Greetings fellow petitioners.
As of today we are over 53 000 persons whom has signed this petition. Thank you!
First I would like to share a song with all of you, it is on repeat here in my residence... It gives med hope and a feeling of unity with all of the people around the world that together are fighting different fights to put the spotlight on Palestine and its people suffering.
You can listen to it on Youtube here it is Omar Offendum, God Is Love, a Banger if you ask me!
Second of all I would like to thank www.carcazan.com
That reached out to me and told me about their activity to stop Israels participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2024. They have also e-mailed the EBU, Cilla Benko, and many others being involved in being the enablers of Israels participation in ESC.
They also said I can share the e-mail they used for all petitioners as a template to copy and paste in to their own e-mail. My wish is that all of you sends an e-mail, to one or all of the people involved in being responsible for letting Israel participate * emails on the petitions first page.
They sent the following text:
Dear Mr Curran
Being in the media, you cannot fail to have noticed a resounding campaign questioning the EBU's/Eurovision's insistance on including Israel in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest (Israel being subject to 2 ICJ Provisional Measures Orders for their quote 'plausible genocide' in Gaza, and whose gloating about genocidal actions can be viewed live-streamed on social media) when it banned Russia in 2022 for invading Ukraine.
I want to lodge a formal complaint against the EBU and/or Eurovision for this stance which appears to constitute an act of racism. It is alleged to be racism because:
there is no reason given by the EBU as to why it will not exclude Israel from this year's Eurovision when it quite rightly excluded Russia in 2022
there is no evidence explaining what the difference is between Russia in 2022 and Israel today when Russia was banned for invading Ukraine
there is overwhelming evidence, including from the International Court of Justice and the report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that Israel's actions in the last 6months meet the Genocide Convention criteria for genocide and this makes their aggression far worse than Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the material time Eurovision excluded Russia in 2022 - yet Israel gets to participate in Eurovision 2024
in the absence of any justification by the EBU and/or Eurovision (which is organised by EBU and therefore subject to it), the only evidence which differentiates the two decisions is that the victims of Russia's invasion of Ukraine were white (or predominantly white Ukrainians), but the victims of Israel's genocide in Gaza are not white (or are predominantly brown/non-white Palestinians)
It is on this basis that the EBU and/or Eurovision and/or both have made the decision to not treat Israel today equally to Russia in 2022 for what appears to be the EBU and/or Eurovision prizing and valuing white people over non-white people.
The decision to not exclude Israel from Eurovision 2024 appears therefore based upon allegedly racist motivations and discrimination.There is no other evidence to the contrary.
Furthermore, while you have included Israel as a participant of Eurovision since 1973, you have never once invited Palestine or participants from the OPT (as is recognised by the UN, being the Occupied Palestinian Territories) - this is further evidence of an apparent racist agenda against Palestinians in particular and frankly, quite specifically. Please do not tell me that Australia, who also now participate in Eurovision, is in Europe - it is clear from this alone that the EBU can be creative when it wants to be.
Please kindly confirm the next steps of how this allegation will be investigated and what the outcomes will be - please do not allow it to drag beyond the Eurovision Song Contest airing date as if this does not matter, because in 2022 the Guardian reported the Eurovision's Executive Supervisor as saying that '"...How Europe feels very much affects the contest.“It is also that when you look back in time, you see that the Eurovision song contest is like a logbook of what has happened in Europe, what the trends have been in Europe.
“But, also, what is the kind of mood and sentiment of Europe, and what is the social context of Europe at the time. When we say we are not political, what we always should stand up for are the basic and ultimate values of democracy. Everyone is right to be who they are.”
He added: “This will be a Eurovision song contest that really shows the values that we talk about – solidarity, reaching out, uniting through music.”'
This was describing the decision to exclude Russia from the Eurovision Song Contest after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. And before you say 'music has the power to unify..', you did not use this for Russia in 2022.
The mood of Europe today and in response to the Gaza genocide by Israel has been overwhelming - people in each European country have demonstrated and protested in their hundreds of thousands against the genocide, against Israel's actions and in support of the victims and people of Gaza and Palestine (who are again, not white and/or predominantly brown). There is no explanation from the EBU and/or Eurovision why the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest is not reflecting this mood of Europe especially when hundreds of artists including Eurovision participants have petitioned the EBU/Eurovision to treat Israel equally to Russia by excluding it from this year's Contest.
You can see how this only points to one thing: apparent EBU/Eurovision anti-Palestinian racism because they are brown and/or non-white and/or Muslim and Ukrainians are white and/or not Muslim (which arguably makes EBU/Eurovision allegedly Islamophobic as well, but this may not be fair because you permitted Bosnia to participate at the height of the Yugoslav war in 1993 with Fazla's Sva Bol Svijeta and Bosnia was predominantly Muslim and suffering genocide at the material time - however Bosnian Muslims are white, which brings us back to the apparently racist motivations alleged above since Israel's victims are brown/non-white and therefore do not appear to count in the same way as white Ukrainians or white Bosnian Muslims). No other explanation which aligns with the decisions and actions taken in relation to Russia in 2022 has been presented.
I do not know how EBU/Eurovision expects us as a European or global audience and as human beings, to sit, watch and applaud/vote for Israel whose military, senior politicians and Government have used genocidal and dehumanising language against Palestinians including children, and whose military have even gloated on social media about their genocidal conquests. I won't even go into the number of humanitarian, aid, clinical and media workers they have been documented to have slaughtered. Israel is reputed to have the world's most advanced military equipment so there is a widely reported evidence base that none of these were random acts but strategic.
I look forward to your reply.
Kind regards"
We also talked about the feeling of speaking in to a void sometimes as activists, the lack of response, the shadowbans on social media, the way people ignore posts, statements and the lack of engagement for Palestinian lifes from media and other outlets.
But it is important that we continue, regardless! We are the ones whom eventually will flip the scale!
This ends todays update.
Keep up the fight, be active, and together we are strong and we will WIN!!
Respectfully/Lotta