With Eurovision fever mounting, boycotts by European broadcasters of this week’s song contest over Israel’s participation feature prominently in Israeli media coverage.
Five broadcasters, including RTÉ, withdrew from the contest after the Swiss-based European Broadcasting Union (EBU) cleared the way for Israel to participate. The broadcasters were motivated by the civilian death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza, which followed the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023.
However, the general tone in Israel resembles the mantra of supporters at English football club Millwall: “No one likes us, we don’t care.” Media coverage often ends with a reminder to Israelis to urge their relatives and friends in Europe to vote for Noam Bettan, Israel’s contestant.
Bettan will perform his song Michelle, sung in Hebrew, English and French, in the first semi-final on Tuesday.
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Following his first rehearsal last week, Bettan posed for a photograph with Boy George, the former Culture Club singer, who will be performing with San Marino’s official contestant, Senhit, and has posted frequently on social media to express solidarity with Jews during a time of rising anti-Semitism around the world. In contrast, many musicians have come out against Israel because of the war on Gaza.
Last year, Israel’s contestant Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Hamas October 7th, 2023, massacre at the Nova music festival, came second overall but topped the audience vote, prompting allegations that Israel had mounted a campaign to mobilise European Jewish communities to vote for her.
In response, the EBU decided that juries would return to voting in the semi-finals, along with the audience televote, and reduced the maximum phone vote to 10 from 20.
This year, Israel ranks sixth to win the contest in the overall betting but, according to Polymarket, again tops odds on the audience vote.
Over the weekend the EBU issued a letter of warning to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster over an online campaign calling for fans to give 10 votes to Bettan.
“This is indeed Austria, which is friendly to Israel, and it’s true that the war in Gaza is over, but absurdly the hatred of Israel has grown,” said Yoav Tzafir, the Israeli delegation’s director.
“I know Jewish communities support us very much,” he said. “It would not be accurate to say that we manage their support for us or organise it. We are in good contact with them. And I’ll tell you something else: it doesn’t really matter whether we are in contact with them or not. The support of Jewish communities across Europe has become organic.”
Last year, there was some booing during Israel’s performance and part of Bettan’s preparation has included how to deal with a similar reception.
Vienna police are also mounting one of the biggest security operations in the Austrian capital’s history ahead of expected anti-Israel protests.
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