The countries participating in Eurovision They broadcast the development of the contest on their networks. It must be taken into account that the organization of the Eurovision Song Contest is carried out by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), not by the European Union itself, which is an international corporation (not only European) of collaboration between different public channels and private. In the case of Belgium, the two active members of the EBU are the Radio-Télévision Belge de la Communauté française (RTBF) and the Vlaamse Radio en Televisieomroep (VTR), a radio station that is part of the former but is mainly oriented to the flamenco community.

And it was precisely this last one that carried out its particular boycott of Israel’s actions, that the pass to the final was at stake in the second semi-final, broadcast on Thursday, May 9, two days before the final of the contest. The Israeli representative, Eden Golanalready experienced tense moments during the general rehearsal and also during the performance, receiving, in both, loud boos from the audience who tried to be covered with canned applause. This moment could be seen on many of the networks that broadcast the second semifinal, but the fans did not witness it. Belgian viewers who followed the semi on VTRsince the network chose to cut the performance.

As Golan’s performance was about to begin, the following message appeared on the screen, in Dutch: “This is a union action. We condemn the violations of Human Rights by the State of Israel. Furthermore, the State of Israel destroys freedom of the press. That’s why we interrupt the image for a moment.” Below, next to these words, two hashtags: #CeaseFireNow (#StopGenocideNow) and #StopGenocide (#StopGenocidio). Social networks were filled with images of televisions with this message accompanied, mainly, by words of pride.

From some Israeli accounts, for their part, they criticized this action. The user @IsraelNewsPulse, for example, published a message in which he claimed that “Flemish public television staff” had “kidnapped” his audience by broadcasting a “pro-Hamas message” during the second semi-final of Eurovision, before Israel’s performance began.

Last March, several Belgian ministers already requested that Israel will be excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest as long as it continues its war against Hamas, which has already caused nearly 40,000 victims, mainly civilians. It was the French-speaking Minister of Culture, Benedicte Linard, and her Flemish counterpart, Benjamin Dalle, who joined this request, which is not unique, but has also been arriving from different parts of the continent and from different areas. “Just like Russia was suspended from the competitions and Eurovision After the invasion of Ukraine, Israel should be too until it puts an end to its flagrant violations of international law, which are causing thousands of victims, especially children,” Linard explained.