Reigning Eurovision winner backs calls to ban Israel from 2025 Song Contest

Cliff Notes – Reigning Eurovision winner backs calls to ban Israel from 2025 Song Contest

• Nemo Mettler, Switzerland’s Eurovision 2024 champion, supports the exclusion of Israel from the 2025 competition, citing a conflict with Eurovision’s values of peace and human rights.
• A group of former contestants, including Mae Muller and Salvador Sobral, have signed an open letter calling for Israel’s ban, accusing its broadcaster of complicity in human rights violations against Palestinians.
• This year’s Israeli participant, Yuval Raphael, is a survivor of the October 7 Hamas-led attack, while Eurovision has implemented new rules banning Pride flags from the stage.

Reigning Eurovision winner backs calls to ban Israel from 2025 Song Contest

The current Eurovision champion has said they support the decision to ban Israel from the 2025 competition.

Nemo Mettler won the song contest in 2024 on behalf of Switzerland with the song The Code.

Ahead of last year, the singer joined critics in calling for a boycott of Eurovision if Israel’s Eden Golan was allowed to participate as the conflict in the Middle East continued to rage on.

Nemo, who was the first openly non-binary act to represent Switzerland in Eurovision, was one of nine acts who issued a group statement expressing solidarity with Palestine.

This time around, the singer-rapper has once again objected to Israel’s participation.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, Nemo said: ‘I personally feel like it doesn’t make sense that Israel is a part of this Eurovision. And of Eurovision in general right now.

‘I don’t know how much I want to get into detail, but I would say, I don’t support the fact that Israel is part of Eurovision at the moment.’

Nemo later added an additional statement, reading: ‘I support the call for Israel’s exclusion from the Eurovision Song Contest.

‘Israel’s actions are fundamentally at odds with the values that Eurovision claims to uphold — peace, unity, and respect for human rights.’

Earlier this week, former Eurovision contestants called on the competition to ban Israel and its national broadcaster Kan from this year’s contest.

Among the 72 names who have signed the open letter are the UK’s 2023 entry Mae Muller, Ireland’s 1994 champion Charlie McGettigan and 2017 Portuguese winner Salvador Sobral.

The contestants have accused Kan of being ‘complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the decades-long regime of apartheid and military occupation against the entire Palestinian people.’

The Swiss singer said ‘I personally feel like it doesn’t make sense that Israel is a part of this Eurovision’ 

The open letter also accused Eurovision organiser, the Eurovision Broadcasting Union (EBU), of ‘whitewashing and normalising [Israel’s] crimes’ by providing a platform for the country.

It also said there was a ‘double-standard’ after Russia was expelled from the competition in 2022.

This year’s participant for Israel is Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in which roughly 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Meanwhile, Remember Monday – which is composed of Lauren Byrne, Holly-Anne Hull and Charlotte Steele – will be representing the UK with their song What the Hell Just Happened?

Elsewhere in this year’s competition in Basel, artists have been banned from taking Pride flags on stage.

The new guidance outlines that only one national flag can be used in official spaces ‘in line with other international competitive events’ which includes the Stage, Green Room, Eurovision Village Stage, the Turquoise Carpet at the Opening Ceremony and the Flag Parade.

Eurovision will be available to watch on Saturday May 17 on BBC 1.