Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros called Klein’s expulsion “very harsh and disproportionate”. According to her, Klein was leaving the stage after Thursday’s semi-final when he was filmed without his consent and subsequently made a “threatening gesture” towards the camera. According to television, Klein did not touch the camera or the camerawoman. Singers from 25 countries will take part in the final after the Dutchman was eliminated, the representative of the Czech Republic, singer Aiko, did not make it to the final.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the competition, said in a statement today that exclusion refers to an incident in which no other artist (competitor) or member of another delegation is involved. According to AP, there were speculations that the incident was related to the Israeli delegation. Today, Klein was supposed to perform the song Europapa, which he wanted to pay tribute to his father, who died of cancer. According to the media, the song, described as a techno ode to the diversity of Europe, was one of the favorites to win. However, the Dutch will still be able to vote in the competition, as according to the rules, you cannot vote for your country.
Massive protests against the Israeli participant
This year’s 68th edition of Eurovision was also marked by anti-Israel protests due to the war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, which began last October 7 with a terrorist attack by the radical Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas on Israel. Today, a crowd of several thousand protesters gathered in Malmö’s main square and then marched towards the concert hall. Many protesters carried Palestinian flags and banners reading “Eurovision linked to genocide” with a link – the slogan of the competition – “United by music”, reports Reuters.
“It is important to show that we will stand on the right side for everyone. It could be any other country and we would still be standing here because these are children, men and women who have been occupied for so many years,” one of the protesters, Maryam, who gave only her first name, said today. The police estimated that 6,000 to 8,000 thousand people participated in the demonstration.
In the previous months, many called for a boycott of this competition or the exclusion of the Israeli singer Eden Golanová, similar to how Russia’s representatives were expelled in 2022 due to the invasion of Ukraine.
Golanová finally made it to today’s final. She was also congratulated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said she had advanced despite the “nasty wave of anti-Semitism”.
However, the Israeli had to do so earlier at the request of the organizers to edit her composition, which she originally called October Rain, which the EBU rejected as politically tinged. Israel was the target of an attack by Hamas last October, in which Palestinian militants killed 1,200 people. In the end, Golan performed the song Hurricane and her final performance today went off without a hitch.
Protests by thousands of people took place in Malmö in the previous days as well. About 10,000 people demonstrated on Thursday in Sweden’s third-largest city, which also has a large Muslim community. They criticized Israel’s participation in the music competition because of its offensive in the Gaza Strip, which has killed 35,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority. Protests in Malmö also took place on Friday.
Also this morning, about 40 activists broke into the building of the Finnish public broadcaster YLE in Helsinki and demanded the withdrawal of the Finnish representative from the final race. Among other things, they brought cardboard boxes with inscriptions “Boycott Eurovision” or “Stop the Genocide”; indeed, some label the behavior of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians in Gaza as genocide.
