{"id":19484,"date":"2025-05-21T05:48:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T05:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=19484"},"modified":"2025-05-21T05:48:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T05:48:23","slug":"spanish-pm-calls-for-israel-ban-at-eurovision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=19484","title":{"rendered":"Spanish PM calls for Israel ban at Eurovision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/31eb\/live\/4d7ffd30-34d4-11f0-a7d6-116e90b77ae3.jpg.webp\" alt=\"EPA-EFE\/Shutterstock Israel's Yuval Raphael performs the song &quot;New day will rise&quot; during the grand final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Israel&#8217;s Yuval Raphael came second at Saturday&#8217;s song contest with her song New Day Will Rise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Spanish prime minister has called for Israel to be banned from the Eurovision Song Contest over its military action in Gaza.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pedro S\u00e1nchez noted&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/entertainment-arts-60530513\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Russia has been banned from the contest since 2022<\/a>&nbsp;following its invasion of Ukraine, and said there should not be &#8220;double standards&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Israel came second in the contest&#8217;s grand final in Switzerland on Saturday, but topped the public vote &#8211; with Spanish viewers giving Israel the maximum 12 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Israeli minister for diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, ridiculed S\u00e1nchez with a social media post that said the vote had been a &#8220;slap in the face&#8221; for the Spanish PM, &#8220;which we have heard here in Jerusalem&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>BBC News has asked Eurovision organisers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking at a news conference in Madrid, S\u00e1nchez said: &#8220;Nobody was up in arms when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and [Russia] had to leave international competitions and could not take part, as we have just seen, in Eurovision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Therefore Israel shouldn&#8217;t either, because what we cannot allow is double standards in culture.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/bbf3\/live\/916432f0-34c5-11f0-aa60-d5869f4a84da.jpg.webp\" alt=\"Reuters Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Pedro S\u00e1nchez and his government have been harsh critics of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He also expressed solidarity with &#8220;the people of Palestine who are experiencing the injustice of war and bombardment&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Spain&#8217;s commitment to international law and human rights must be constant and must be coherent,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Europe&#8217;s should be too.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>S\u00e1nchez and his government, which officially acknowledged a Palestinian state last year, have been harsh critics of Israel, and last week in Congress the prime minister referred to the country as &#8220;a genocidal state&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Israel has strenuously denied accusations of genocide, and its foreign ministry summoned the Spanish ambassador for a formal reprimand over S\u00e1nchez&#8217;s &#8220;serious remarks&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Eurovision, Spain&#8217;s televote saw the country award Israel maximum points for its song New Day Will Rise by Yuval Raphael. Spain&#8217;s broadcast network&nbsp;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/elpais.com\/television\/2025-05-18\/tve-solicitara-este-lunes-una-auditoria-del-televoto-espanol.html?outputType=amp\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RTVE has since requested an audit<\/a>&nbsp;of the votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ahead of the Eurovision final on Saturday, RTVE aired a message in support of Palestinians &#8211; despite being warned to avoid references to Gaza by the EBU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Spain&#8217;s entry, Esa Diva by Melody, finished in 24th place on Saturday night in Basel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reference Link:- <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cn7zx836v6do\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cn7zx836v6do<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Spanish prime minister has called for Israel to be banned from the Eurovision Song Contest over its military action in Gaza. Pedro S\u00e1nchez noted&nbsp;Russia has been banned from the contest since 2022&nbsp;following its invasion of Ukraine, and said there should not be &#8220;double standards&#8221;. Israel came second in the contest&#8217;s grand final in Switzerland [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[58,18779,575,64,18780,893,1115,105,2569,6263,52,1636,51,3425,18778,18781,1240,4384,972],"class_list":["post-19484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-america","tag-ban-isreal","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-eurovision-2","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-geopolitics-2","tag-holocaust","tag-hunger","tag-israel","tag-israeli-agressions","tag-palestine","tag-spain-2","tag-spanish-pm","tag-spanish-pm-calls-for-israel-ban-at-eurovision","tag-starvation","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19486,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19484\/revisions\/19486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}