{"id":480524,"date":"2026-05-12T07:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T07:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/480524\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T07:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T07:57:12","slug":"no-one-likes-us-we-dont-care-defiant-tone-in-israel-as-eurovision-approaches-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/480524\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No one likes us, we don\u2019t care\u2019: Defiant tone in Israel as Eurovision approaches \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Eurovision<\/a> fever mounting, boycotts by European broadcasters of this week\u2019s song contest over Israel<\/a>\u2019s participation feature prominently in Israeli media coverage.<\/p>\n

Five broadcasters, including RT\u00c9<\/a>, 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\u2019s war on Gaza<\/a>, which followed the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. <\/p>\n

However, the general tone in Israel resembles the mantra of supporters at English football club Millwall: \u201cNo one likes us, we don\u2019t care.\u201d Media coverage often ends with a reminder to Israelis to urge their relatives and friends in Europe to vote for Noam Bettan, Israel\u2019s contestant.<\/p>\n

Bettan will perform his song Michelle, sung in Hebrew, English and French, in the first semi-final on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Last year, Israel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This year, Israel ranks sixth to win the contest in the overall betting but, according to Polymarket, again tops odds on the audience vote.<\/p>\n

\"YuvalYuval Raphael representing Israel in last year’s contest with the song New Day Will Rise. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini\/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Over the weekend the EBU issued a letter of warning to Israel\u2019s Kan public broadcaster over an online campaign calling for fans to give 10 votes to Bettan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is indeed Austria, which is friendly to Israel, and it\u2019s true that the war in Gaza is over, but absurdly the hatred of Israel has grown,\u201d said Yoav Tzafir, the Israeli delegation\u2019s director. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Israel\u2019s artists face isolation at Venice Biennale and prepare for booing at EurovisionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Jewish communities support us very much,\u201d he said. \u201cIt 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\u2019ll tell you something else: it doesn\u2019t really matter whether we are in contact with them or not. The support of Jewish communities across Europe has become organic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, there was some booing during Israel\u2019s performance and part of Bettan\u2019s preparation has included how to deal with a similar reception. <\/p>\n

Vienna police are also mounting one of the biggest security operations in the Austrian capital\u2019s history ahead of expected anti-Israel protests.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Eurovision 2026: When is it on, who is boycotting and could Israel win?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Eurovision fever mounting, boycotts by European broadcasters of this week\u2019s song contest over Israel\u2019s participation feature prominently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,10893,69,19,17,3857],"class_list":["post-480524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-eurovision","tag-hamas","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-israel-hamas-conflict"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116560543872537656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}