Could Eurovision boycotts over Israel lead to a competition crisis?

In the last two years, there has been growing controversy over Israel's participation in Eurovision - now, countries including Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands are already threatening to withdraw ahead of next year's event.

The BBC continues to bury its head in the sand:

BBC director general Tim Davie has said the corporation is "aware of the concerns" raised, but the song contest has "never been about politics".

But it has and everyone knows it.

As Dean Vuletic, a historian of contemporary Europe and author of Postwar Europe In The Eurovision Song Contest, points out in the article:

"Politics has always been there," he says. "Countries have always used the contest to send political messages. For example, in the very first contest in 1956, West Germany was represented by a Jew and a Holocaust survivor."

Yugoslavia was banned, Belarus was banned, Russia was banned - how exactly were those exclusions not about politics - unless you consider them to be the result of the application of EU 'values' and the unilateral 'rules-based order' (our rules, your order).

A spokesperson for the BBC also said:

Eurovision has never been led by politics, it has been - and is - a celebration of music and culture that brings people together from across the world.

If only.