«Palestine must find hospitality on the Eurovision stage, if we don't want to undermine the values of inclusion and brotherhood that music brings with it». Alessandro di Majo, Davide Di Pietro and Roberto Natale, three directors of Rai, say this. Their note, reported by Corriere della Seracomes after Levante's statements that we wrote about here.
“Levante has declared that, even if he were to win the Sanremo Festival, he would choose not to represent Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest to protest against the presence of Israel”, reads the note. «The singer-songwriter is the first artist, and probably won't be the only one among those competing at the Ariston, to remind us that Gaza still weighs heavily on the musical event scheduled in Vienna in May. As is known, Rai chose to participate, given that our proposal to boycott the ESC had not passed the board of directors, as five other broadcasters had instead decided. And within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) there was a large majority that preferred not to oust Israel.”
According to the three councilors, despite having chosen to participate in the event, Rai «proposed to evaluate editorial choices capable of giving visibility, in a non-competitive form, to an artist representative of Palestinian culture, as a sign of civil sensitivity and promotion of dialogue. To date, no response has been received from the EBU or ORF, the Austrian broadcaster organizing the event. But international pressure can still influence the decisions of European broadcasters, who in mid-March will meet with the ORF to define the editorial contents of the three evenings in Vienna”.
