{"id":114827,"date":"2026-05-15T07:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T07:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/114827\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T07:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T07:03:17","slug":"the-new-york-times-missed-the-mark-on-israel-and-eurovision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/114827\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times missed the mark on Israel and Eurovision"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Eurovision Song Contest is a loud, flashy event whose entire essence is exaggeration:\u00a0The songs are exaggerated. The costumes are exaggerated. The delivery is exaggerated. The choreography is exaggerated. The stage is exaggerated. The audience is exaggerated. The coverage is exaggerated.<\/p>\n

Eurovision is not an evening in which humankind soberly celebrates the charms of understatement and the wonders of refined taste.<\/p>\n

At its best, Eurovision is a glittering arena where Europe gathers every year to rejoice, sing, dance, get excited, laugh, wave flags, surrender to nonsense, and, along the way, display liberal openness toward anyone who deviates from accepted norms \u2014 regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation, or lack of taste in clothing or music.<\/p>\n

In Israel \u2014 where loudness, blurred boundaries, and exaggeration are an essential foundation of the state\u2019s infrastructure \u2014 Eurovision has become one of the most important events on the calendar.<\/p>\n

The further Israel has drifted in recent years from the values of liberalism, tolerance, openness, and pop lightness that characterize Eurovision, the more important the event seems to have become.<\/p>\n

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For months ahead of the competition, the Israeli media is preoccupied with \u201cthe road to Eurovision.\u201d Politicians stir the pot. The president delivers remarks. The prime minister tweets. The chosen singers take the stage to \u201cbring a little comfort to the people of Israel,\u201d to \u201cmake us all forget, if only for one evening, everything we have been through here,\u201d and to \u201cshow the world Israel\u2019s beautiful face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tIsrael fans wave flags prior to the first semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 at Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, May 12, 2026. (Tobias Schwarz \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

But even within this exaggerated context, the investigation published this week in The New York Times<\/a> was exceptional, if not downright ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Reporters Mara Hvistendahl and Alex Marshall interviewed more than 50 people across Europe. They were given access to what they call \u201cinternal Eurovision documents\u201d to deeply investigate the widespread claims on social media that Israel is working to tilt the results of the competition in its favor. They write:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the normally lighthearted contest became a proxy fight over Middle Eastern affairs and human rights, Eurovision struggled to defend a core tenet: Politics play no role in the event.\u201d<\/p>\n

No role?! Allow me to deviate from the rules of refined restraint and burst out laughing at the top of my lungs.<\/p>\n

When exactly was Eurovision an event where politics played no role? It is, after all, a competition between nations, not between singers. On Saturday night, voters across Europe will not be voting for Noam Bettan (or any other artist in the competition), but for \u201cIsrael.\u201d And probably also against it. It doesn\u2019t get more political than that.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tProtesters hold a banner and Palestinian flags as they take part in a demonstration against Israel\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest 2025 entrant during the opening ceremony in Basel, Switzerland, on May 11, 2025. (Stefan Wermuth \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

It has always been this way. It did not begin with the uprising against Israel amid the war in Gaza. Every Eurovision viewer knows that Greece and Cyprus will vote for each other, that the Scandinavian countries will close ranks, and that the former Yugoslav countries will remember their shared past. And that a broad campaign will be waged against Israel\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n

Everyone also knows about the expat communities of different countries. Turkish immigrants in Germany will tilt the vote there in favor of their homeland. Albanians in Switzerland, Ukrainians in Poland and Armenians in France will all have an influence on the results.<\/p>\n

Yes, the biggest cultural event of the year in Europe is of great interest to the participating artists \u2014 who all dream of following the path of ABBA \u2014 as well as to the public broadcasters and the countries that long to host the competition, to enjoy the public relations bonanza that comes with it, to improve the country\u2019s image, and to promote tourism. So everyone will also invest in advertising and marketing. What is unclear about that?<\/p>\n

The New York Times investigation ultimately boils down to three central claims:<\/p>\n

The first claim is based on reports that \u201c[Prime Minister] Netanyahu\u2019s government\u201d spent $1 million in ad campaigns ahead of the event. In reality, that is a truly ridiculous amount. One could argue that for such a prominent event, at such a sensitive time, Israel should have invested far more.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tIsraeli flags hang in the designated Israel \u201cEuro Cafe\u201d MQ Kantine during the 70th Eurovision Song Contest week in Vienna, Austria, May 13, 2026. (AP\/Martin Meissner)<\/p>\n

The second claim is that countries should not interfere in the competition. I do not know exactly how the familiar regional collaborations, which can be seen every year on the Eurovision scoreboard, came into being, but it is highly doubtful that Israel is the only country in Europe preoccupied with the matter.<\/p>\n

In Ireland, for example, Eurovision is celebrated just as much as it is in Israel. In previous years, those who happened to visit England in the weeks before the competition attest that across the country, huge billboards (which someone, of course, had to fund with a great deal of money) called on all Britons to remember, when voting, \u201cwho your neighbors are.\u201d What is that if not \u201ca campaign to tilt the results\u201d?<\/p>\n

It is also worth recalling in this context that in 2022, the European Broadcasting Union determined<\/a> that six countries \u2014 San Marino, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, and Romania \u2014 had operated \u201cirregular\u201d voting patterns among their juries, meaning that a real suspicion arose of mutual coordination between the jurors. This led to the jury scores in those countries being disqualified and replaced with statistical scores.<\/p>\n

The third claim \u2014 and really the central one \u2014 is based on the fact that Israel has in recent years received significant support in countries where public opinion polls consistently show substantial public hostility toward it.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tIsraeli singer Noam Bettan, representing Israel with the song \u2018Michelle,\u2019 poses for photographers on the turquoise carpet for the opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 at the City Hall Square in Vienna, Austria, on May 10, 2026. (Tobias Schwarz \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

The New York Times reporters do apologize for not managing to obtain even a shred of evidence that Israel is achieving this by means of improper technological methods. \u201cThere is no evidence that Israel, as some Eurovision fans speculated, used bots or other covert tactics to manipulate the vote,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Still, this claim hovers above the investigation as a kind of reasonable possibility \u2014 one that, given what everyone knows about Israeli technological cunning, cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n

Well, it can be ignored. Because this state of affairs has a much simpler and much more logical explanation.<\/p>\n

It is true that Israel has many haters in Europe. They crowd the streets beforehand, they boo during the competition, and they presumably also express their hostility in the voting.<\/p>\n

But Israel also has quite a few supporters in Europe and around the world. And the more attention in recent years has focused on the Israeli performance and on calls to boycott Israel, the more they too may feel an obligation to exercise their right to vote (this year, up to 10 votes).<\/p>\n

And since many of Israel\u2019s supporters around the world likely vote only for Israel, while all of Israel\u2019s haters scatter their votes among dozens of other countries, the absurd result is that the more Israel becomes ostracized and hated, the better its results could get in the competition.<\/p>\n

It is really that elementary.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tIsraeli singer Yuval Raphael representing Israel during the opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel, Switzerland, on May 11, 2025. (Fabrice Coffrini \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

This is not the only conclusion The New York Times investigators missed this week regarding Eurovision.<\/p>\n

The reporters also do not understand that the government campaign \u2014 insofar as it is funded and run for the purposes of \u201chasbara\u201d (public diplomacy), as they claim \u2014 is not actually concerned with Israel\u2019s image in Europe. It is not trying to whitewash Israel\u2019s so-called \u201ccrimes\u201d in Gaza, and it is not trying to change the mind of John Doe.<\/p>\n

The Israeli campaign \u2014 like every Israeli campaign \u2014 is intended for domestic purposes. Its overarching goal is to prove to Israelis that the world does not hate us the way the hostile media claims.<\/p>\n

The great danger in such a campaign is that if it succeeds and Israel wins the competition, the country will end up hosting the contest next year. The expected crisis in such a scenario is something no one is really interested in.<\/p>\n

And that is why on Saturday night, Israel will be looking to hopefully take second place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Eurovision Song Contest is a loud, flashy event whose entire essence is exaggeration:\u00a0The songs are exaggerated. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[28326,3741,37,6793],"class_list":{"0":"post-114827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-anti-israel-activity","9":"tag-eurovision-song-contest","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-the-new-york-times"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116577318022511296","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}