I think people are responding to you in this way because you want to extricate the current situation of its current context and discuss it in terms of abstract principle.
I think this is disingenuous, because this is commonly a disingenuously used tool*. Perhaps you are not engaging in rhetorical games and are sincerely questioning, but at the same time, the question has been asked and answered: Nobody is saying that Israelis shouldn't compete, but that Israel as a country should not compete. In some international competitions, you represent both yourself and your nation. In many international competitions, you can choose to represent only yourself. Nobody would have a problem with the latter.
Even if you're on maximum neoliberalism brainworms and believe 100% in the atomised individual, it's easy to understand the argument:
When I am at work, I represent my company, and when people are unhappy with the company, they get to be angry at me, and I don't get to say, "Well, it wasn't me that made that mistake". But I am also free to actually quit and therefore no longer be expected to listen to that. Each of us has two modes: When we're at work, we represent our company. When we go home, we represent ourselves. We can choose to represent our country if we believe in it or want to reform it, or we can say we don't want anything to do with it.
So the conversation, actually, is whether Israel, as a nation, should be allowed to compete. If you don't want to have that conversation, fair enough, but that is kind of what we're talking about there.
In respect to your response to me, no, your analogy falls completely flat. Sanctions are a punishment, collectively applied. And sanctions are a bargaining tool in order to extract a concession. It is understood that if a country is behaving in a way that other countries to not like, then that country can be excluded from trade. As a consequence, every individual in that country suffers. It is different to whatever analogy you want to bring, because the sanction is conditional: If the targeted country stops its "misbehaviour", the sanctions are lifted.
Likewise, in my time, the United Nations launched joint military operations into nations it perceived as infringing on the rights of others.
That is the context to which I can say, yes, I actually have no problem with individuals losing opportunity because of their country. If I had a problem with that, then, in order to be morally consistent, I would have to oppose all sanctions and I would have to oppose all wars in history. I generally don't like sanctions and I generally don't like war, but it is apparent to me that both things are unavoidable in certain circumstances.
It is the moral philosophy of nations that people deserve to lose their lives (in war) because of the country they were born into. How absurd it is, then, to be talking about whether or not they deserve to sing in competitions?
The remainder of this post is sidebar regarding principle in general. Skip if you want.
*I will always come at these sorts of issues from a materialist lens. I do not care about words and professed ideas. I care about the actual actions. From this lens, principle itself is a tool used to bludgeon. This is obvious in the way that principles are rarely consistently held. They are selectively applied. There's a great example right here:
"Eurovision is not a political event and is about bringing people together" -> Eurovision expels Russia from the competition -> "Eurovision is not a political event and is about bringing people together"
It doesn't take a particularly close read of history to see that inconsistency is the rule rather than the exception when it comes to principles. It also doesn't take a particularly intelligent person to see the gulf between the ideals that politicians profess to have and the actions which they take. And with those two things in mind, it's obvious why politicians (and others) would rather be judged on the things they said than what they did. I'm too old to play that game. Sorry.
Your principle - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that the actions of a nation should have no bearing whatsoever on the international rights and privileges of its members. That principle is not inconsistent with anything most people have said in this thread. But I don't agree with it, and I believe 99% of the people in the world do not agree with it. I'm not sure you actually agree with it if you actually stopped and thought about it. Or is it your argument that the allied powers should not have gone to war against Germany because it would have inevitably resulted in the deaths of Germans who were opposed to the Nazi regime? Dying is far more extreme than not being able to compete in a singing competition, after all.
The irony of course if that if you decided to take a much less abstract view, you'd see that it is very extremely likely that the competitor in question does not share your view, given they are freely and enthusiastically representing a nation carrying out collective punishment. And yet, they would profess to have the same principle of you. Only selectively applied. What about you? Selectively applied or universal?
I'll be straight: I only have one principle. If you live by the sword, you can die by it. Israel can be disqualified on the basis of its own logic, its own principles. There is no other discussion to even be had about that.
