More than 70 former Eurovision contestants have reportedly signed an open letter urging organizers to ban Israel and its national broadcaster, Kan, from this year’s competition.

In a letter addressed to the European Broadcasting Union, participants such as British musician Mae Muller, Ireland’s 1994 winner Charlie McGettigan, as well as Portuguese singer Fernando Tordo called for Israel’s exclusion over the country’s “genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the decades-long regime of apartheid and military occupation against the entire Palestinian people.”

The letter refers to the ongoing war in the region that has so far claimed the lives of over 50,000 Gazans, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Decades-spanning tensions escalated when the Hamas militant group launched an armed incursion on an Israeli music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people.

Israel’s continued air strikes on Gaza were the source of rife controversy at last year’s Eurovision Song Contest,...