion and Mia had a nice song, but there was a bit too little consideration for the fact that they had to perform it live. That didn't go well, panic ensued, the song was adjusted and... We ultimately performed bizarrely poorly. HAHA.

But well, it would probably have been even worse if the song hadn't been adjusted, so it's nice that that can still happen. Only Israel doesn't want any part of that this year. If their song needs to be adjusted (it is currently awaiting approval from the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union), they have announced that they will withdraw from the competition.

And that chance is quite present, because currently the EBU is scrutinizing the song, October Rain. In a statement to the Huffington Post, the organization stated: ‘The EBU is currently in the process of scrutinising the lyrics, a process which is confidential between the EBU and the broadcaster until a final decision has been taken. All broadcasters have until 11 March to formally submit their entries. If a song is deemed unacceptable for any reason, broadcasters are then given the opportunity to submit a new song or new lyrics, as per the rules of the Contest.’

So a very general statement, but there is a significant chance that Eden Golan, who will perform the song, will withdraw. The rules of the Eurovision Song Contest state that no song may contain a political message — in the past, several songs have already been adjusted for this reason. There are concerns that the song will mainly be about the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7.

The final judgment of the EBU will therefore take a while because all countries have until March 11 to submit a song, but if they want to make adjustments here and there, we will not see Israel in the competition this year.