Eurovision in crisis as countries walk out over Israel
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Broadcasters in Ireland, The Netherlands, Slovenia and in Spain announced that they would neither show nor take part in next year’s competition, due to be held in Vienna. Members of the European Broadcasting Union, which organises the contest, had earlier decided not to hold a vote on barring Israel from competing.
Also on the programme: Vladimir Putin is feted by Narendra Modi on his visit to India; and we hear what the late Steve Cropper, legendary session guitarist, taught Otis Reading.
(Picture: Israeli entrant Yuval Raphael ahead of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest, in Basel, Switzerland, May 14, 2025 Credit: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. With me, Sean Lay. We're coming to live from London. |
| 0:17.1 | It's been one of the world's biggest annual music events for the last 70 years, and these days has an audience larger than American football Super Bowl. It is Eurovision. The entrance from Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Spain this year. But artists from none of those countries will be in Vienna when the Eurovision Song Contest is held in May of next year. |
| 0:40.1 | The broadcasters from those countries who belong to the European Broadcasting Union, the EBU, |
| 0:44.8 | which founded and organises Eurovision, won't be taking part and won't be showing it. |
| 0:49.8 | The reason Israel will again be a contestant, despite a minority of the 37 or so national |
| 0:55.9 | broadcasters who attended today's meeting, wanting the Israelis excluded. At that crisis meeting |
| 1:01.9 | in Geneva, Switzerland, some TV companies pressed for an Israeli boycott, but the meeting |
| 1:06.5 | decided not to vote on the issue. The broadcasters in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, |
| 1:10.6 | Slovenia and in Spain immediately announced they wouldn't be showing the competition or taking part. |
| 1:15.7 | One of those who attended the meeting was Natalia Gorschak, who was head of Slovenia's national broadcaster, |
| 1:22.1 | RTV Slovenia. And I asked her a little short time ago, why they wanted to see Israel excluded. |
| 1:28.3 | I think it's obvious. If we excluded Russia, like one week after they attacked Ukraine, |
| 1:35.7 | I think the same rules should be applied also to Israel. |
| 1:40.1 | Any aggressor, and we are talking about aggressor, should not be a part of the Eurovision Song Contest. |
| 1:46.7 | Once we decided this, we need to continue with the same principle. |
| 1:51.5 | I need to pick you up on that because a lot of Israelis listening to this, |
| 1:55.9 | and indeed it seems a majority of the broadcasters who take part in Eurovision, |
| 2:02.9 | do not see the two situations as the same. And Israel would argue it wasn't an aggressor. It responded to an attack on it |
| 2:09.0 | by Hamas. Yeah, but when, you know, you have the hostages and you want to release the hostages, |
| 2:16.6 | and then you have two years of complete destruction |
| 2:19.9 | of one territory. And when 20,000 children die, when 92% of homes are destroyed, I can't see |
... |
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