Addressing Elephants In The Room

Lancing, 24th May 2024

Before I put the review blog up for this year (that makes it sound like it’s almost ready, when it’s anything but…), I had been uhming and ahhing about how and when to address the big issues of this year.

I eventually decided that a separate post would be better. My review blogs follow a basic structure of analysing the presentation, postcards, songs, interval act and a conclusion, and I want that to be the case still with the 2024 blog. But I’m well aware that doing that would be ignoring some serious elephants.

Let me make clear that I’m not firmly on either side when it comes to my stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict. Mr LLPP is from Jewish heritage (his late father spent a lot of time in Israel doing Kibbutzim) and we’ve raised our daughter to be aware of her ancestry. My first trip to Eurovision was to Tel Aviv in 2019, and that was an incredible week. Nothing changes that. Up to now I’ve always been in favour of Israel being in the contest, both from a musical and political point of view and they were an absolute powerhouse in the era I mostly blog about.

But. They are committing literal war crimes.

Even their participation might not have been a problem in itself. If they had gone this year with a protest song, that could have been a very powerful moment. The average Israeli citizen does not want what is going on right now, and is in favour of a dual state. But the minute they started pushing their victim agenda onto the contest  – the clue was in putting forward a song called October Rain – the EBU should have said a hard no. My belief is that the EBU thought Israel would walk away themselves at that point, but they got played by the lyrics being changed and then being unable to refuse.

Add in the existing Israeli sponsorship, and this made the delegation believe they were untouchable and created the terrible atmosphere. The EBU then literally behaving like this meme really harmed their remaining credibility.

Pretending that the contest isn’t political is like Formula One pretending there are no Team Orders. Once they realised there was no stopping that, and made it an acceptable part of the rules, it improved things immeasurably for everyone. Countries competing against each other is inherently political. As long as nothing outright inflammatory is entered, let’s get it out in the open from now on.

It’s fair to wager that if Israel are allowed to compete again next year, there will be 10 or more withdrawals, a number that will give the EBU serious headaches in how to format the show. You can’t make two semis with that few numbers, unless you shrink the Grand Final as well. But it’s a situation they’ve completely brought upon themselves. I don’t think the contest will be killed by this (everything did look fine to the average viewer) but there’ll be changes for sure and a reset is needed.

The other blue, spiky-shoulder-padded elephant I need to talk about is the Netherlands DQ, which I treat as a wholly separate issue. We still have too few details to really draw some definite conclusions, but it’s important to bear in mind that the contest is a workplace. Try doing even the most benign version of events I’ve heard at your workplace and let me know how that works out. You might not get sacked but you’d certainly get in a fair bit of trouble, and given it happened on the Friday, that isn’t enough time to carry out a full investigation, so the EBU would have to come down on the uncharitable side.

The unconditional support I’ve seen for Joost has not sat well with me. But I’m not going as far as presuming him guilty, and I don’t doubt that the bad vibes of the week backstage would have had a major role to play.

If you got the end of all that, well done, and I’m sure you can now see why I didn’t want to embed that in the main review. But it couldn’t go unsaid either.

Love Love, and more importantly, Peace Peace.