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BERLIN: Germany’s culture minister on Saturday slammed threats by several European countries to boycott next year’s Eurovision song contest if Israel took part as politicizing a cultural event.
Spain said this week it would boycott the world’s largest live televised music event in May if Israel participated, and Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and the Netherlands have made similar threats.
“Eurovision was founded to bring nations together through music. Excluding Israel today goes against this fundamental idea and turns a celebration of understanding between peoples into a tribunal,” said Wolfram Weimer in a statement.
“It’s precisely because Eurovision was born on the ruins of war that it should not become a scene of exclusion.”
Austria, which is hosting the next Eurovision, had on Friday expressed regret over the threats.
Other countries like Belgium, Sweden, and Finland are also considering a boycott and have time till December to decide.
“Eurovision is based on the principle that artists are judged on their art and not on their nationality. The culture of cancelation is not the solution — the solution is diversity and cohesion,” Weimer said.
“It’s precisely because Eurovision was born on the ruins of war that it should not become a scene of exclusion,” he added.
The European Broadcasting Union, the organizer of Eurovision, is set to decide whether Israel will take part in the 2026 edition at its general assembly in December.
This year’s edition in Basel in Switzerland drew in 166 million viewers across 37 countries.
Pro-Palestinian activists protested in Malmo, Sweden in 2024 and in Basel in May over Israel’s participation amid its devastating offensive in Gaza.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 65,174 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next week as Russia intensified strikes across his country.
Russia carried out one of its largest aerial attacks overnight, firing 40 missiles and some 580 drones at Ukraine in a barrage that killed at least three people and wounded dozens, Zelensky said Saturday.
A Ukrainian strike, meanwhile, killed four people in Russia’s southwestern Samara region, local governor said, in one of the deadliest Ukrainian retaliatory strikes on Russia since Moscow launched its invasion in 2022.
Zelensky said he would hold “a meeting with the President of the United States,” adding he would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia during the talks with Trump.
Ukraine has insisted on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has however warned that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.
A US-led push for a quick end to the war has stalled and Russia effectively ruled out a meeting between Putin and Zelensky — something that Kyiv says is the only way toward peace.
“We expect sanctions if there is no meeting between the leaders or, for example, no ceasefire,” Zelensky said in comments released by the Ukrainian presidency on Saturday.
“We are ready for a meeting with Putin. I have spoken about this. Both bilateral and trilateral. He is not ready,” Zelensky added.
In Russia’s latest aerial assault of Ukraine, “a missile with cluster munitions directly struck an apartment building” in the central city of Dnipro, Zelensky said earlier on social media.
He posted pictures of cars and a building on fire and rescuers carrying a person to safety amid rubble scattered nearby.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the strikes killed one person and wounded at least 30, with one man in a serious condition, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.

- ‘Intense’ fighting -

The strikes come a day after three Russian fighter jets violated the airspace of Estonia — a NATO member on the alliance’s eastern flank — an allegation Moscow denied.
But it triggered fears in the West of a dangerous new provocation from Moscow after Poland last week complained that around 20 Russian drones overflew its territory.
Zelensky repeated the call for “joint solutions” to shoot down drones over Ukraine “together with other countries.”
Russia, which has been chipping away at Ukrainian territory for months, announced on Saturday its troops had captured the village of Berezove in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, “intense actions” were ongoing in the key area of Kupiansk, Zelensky said, referring to a rail hub Ukraine recaptured in its 2022 offensive.
In Russia, four people were killed “in an enemy drone attack last night,” Samara governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on social media.
He earlier said “fuel and energy facilities” were targeted, without specifying the damage.
Ukrainian General Staff said “strategic objects of the Russian aggressor were struck,” adding its forces “inflicted damage” on the Saratov Oil Refinery and struck the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery in the Samara region.
“Preliminary information indicates that explosions and fires were recorded at the site as a result of the strike,” it said on social media.
The Russian defense ministry said on Saturday its air defense alert systems “intercepted and destroyed” 149 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Saratov region and 15 over the Samara region.
Three rounds of direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul have failed to yield anything more than large-scale prisoner exchanges.
Russia has maintained a series of hard-line demands, including that Ukraine fully cedes the eastern Donbas region — parts of which it still controls.
Kyiv has rejected territorial concessions and wants European troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, something Moscow sees as unacceptable.