Austria Rejects Israel’s Eurovision Ban as Artists and Labels Say No Music for Genocide
After initially refusing to comment on the report that he and quite a number of other members of his party are trying to convince the organizers to withdraw from hosting next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel will be banned, Austria’s chancellor decided to speak out and firmly reject the ban, though he doesn’t seem to have mentioned the possibility of withdrawing from hosting the competition. Since he stated that he’ll never support such a ban “based on [Austria’s] history alone”, I have to once again wonder how much longer will the admittedly undeniable atrocities committed against a group of people in a period that ended more than the average lifespan ago be used as an excuse to turn a blind eye against the similar acts committed by them against another group… But this is a post about musical events, so I’ll leave it at that for now and say that the German chancellor displayed even more of that historical guilt by actually stating that Germany should boycott the ESC if Israel won’t be allowed to participate. At least another one of the big payers, Spain, made a firm decision to boycott the event if Israel will be allowed to participate, making them the most important country to have made such an announcement so far. But the vote regarding the ban, which was supposed to take place next month, was called off, proving that the EBU is still hoping that it’ll all blow over and they’ll keep being allowed to get away with their double standards on the matter.
On the other hand, from the articles I read for this post I learned, with some delay, of the No Music for Genocide movement, which describes itself as a cultural boycott of Israel, albeit one limited to music, the participating artists and labels geo-blocking and removing their music from there in response to Israel’s genocide, occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against Palestinians and the repression of pro-Palestine efforts. The movement now reports over 1000 participating artists and labels, and the list keeps growing. Admittedly, that’s a drop in the bucket, especially since very few are big names, but there are a few of those as well and, either way, it’s something that’s being done from this point of view. And, sure, it does almost exclusively affect regular Israelis, including those who oppose or even openly protest against the regime’s actions, but Israel’s crimes are also against regular Palestinians, including those who oppose Hamas, and in fact provide Hamas with a way to justify their existence and drive desperate people towards them. That doesn’t make it fair, of course, but when we’re talking about something that’s so much less severe that there can’t be any sort of comparison, at this point this can’t be used as an argument against it.
