{"id":673,"date":"2026-05-12T17:35:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=673"},"modified":"2026-05-12T17:35:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:35:46","slug":"eurovision-song-competition-starts-with-the-first-semifinal-after-boycott-over-israel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=673","title":{"rendered":"Eurovision song competition starts with the first semifinal after boycott over Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>VIENNA<\/strong> | Competition starts Tuesday at the Eurovision Song Contest, with divisions over Israel\u2019s participation hanging over the 70th birthday of the over-the-top pop music extravaganza.<\/p>\n<p>Host city Vienna has been bedecked in hearts and the contest\u2019s \u201cUnited by Music\u201d motto for a week in which singers and bands from 35 countries will compete onstage for the continent\u2019s musical crown. But five countries \u2014 Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland \u2014 are boycotting to protest Israel\u2019s inclusion.<\/p>\n<p>Several pro-Palestinian demonstrations are planned in Vienna during Eurovision week, and security is tight, with police officers from across Austria deployed in the capital, and support from forces in neighboring Germany.<\/p>\n<p>Last month a 21-year-old Austrian man accused of pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group pleaded guilty to plotting to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024, and the head of Austria\u2019s DSN intelligence service, Sylvia Mayer, said \u201cthe terror threat posed by Islamist terror groups, as well as Iran-affiliated groups, is still at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Israeli singer Noam Bettan is among 15 acts competing for votes from viewers and national juries in Tuesday\u2019s semifinal at the Wiener Stadthalle arena. The top 10 will go through to Saturday\u2019s grand final, along with 10 from Thursday\u2019s second semifinal. The U.K., France, Germany and Italy automatically qualify because they are among the contest\u2019s biggest funders. Austria, last year\u2019s winner, goes through to the final as host country.<\/p>\n<p>Bettan is seeking to get Israel, which came second in 2025, into Saturday\u2019s final with the ballad \u201cMichelle.\u201d Like last year\u2019s Israeli competitor, Yuval Raphael, he has practiced singing while being booed.<\/p>\n<p>Hoping to cement its status as bookmakers\u2019 favorite is Finland, with the intense \u201cLiekinheitin\u201d (\u201cFlamethrower\u201d) by violinist Linda Lampenius and pop singer Pete Parkkonen.<\/p>\n<p>Other competitors in Tuesday\u2019s semifinal include Greece\u2019s Akylas with fan-favorite party-rap track \u201cFerto\u201d (\u201cBring It\u201d); Portuguese quintet Bandidos do Cante with the soulful \u201cRosa\u201d; and singer Senhit, representing tiny San Marino with \u201cSuperstar,\u201d a party anthem featuring a guest appearance by Boy George.<\/p>\n<p>Long a forum for good-natured \u2014 and sometimes more pointed \u2014 national rivalries, Eurovision has found it hard to separate pop and politics in recent years. Russia was expelled in 2022 after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>The 2024 contest in Malmo, Sweden, and last year\u2019s event in Basel, Switzerland, saw pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel to be expelled over its conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza and allegations it ran a rule-breaking marketing campaign to get votes for its contestant.<\/p>\n<p>When organizers declined to kick Israel out, five countries announced in December that they would not participate this year.<\/p>\n<p>The European Broadcasting Union, which runs Eurovision, has toughened voting rules in response to the vote-rigging allegations, halving the number of votes per person to 10 and tightening safeguards against \u201csuspicious or coordinated voting activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dean Vuletic, author of \u201cPostwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest,\u201d is confident Eurovision can weather the latest storms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll see demonstrations, but we\u2019ll also see a lot of colorful events going on which will really represent what Eurovision is about, which is bringing Europeans together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you look at the history of Eurovision, it\u2019s gone through so many crises, so many political challenges, so many geopolitical changes in Europe, and it\u2019s always managed to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest, visit: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/eurovision-song-contest<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=667\">Toon in Tuesday<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=669\">Israeli lawmakers set up a special tribunal and allow for death penalty for Hamas-led 2023 attackers<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=671\">Kuwait alleges that Iran attacked an island hosting a China-funded port before Trump\u2019s Beijing trip<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VIENNA | Competition starts Tuesday at the Eurovision Song Contest, with divisions over Israel\u2019s participation hanging over the 70th birthday of the over-the-top pop music extravaganza. Host city Vienna has been bedecked in hearts and the contest\u2019s \u201cUnited by Music\u201d motto for a week in which singers and bands from 35 countries will compete onstage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[799,800,801,77,802,803],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-boy-george","tag-dean-vuletic","tag-finland","tag-israel","tag-noam-bettan","tag-san-marino"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Eurovision song competition starts with the first semifinal after boycott over Israel - Denver Moving Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=673\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Eurovision song competition starts with the first semifinal after boycott over Israel - Denver Moving Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"VIENNA | Competition starts Tuesday at the Eurovision Song Contest, with divisions over Israel\u2019s participation hanging over the 70th birthday of the over-the-top pop music extravaganza. 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