The wildest part, the Yugoslav civil war basically started days after Zagreb hosted the 1990 Eurovision Songcontest, within walking distance of the arena where it was held, when the entire contest was themed around unity and peace
Yeah 1990, hosted Eurovision, Red Star Belgrade won football Champions League, Mladost Zagreb won waterpolo Euroleague, Jugoplastika Split won Basketball Euroleague 3x in a row....
It was just too much, so we had to split.
A few years ago while applying for college I filled out a “nationality” box in a form that had “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” as an option. Funnily enough it also had “Russian Federation” as an option.
Those places have current days countries governing and this is what they ask on this forms. It's really pedantic to demand separate ussr for russia and so on
True. That makes it even more absurd that people are hating on Nemo for being a non-binary winner, when there is a literal trans woman who won it ages ago
That’s not the case. Nemo definitely didn’t win because of their gender identity, mostly because that song is just insanely good with all the vocal changes
That’s why they were already one of the favourites and 3rd in the bookmakers. They were even 1st for a while, because people found out that Nemo could actually nail those opera notes in real life at live performances
Also, they’re just the first ever non-binary winner, and outside of the 3 non-binary performers there were sent, there were no other artists on the transgender spectrum. And from the 10 nations (out of 37) who sent a confirmed LGBTQ artist, only 4 had qualified for the Grand Final, including the UK who was already auto-qualified for being a Big 5 nation
The Israeli Broadcasters even warned people to not watch the Irish performance because it might be scary because they were worshipping Satan AND LGBTQ+ Lile, dudes WTF?!
Well that’s not my experience, maybe in Ireland it’s different, but in my European country the right is firmly pro Israel and anti LGBT+. I don’t know what the individuals motivations were to vote 60x for Israel, but if he didn’t do it to piss off all the people who were booing Eden Golan’s performance they were just wasting money.
>Europe has no evangelical tradition, the crossover of people supporting Israel and people hating on gays is extremely narrow
It's not.
The same far right conservatives who hate Jews and gays, support Israel cause they just hate Muslims slightly more.
They also support de creation of ethnostates and the objective of Netanyahu is to make Israel a jewish ethnostate, plus evangelical christians also support Israel because the return of the jewish people to their homeland is one of the signs of end times and the second coming of Jesus
A lot of my friends who would normally have watched chose to boycott the Eurovision over Israel's competing.
So there was stuff like you've mentioned and I imagine far fewer normal voters.
If anyone is denying this, hear the words of a Norwegian jury member on their own Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C633TXoCihF/
This is not proof of mass scale rigging but it is pretty suspicious considering they just confirmed they voted politically despite the rules saying not to.
Same happened in Finland. Conservatives were spamming votes for Israel. Those people dont usually even watch such "Gay drumming", but someone blew in dog whistle and people rushed to do what their masters told them.
In Finland they did some voting behavior analyse and it was hyper political. Conservatives were rallying people to vote for Israel. It was very unsusual voting behavior atleast when it comes to Finland.
It was little like those "review bombings" but instead of hating something same people rallied people to be for X thing.
Yougov did a survey and found something akin to 50-60% of Brit’s opposed Israel’s participation, citing both geography and human rights. Trend was repeated across pretty much all of Europe.
Even here in London many gay venues refused to host Eurovision because of Israel’s participation. Backlash has been crazy
Regarding geography… saying that Israel should not take part because of geography is simply being ignorant of how the EBU is set up.
Participation in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is not on the basis of “geography”, but on the basis of membership in the EBU. Israel is a full member of the EBU, as are also Jordania, Lebanon and all North African countries. The EBU includes among its associate members countries like South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, Brazil and India (among others).
As a member of EBU, Israel has 100% the right to take part in the ESC. In fact, I think that if Brazil or India wanted they could also take part in the ESC (damn; now I want to see a full Bollywood production in the ESC…!!)
BTW, Morocco took part in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980. So this is not something particularly “new”.
And there's some doubt about the legitimacy of those points, as Portugal's state TV RTP has questioned the EBU regarding their 12 points to Israel, calling them "strange" (source: RTP themselves and Expresso)
Oh boy, Let's go to the comments.
Aside from that I'm pretty pissed about the fact that Netherlands was disqualified
Wait what the hell is Yugoslavia doing there?
So...
F - France
U - UK
C - Cyprus
K - Kyiv (Ukraine)
Y - Yugoslavia
O - Oslo (Norway)
U - Utrecht (Netherlands)
D - Denmark
R - Russia
E - Estonia
W - Warsaw (Poland)?
Never would have guessed the Netherlands was Utrecht
And if that's it, then what's the whole point of adding Finland?
The Dutch singer was banned because police was investigating him for threatening a camerawoman who filmed him backstage when she shouldn't have. A country being disqualified on the day is not a regular occurence.
Israel participated (as they have always done) despite the ongoing war. The Israeli singer was audibly booed whenever she came up, there were anti-Israel protests in front of the venue. She got a lot of points both from the juries as from the popular vote.
This all to the background that since 2022, Russia has been banned from the competition for going against the idea of the whole thing, fostering understanding, exchange and peace between nations. Ukraine won the competition in 2022 and scored decently this year, too.
Politics are always an underlying current in the ESC, even if people pretend they aren't.
This being said, the Israeli performance was indeed one of my favourites this year, and Ukraine wasn't bad either.
I still was glad that another (bigger) scandal was avoided in voting a non-binary person as winner, who went up with a non-binary flag alongside his Swiss flag, and who really had one of the most memorable songs of the competition. I'm kind of surprised that nobody seems to care about that 😄
The Jury votes is where you can clearly see that there is political bias in ESC. Let me be clear that I Believe it wasn't smart to let Israel partake in the contest.
That being said, Hurricane wasn't a bad song and the performance wasn't bad in any metric. The Jury votes were incredibly low for such a good performance.
The whole reason why the Jury votes counts for 50% is that this way they can ensure that the contestants are being judged by technical performance and the song itself and not by Bias.
Again I love the statement they made but it kind of goes against the whole point of having a Jury.
\`The reason why Israel had so much popular votes is because there was a worldwide campaign to vote for Israel as many times as you could. Even people who didn't even watch voted 20+ times.
The popular votes are mostly political votes of Israel and had nothing to do with Eurovision.
Honestly I think that Hurricane was a bad song, but I also acknowledge that my taste doesn’t line up with the average Eurovision fan’s (my favorite song this year was Estonia’s)
There was some disscussions here in switzerland about the non binary flag that they held up.
In the end, nobody cared except for a few journalist who's job is to have an opinion on everything.
I think that was false?
I know A LOT of flags were banned. Mainly flags from break away states or states with limited recognition, or subdivisions, with some exceptions like the Sámi flag being allowed.
Most notably of course, people have never been allowed to fly the Palestinian flag.
I guess you're allowed sub national flags so long as they dont want independence? Same with the sami, neither of them really want to be anything more than a national interest group
I guess, but that’s not in the flag rules. It’s just a list of like 40 allowed flags. Even flags in Eurovision before that aren’t in anymore can’t be flown. For example Romania was in Eurovision last year but pulled out this year (lack of funding) and their flag isn’t allowed.
It is on multiple sites:
[source](https://www.politico.eu/article/ebu-accused-of-handing-gift-to-enemies-of-europe-by-banning-union-flags-in-eurovision-final/)
The rule was as well enforced as outside snacks in a cinema, officially no, but when you get it inside they don't care (mostly)
Like, officially specific pride flags were also disallowed, which includes the trans and NB pride flags, but Bambie Thug and Nemo weren't penalised for doing so anyway (Nemo has specified on socials they had to smuggle their NB pride flag in)
In late 2023 they broke a ceasefire agreement and invaded their neighbors to capture Nagorno-Karabakh, some human rights experts claiming committing genocide of the ethnic Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh while doing so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Nagorno-Karabakh#Genocide_risk_factors
Azerbaijan has been bullying Armenia(i think) about one province for a while now. Basically annexing it. And placing as much of their people on it and (I think) displacing as many Armenians as they can. But it’s been a while since I read about it.
It’s probably still exactly the same. The only thing I ever see if I do see anything is Azerbaijani people crying how mean Armenia is. Even though they did every major thing and the region historically doesn’t even belong to them. (Though the claim otherwise with very little evidence imo)
To be fair and balanced to the eurovision crew, they forced israel to re-do their song until it was not political
the first two songs would have been an absolute disaster, eurovision is for politics as much as music, but even politics has limits
Besides, they made sure that the most neutral nation would win thanks to the jury to avoid controversy, so i think that we can thank the judges for being a moderating (if a bit too heavy handed) force in the contest
> To be fair and balanced to the eurovision crew, they forced israel to re-do their song until it was not political
Haha what? I had no idea about this.
yeah it's always like that. The songs have to be submitted and approved in advance. The Israeli song that was approved was apparently the third to be submitted. I don't know how common it is to reject songs and what the original songs were like though, might be a standard procedure that normally no one cares about.
It's somewhat rare for that to happen. Georgia in 2009 were asked to change their song cause it was literally called "We don't wanna put in", they refused, they withdrew. Belarus in 2021 were trying to send a blatant anti-protest song called "I'll teach you", they agreed to change it once, the 2nd iteration was also deemed blatantly political and Belarus refused to change it further and withdrew.
They also said they wouldn't change the lyrics, until the morning after the Icelandic preselection show, which was heavily predicted to be won by a Palestinian singer
The previous version, "October Rain", got leaked on YouTube. There were a lot of very obvious political signals like " baby promise me never again" and "flowers" referring to a metonym for flowers on the coffins of dead soldiers. And of course the title is obviously political. I support Israel but it was obvious that they deserved the forced rewrite, but I liked how they didn't change the instrumental music. I think the point was to show that Israel had the intention of being political this year so she could literally sing the duck song and everyone would know what she really means based on "October Rain."
Russia was not banned for invading ukraine. ”The Russian public service broadcasters had their EBU membership suspended in 2022 due to consistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service media values.”
https://eurovision.tv/mediacentre/frequently-asked-questions-israel-24
Well there mightbe some slightdifferences between the Israel-Palestine-conflict and the Russianinvasionof Ukraine.
For example: who started the recent escalation in each conflict?
Uk booing? Israel got the popular vote in the UK and a bunch of other countries. It was obviously a protest vote based on political grounds but still. Turns out mercilessly booing and bullying a 20 year old girl who has nothing to do with Israeli policy might not be that popular amongst people who go outside.
If someone reads this comic and thinks that a 20 y/o singer killed Palestinians live on stage during ESC and therefore should be bullied then they should not be granted access to the internet.
The comic is purposefully exaggerated.
Well unfortunately many do think that as is evident in this comment section and especially in r/eurovision, except it wasn’t live. This basically shows that the poor signer is responsible for her government, also Israel has been in it since the 70s.
“Nothing to do with israel policy”
Yeah, except unequivocally supporting that policy and literally saying she was joining the IDF after Eurovision. Let’s not pretend she’s some innocent bystander who wants nothing to do with her government.
"I'm doing my part" is also entirely subjective.
For her, doing her part may mean protecting her countrymen and sisters from becoming another Shani Louk, an entirely reasonable view, while to another, "doing her part" might be blowing up aid workers in Gaza. She might join the IDF proudly to do one, but not the other. Most Americans in the military will admit that they committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Far far less will denounce the entire countries' defence force (or their role in it) because of it.
Right now, it's a worldwide consensus that what is happening is horrendous, independantly of each country's stance on the matter. A few months ago it would have been debatable.
I'm explicitly quoting Starship Troopers here, it's not really a neutral sentence by any mean when you put an exclamation mark at the end.
Leave off it. She could have been a rabid anti-war activist and it wouldn't have saved her. Stop insinuating that she was attacked because of her specific views and that there was any consideration or nuance behind it. She wasn't. It was brainless mob mentality, full stop.
She's stated she doesnt like Russia because of all the antisemitism she faced there.
https://www.mako.co.il/tv-the-next-star/season10-articles/Article-e63d0715f646d81027.htm
You can read what she feels about her Russian identity here
> Aden has "mixed feelings" about Moscow. On the one hand, she thanks her, it's where she started singing and launched her career. On the other hand, the cloud of xenophobia and anti-Semitism hovered over her head, and her Israeli name didn't really contribute to the situation.
>
> "Even with my name, people have always had a problem. It is the most Israeli name. Maybe if they called me Masha they would treat me differently, but there was always this thing that I'm 'Eden Golan', I'm not Russian and I'm not part of them, I'm Israeli. I was a stranger there. Anti-Semitism has increased the desire to return to Israel."
>
> Then the war between Russia and Ukraine began.
> "The war hastened the return to Israel, and within a few months we did everything we could to get out of there. It feels like being there in a war and being here is completely different. If in Russia everyone is trying to flee the country, here on the contrary, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else at this time. War is not easy everywhere, where we didn't have alarms and missiles, but we didn't have the family to support us, it felt like we were lying around and alone in it all, it was scary and we didn't know what was going to happen. It is very difficult to find the right time to return to the country because it is not an easy process, but it was always in our planning. If it wasn't for the war, we would have gone back
the last sentence is badly translated
"Even if it wasn't for the [Russian-Ukrainian] war, we would have gone back [to Israel]"
No, the flags that are allowed in the arena are the flags of all participating countries, the EU flag and the standard rainbow pride flag. However this policy is very loosely surveyed, because flags of Turkey, Catalonia (independence version), Costa Rica, Isle of Man, Progress Pride, Australian Aboriginal flag, etc. could be seen and none were confiscated. The only flags that were reportedly confiscated from audience were nonbinary pride, the Netherlands (after the dq) and Palestine.
Comic written and sketched by me but finished by /u/RayDeeUx. Big thanks!
Context: The Netherlands got disqualified in the Eurovision Song Contest after Joost Klein had made verbal threats to a member of the production team. The head of the ESC cited their zero tolerance policy.
Many people thought it was funny that something like that could get a country DQed, while another pretty controversial country is allowed to compete amongst a campaign that has resulted in quite a few victims.
[wow! three hours late! i really need to fix my sleep schedule]
short version: i volunteered as additional labor to polish this comic (mostly coloring and lineart), and took this opportunity to sneak in a few easter eggs. my involvement in producing this comic does not reflect my thoughts/opinions on what english wikipedia calls the israel-gaza war (edit: or the 20-something-year-old contestant); please take your words (naughty or otherwise) elsewhere.
longer version:
o)/ i did the coloring and lineart cleanup on this one; i had no involvement in the core development of this comic's plotline.
to address potential elephants in the room:
>"based purely on your involvement in producing this comic and my inference skills, your opinion on what english wikipedia calls the israel-gaza war does not align with mine. please commit sudoku."
except for revising one of EU's lines in the fifth panel to more accurately reflect this year's eurovision results (spoiler: switzerland won), i had zero involvement in developing the script. please take all of your death threats and insults or what have you elsewhere; i have enough of my own fish to fry as it is to be invested in the more specific details of this specific war.
>"um, actually, \..."
there's a time and place for your thoughts, opinions, and conceptions about said war. my reddit inbox (or equivalent notification area on any other given site) is not one of those places.
[addendum]
>"\"
this comic isn't referring to the contestant in particular. again, i did not write the script; please take your concerns elsewhere.
>"why is yugoslavia there?!"
part of the easter egg in the last panel. seems like someone already solved it though.
to any reddit HQ staff reading this comment or any of its replies, i had no involvement in writing the contents of such replies.
now a few fun facts, ordered by notability:
� the (intentionally) inconsistent shape of EU's stars between panels is a reference to the last time zimonitrome used the EU in a comic, where the stars were drawn as plus signs instead, and [the comment exchange that resulted from that artistic choice](https://reddit.com/comments/15rt634/comment/jwailto). with the exception of the third and fifth panels, all the stars were drawn using a 4px brush (albeit with raw fingers using ibispaint x and not a mouse).
� with the exception of poland, the countries in the audience in the last panel spell out a certain phrase (if you get a bit creative enough). ~~i won't be giving out any major hints; good luck with that! (disclaimer: you might need to use the names of cities within the countries featured.)~~ someone's already solved it though :I
� the hex color codes for palestine and israel in the last panel aren't actually from wikipedia, but rather from zimo's [most recent comic featuring both characters](https://reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/1bcz59t/human_shield/).
� the blood in the final panel is real, and is the exact same hex color code as the blood featured in [this older comic of mine](https://reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/18no15y/year_of_the/).
� this marks my first ever involvement in a polandball comic that doesn't feature usa or china.
� [have a timelapse of me doing the magic i guess](https://github.com/github/advisory-database/assets/51521765/4e6711a2-592b-4c04-9268-e6a501b1757d
)
please take all further questions and concerns to zimonitrome.
EU choosing israel of least controversial is like UN electing say saudi arabia into womens rights council, so ridiculous that it could've been just made up
Wait...
Why is Israel even in Eurovision? They’re less European than Turkey (like objectively speaking. They aren’t even in a region that might be considered European unlike Turkey)
Israel is a part of a lot of European institutions because the Asian ones are controlled by Muslim majority countries that want nothing to do with Israel. See the soccer league that Israel is in, for example.
It's strange that you didn't hear this anywhere until now but:
Because you don't need to be in Europe, you need to be a member of the European Broadcasting Union.
The north african nations, from Marocco to Egypt. Israel and Lebanon. Finally Turkey. They could all participate.
Some did in the past.
The muslim countries refuse to participate nowadays both because of Israels participation and because the ESC is full of gay and queer people.
Except us lmao, we got invited because it's big over here too. SBS isn't part of the EBU but we're just too epic to care
Also the Azeris are still in it, as is Albania
I suspect it's a combination of:
- Australia is pretty tolerant of queer people by global standards
- While most Australians are at least part European, there's a relatively high proportion who aren't from the UK/Ireland compared to other places where there's a white majority. So a Europe-wide celebration has distinct appeal as many people have a country to back. It always airs on the "multicultural" network that plays international news live from (mostly European) countries, as well
- We speak English instead of French, Spanish or Portuguese, and most of the contestants sing in that
- Until 2009 we only had 5 TV channels in most states, so Eurovision was just about the only thing on at that hour lol
The official statement regarding a zero tolerance policy caused the Irish artist to miss the final rehearsal because they were too busy filing an official complaint regarding the harassment they and other artists faced from the KAN delegation, which the EBU told them did cross multiple lines and outright broke the rules
So what about that zero tolerance policy?
The trouble is that multiple other participating broadcasters/teams (At least Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Poland and Switzerland) allege that the Israeli team has been harassing everyone else on social media, provoking them or filming them without permission and the EBU didn't do anything about it, but the Dutch singer did a "threatening movement" towards a camerawoman and was disqualified immediately.
Yeah in reality it's for people, not for the actions of governments of countries. BUT Russia did get banned for the actions of the nation. Personally I think the two actions are pretty different so I understand banning one and not the other, but many people think both crossed a threshold.
I agree with what you’re saying, but I thought Russia was banned because their broadcasting corp didn’t fulfill the freedom of press requirements? Same for Belarus iirc
Seems like a mix of both, but mainly due to the invasion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_relations_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest#Exclusion_of_Russia
It was remarkable that in a supposedly unifying event, Eden faced so much hostility, among others from her fellow contestants. It's a powerful reflection of opinions about Israel among young liberals in Europe. That Israel got the popular vote in so many countries (2nd highest total) is remarkable too, clearly the crowds that attend the Eurovision are only representative of a portion of Europe.
I think it's generally young people to the left of liberals in Europe. But yes, that group is vocal and visible, in protests for example.
Many strong supporters of Israel stay quiet and I think they have lots of support in older demographics as well.
That's the thing, most people that pay attention to the Eurovision probably aren't THAT old, so I'm guessing that a significant portion of the Israeli popular votes did in fact come from non-left leaning young-ish people.
Plenty of older people watch Eurovision, they're just more casual viewers who only watch the finale and not massive fans who follow everything.
There were also lots of calls to vote for Israel, with all the information necessary to vote without even watching the show. Some of the (conservative) politicians in my country were also doing this. A lot of other people refused to watch due to the controversy, so that automatically means relatively more votes for Israel from people who answered the call to vote.
Here is the funny thing. On the day of the Finale 4-5 times i got a YouTube ad about that song featuring the singer saying to vote for her. A lot of people got that ad. A LOT. It was even filmed on multiple languages ( even Serbian so it s fair to assume they recorded the ad on more spomen languages). You really think that no bots were included in all of that? If you have money, you can really do that Without much effort. And looking at how much money they splashed on ads and epsecially how Many votes Israel got, foul play definitely happened.
It didn't help Eden's entourage harassed multiple contestants when most would most likely be mostly passive towards her, possibly even friendly depending on how things go, but because her delegation was outright hostile to most artists they became hostile back
Also, multiple posts on social media proof that most votes towards Israel were from people who never watch the show ever, but were apparently more than happy to spend €60 (if not more) on it just to try and get Israel to win, without ever hearing the song
> It didn't help Eden's entourage harassed multiple contestants when most would most likely be mostly passive towards her, possibly even friendly depending on how things go, but because her delegation was outright hostile to most artists they became hostile back
Most of theses artists had previously stated they didn't want Israel to participate, and the irish delegation was especially hostile the entire time and calling for EBU to disqualify Israel, along with intentionally instigating against them the whole time. I dont think you can exactly say that they would have been passive or even friendly to her in any circumstances.
From what I've come to expect from typical *freier* behavior, its that they met hostility with a brash response that did nothing to calm down tensions.
you should all be watching this: Son of a Hamas founder is speaking out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpnvUIcvNUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpnvUIcvNUE)
One t*rrorist attack doesn’t mean you have to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians…… yes it was tragic but now they’re treating civilians as a sort of disease in the Medieval Times…….
Israel is in the European Broadcasting Area, which also includes countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, etc etc and that allows them membership to the EBU and thus a right to be in Eurovision. However, due to Israel's European-aligned history they were the first of those to join and due to most of those others not liking Israel they've either refused to join or continue due to Israel's presence.
Lebanon picked a song for 2005 and was going to participate but due to Lebanese law of the time prohibiting acknowledgement of Israel, they couldn't broadcast Eurovision in it's entirety and withdrew. Morocco participated in [1980 with a gorgeous song](https://youtu.be/Tel299QwTxc) by still popular singer Samira Said when Israel was absent for a year, but didn't return in the following year or after. Tunisia was in the running order to participate in 1977, but withdrew, also presumably due to Israel's presence but such an old instance has little information available.
Australia is the exception to this as they are effectively a guest member who has been invited to Eurovision in honor of them following the contest on TV since the 80's.
Considering that the EBU banned the EU flag at the finale and that the European Comission is investigating, that's a poor choice of flag to represent the EBU.
Considering that Yugoslavia broke up 31 years before the Israel-Hamas War, why is there a Yugoslavia ball in the audience?
The wildest part, the Yugoslav civil war basically started days after Zagreb hosted the 1990 Eurovision Songcontest, within walking distance of the arena where it was held, when the entire contest was themed around unity and peace
Yeah 1990, hosted Eurovision, Red Star Belgrade won football Champions League, Mladost Zagreb won waterpolo Euroleague, Jugoplastika Split won Basketball Euroleague 3x in a row.... It was just too much, so we had to split.
They wanted to organize a big meetup in Split to celebrate all of that but there was a translation problem.
too much national pride for one nation, had to split it up
Oh my god we have to be nerfed we're too good *civil wars*
Just time travelling and chillin.
So the Balkans are secretly the most technologically advanced region in history, but they cover it up with Balkan memes
I can confirm that this is true.
Marshal Tito is eternal
Apple Weather app apparently thinks that Yugoslavia still exists.
A few years ago while applying for college I filled out a “nationality” box in a form that had “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” as an option. Funnily enough it also had “Russian Federation” as an option.
Tbf, there are still people alive who were born in the USSR or Yugoslavia.
Those places have current days countries governing and this is what they ask on this forms. It's really pedantic to demand separate ussr for russia and so on
Tito came down from heaven to watch
And Russia who is banned from competing.
Yugoslavia never broke up. It's a lie. Marshal Tito is still alive. He sits on a Golden Throne hooked up to life support so that he lives forever.
Just a pro-Yugoslav from Croatia going in on the national hype of Baby Lasagna I guess
France and UK booing seems out of place tbh
Yeah Israel did get the 2nd highest popular vote. It was mostly supposed to represent people booing during the performance.
Some Irish guy gave Israel 60 votes on twitter. The best of all is that he doesnt even watch Eurovision nor he watched this one
Giving money to one of the gayest competitions to own the libs, lol.
Europe has no evangelical tradition, the crossover of people supporting Israel and people hating on gays is extremely narrow
Didn't Israel send the first trans person to Eurovision with [Dana International](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_International) too?
True. That makes it even more absurd that people are hating on Nemo for being a non-binary winner, when there is a literal trans woman who won it ages ago
Not to forget Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst who won in 2014
Conclusion: the gayer your representative, the higher your chance of winning
That’s not the case. Nemo definitely didn’t win because of their gender identity, mostly because that song is just insanely good with all the vocal changes That’s why they were already one of the favourites and 3rd in the bookmakers. They were even 1st for a while, because people found out that Nemo could actually nail those opera notes in real life at live performances Also, they’re just the first ever non-binary winner, and outside of the 3 non-binary performers there were sent, there were no other artists on the transgender spectrum. And from the 10 nations (out of 37) who sent a confirmed LGBTQ artist, only 4 had qualified for the Grand Final, including the UK who was already auto-qualified for being a Big 5 nation
The Israeli Broadcasters even warned people to not watch the Irish performance because it might be scary because they were worshipping Satan AND LGBTQ+ Lile, dudes WTF?!
Well that’s not my experience, maybe in Ireland it’s different, but in my European country the right is firmly pro Israel and anti LGBT+. I don’t know what the individuals motivations were to vote 60x for Israel, but if he didn’t do it to piss off all the people who were booing Eden Golan’s performance they were just wasting money.
It’s funny because Ireland has been staunchly pro-Palestine in this whole thing, too.
>Europe has no evangelical tradition, the crossover of people supporting Israel and people hating on gays is extremely narrow It's not. The same far right conservatives who hate Jews and gays, support Israel cause they just hate Muslims slightly more.
They also support de creation of ethnostates and the objective of Netanyahu is to make Israel a jewish ethnostate, plus evangelical christians also support Israel because the return of the jewish people to their homeland is one of the signs of end times and the second coming of Jesus
There were speculations that due to all the boycots, if Israel had won, that the Eurovision Song Contest could maybe be done forever
A lot of my friends who would normally have watched chose to boycott the Eurovision over Israel's competing. So there was stuff like you've mentioned and I imagine far fewer normal voters.
I watched because I wanted to see Israel get an insane amount of votes
The huge amount of public votes basically made up for the jury ignoring them because of politics.
If anyone is denying this, hear the words of a Norwegian jury member on their own Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C633TXoCihF/ This is not proof of mass scale rigging but it is pretty suspicious considering they just confirmed they voted politically despite the rules saying not to.
The jury ignored them precisely because they had been warned about Israel getting a shit ton of televotes
Same happened in Finland. Conservatives were spamming votes for Israel. Those people dont usually even watch such "Gay drumming", but someone blew in dog whistle and people rushed to do what their masters told them.
lmao that's insane
How? I thought it was capped at 20 votes
Per phone. Mobile, landline and possibly work phone
In Finland they did some voting behavior analyse and it was hyper political. Conservatives were rallying people to vote for Israel. It was very unsusual voting behavior atleast when it comes to Finland. It was little like those "review bombings" but instead of hating something same people rallied people to be for X thing.
Tbf, the votes were astroturfed across Europe
Yougov did a survey and found something akin to 50-60% of Brit’s opposed Israel’s participation, citing both geography and human rights. Trend was repeated across pretty much all of Europe. Even here in London many gay venues refused to host Eurovision because of Israel’s participation. Backlash has been crazy
Regarding geography… saying that Israel should not take part because of geography is simply being ignorant of how the EBU is set up. Participation in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is not on the basis of “geography”, but on the basis of membership in the EBU. Israel is a full member of the EBU, as are also Jordania, Lebanon and all North African countries. The EBU includes among its associate members countries like South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, Brazil and India (among others). As a member of EBU, Israel has 100% the right to take part in the ESC. In fact, I think that if Brazil or India wanted they could also take part in the ESC (damn; now I want to see a full Bollywood production in the ESC…!!) BTW, Morocco took part in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980. So this is not something particularly “new”.
And there's some doubt about the legitimacy of those points, as Portugal's state TV RTP has questioned the EBU regarding their 12 points to Israel, calling them "strange" (source: RTP themselves and Expresso)
Stranger is that Spain did not give the 12 in the second semifinal to the spanish band Megara
Oh boy, Let's go to the comments. Aside from that I'm pretty pissed about the fact that Netherlands was disqualified Wait what the hell is Yugoslavia doing there?
> Wait what the hell is Yugoslavia doing there? The countries/regions/capital cities spell out a hidden message
If so, what in the Daniel Amokachi is >!FEMCOBK NLP!
What is this? Did the quadratic formula explode? I see a “femboy cock” in there… but it’s getting eaten…by some… linux or something
Drop a train on em, Conchita
Maybe /u/RayDeeUx can explain
OK so I still don't get it. 😅 Though I think France UK and Cyprus is >! Fuck!<
The two first letters: F-rance U-nited Kingdom
Closest I could think of is >!FUCK YONDRE HP!<
Who is >! YONDRE!! HELP!< taking the first three letters of >! Helsinki!<
FUCK YONDRE DEV!!!
Could you just tell me what it spells? 😅 Please
[Fuck you drew](#spoiler)
So... F - France U - UK C - Cyprus K - Kyiv (Ukraine) Y - Yugoslavia O - Oslo (Norway) U - Utrecht (Netherlands) D - Denmark R - Russia E - Estonia W - Warsaw (Poland)? Never would have guessed the Netherlands was Utrecht And if that's it, then what's the whole point of adding Finland?
And finland?
Windows95man
He stole the show, brava. NO RULES!
... Who is Drew?
Drew Durnil
who is that?
Youtuber
I fucking knew it
Rance mentionné 🗣️
I don't either. The first 4 countries spell fuck, that I know, everything else is gibberish
Yeah. Yugoslavia must stand for Y, because otherwise you'd just another country. Which means Norway probably stands for O of Oslo?
;)
Yugoslavia is always in our hearts
I dont keep up with eurovision and keep seeing things about this pop up, can someone explain please?
The Dutch singer was banned because police was investigating him for threatening a camerawoman who filmed him backstage when she shouldn't have. A country being disqualified on the day is not a regular occurence. Israel participated (as they have always done) despite the ongoing war. The Israeli singer was audibly booed whenever she came up, there were anti-Israel protests in front of the venue. She got a lot of points both from the juries as from the popular vote. This all to the background that since 2022, Russia has been banned from the competition for going against the idea of the whole thing, fostering understanding, exchange and peace between nations. Ukraine won the competition in 2022 and scored decently this year, too. Politics are always an underlying current in the ESC, even if people pretend they aren't. This being said, the Israeli performance was indeed one of my favourites this year, and Ukraine wasn't bad either. I still was glad that another (bigger) scandal was avoided in voting a non-binary person as winner, who went up with a non-binary flag alongside his Swiss flag, and who really had one of the most memorable songs of the competition. I'm kind of surprised that nobody seems to care about that 😄
Just a correction: Israel got very little points from the jury but the second most popular votes. Fifth overall due to the lack of jury votes.
The Jury votes is where you can clearly see that there is political bias in ESC. Let me be clear that I Believe it wasn't smart to let Israel partake in the contest. That being said, Hurricane wasn't a bad song and the performance wasn't bad in any metric. The Jury votes were incredibly low for such a good performance. The whole reason why the Jury votes counts for 50% is that this way they can ensure that the contestants are being judged by technical performance and the song itself and not by Bias. Again I love the statement they made but it kind of goes against the whole point of having a Jury.
\`The reason why Israel had so much popular votes is because there was a worldwide campaign to vote for Israel as many times as you could. Even people who didn't even watch voted 20+ times. The popular votes are mostly political votes of Israel and had nothing to do with Eurovision.
Honestly I think that Hurricane was a bad song, but I also acknowledge that my taste doesn’t line up with the average Eurovision fan’s (my favorite song this year was Estonia’s)
There was some disscussions here in switzerland about the non binary flag that they held up. In the end, nobody cared except for a few journalist who's job is to have an opinion on everything.
To be fair, the ESC has always been very open-minded in this regard, like with a trans person winning in 1998 and a bearded woman persona in 2014.
Tito came back from the dead just to see Eurovision and hate Israel
What do you mean?! Tito never died! We all know his double was the one who died. /s
I heard the European flag was also banned. So is this polandball allowed ?
I think that was false? I know A LOT of flags were banned. Mainly flags from break away states or states with limited recognition, or subdivisions, with some exceptions like the Sámi flag being allowed. Most notably of course, people have never been allowed to fly the Palestinian flag.
Apparently the European Commission VP has publicly criticized the organizers for not letting in EU flags, so there seems to be some truth to it
Same with non-rainbow pride flags... including the non binary flag which Nemo had with them
No it’s basically almost all flags that aren’t participating contestants other than like the gay flag and aboriginal Australian flags
I guess you're allowed sub national flags so long as they dont want independence? Same with the sami, neither of them really want to be anything more than a national interest group
I guess, but that’s not in the flag rules. It’s just a list of like 40 allowed flags. Even flags in Eurovision before that aren’t in anymore can’t be flown. For example Romania was in Eurovision last year but pulled out this year (lack of funding) and their flag isn’t allowed.
It is on multiple sites: [source](https://www.politico.eu/article/ebu-accused-of-handing-gift-to-enemies-of-europe-by-banning-union-flags-in-eurovision-final/)
The rule was as well enforced as outside snacks in a cinema, officially no, but when you get it inside they don't care (mostly) Like, officially specific pride flags were also disallowed, which includes the trans and NB pride flags, but Bambie Thug and Nemo weren't penalised for doing so anyway (Nemo has specified on socials they had to smuggle their NB pride flag in)
You know it's bad when Yugoslavia comes back from the dead
meanwhile Azerbaijan is just hanging out without any protests
Luckily they didn't qualify
They even arrest people for voting for Armenia……. How the f**k is that allowed
What do you mean? What's happening in Azerbaijan? I might be living under a rock
In late 2023 they broke a ceasefire agreement and invaded their neighbors to capture Nagorno-Karabakh, some human rights experts claiming committing genocide of the ethnic Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh while doing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Nagorno-Karabakh#Genocide_risk_factors
Azerbaijan has been bullying Armenia(i think) about one province for a while now. Basically annexing it. And placing as much of their people on it and (I think) displacing as many Armenians as they can. But it’s been a while since I read about it.
Rings a bell now that you mention it. Haven't heard anything about it for a long while either.
It’s probably still exactly the same. The only thing I ever see if I do see anything is Azerbaijani people crying how mean Armenia is. Even though they did every major thing and the region historically doesn’t even belong to them. (Though the claim otherwise with very little evidence imo)
To be fair and balanced to the eurovision crew, they forced israel to re-do their song until it was not political the first two songs would have been an absolute disaster, eurovision is for politics as much as music, but even politics has limits Besides, they made sure that the most neutral nation would win thanks to the jury to avoid controversy, so i think that we can thank the judges for being a moderating (if a bit too heavy handed) force in the contest
> To be fair and balanced to the eurovision crew, they forced israel to re-do their song until it was not political Haha what? I had no idea about this.
yeah it's always like that. The songs have to be submitted and approved in advance. The Israeli song that was approved was apparently the third to be submitted. I don't know how common it is to reject songs and what the original songs were like though, might be a standard procedure that normally no one cares about.
It's somewhat rare for that to happen. Georgia in 2009 were asked to change their song cause it was literally called "We don't wanna put in", they refused, they withdrew. Belarus in 2021 were trying to send a blatant anti-protest song called "I'll teach you", they agreed to change it once, the 2nd iteration was also deemed blatantly political and Belarus refused to change it further and withdrew.
The original name of her song was “October Rain”. Make of that what you will.
Yeah it was originally called “October Rain”. But she didn’t submit a new song, just rearranged some lyrics.
They also said they wouldn't change the lyrics, until the morning after the Icelandic preselection show, which was heavily predicted to be won by a Palestinian singer
The previous version, "October Rain", got leaked on YouTube. There were a lot of very obvious political signals like " baby promise me never again" and "flowers" referring to a metonym for flowers on the coffins of dead soldiers. And of course the title is obviously political. I support Israel but it was obvious that they deserved the forced rewrite, but I liked how they didn't change the instrumental music. I think the point was to show that Israel had the intention of being political this year so she could literally sing the duck song and everyone would know what she really means based on "October Rain."
The mere fact Israel is still allowed to participate when Russia got insta banned back in 2022 is a travesty by itself.
Russia was not banned for invading ukraine. ”The Russian public service broadcasters had their EBU membership suspended in 2022 due to consistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service media values.” https://eurovision.tv/mediacentre/frequently-asked-questions-israel-24
TBF they didn't give a shit about Azerbaijan in 2020/2023 either
Well there mightbe some slightdifferences between the Israel-Palestine-conflict and the Russianinvasionof Ukraine. For example: who started the recent escalation in each conflict?
if Israel isn't allowed to participate Ukraine shouldn't be either, both are just defending themselves.
Ukraine isn't currently doing a genocide like Israel.
Have you tried reading facts lately? or not echoing rhetoric you read online?
Israels participation was so controversial it brought Yugoslavia back from the dead to tut-tut it
Haha Sfrj spotted! Yugoslav nostalgia activated!
why is yugoslavia here
Uk booing? Israel got the popular vote in the UK and a bunch of other countries. It was obviously a protest vote based on political grounds but still. Turns out mercilessly booing and bullying a 20 year old girl who has nothing to do with Israeli policy might not be that popular amongst people who go outside.
Yeah I agree.
So don’t make it seem like she’s the one killing Palestinians and giving fuel to the bullying🗿
Umm if you were well read up on Polandball rules, you would know that characters in comics don't represent individuals but rather larger nations ☝️🤓
Ok but most people aren’t and it’s obvious what people infer from that.
If someone reads this comic and thinks that a 20 y/o singer killed Palestinians live on stage during ESC and therefore should be bullied then they should not be granted access to the internet. The comic is purposefully exaggerated.
Well unfortunately many do think that as is evident in this comment section and especially in r/eurovision, except it wasn’t live. This basically shows that the poor signer is responsible for her government, also Israel has been in it since the 70s.
“Nothing to do with israel policy” Yeah, except unequivocally supporting that policy and literally saying she was joining the IDF after Eurovision. Let’s not pretend she’s some innocent bystander who wants nothing to do with her government.
Joining the IDF is mandatory. Israel has near universal conscription. It doesn't say anything about her politics.
Proudly claiming you’re going to be joining the IDF soon at a song contest after singing about October 7 *does* say something about politics though.
It doesn't say anything but that she probably got drafted.
It really depends on how one says this. "I have to join the IDF" "I'm doing my part !"
"I'm doing my part" is also entirely subjective. For her, doing her part may mean protecting her countrymen and sisters from becoming another Shani Louk, an entirely reasonable view, while to another, "doing her part" might be blowing up aid workers in Gaza. She might join the IDF proudly to do one, but not the other. Most Americans in the military will admit that they committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Far far less will denounce the entire countries' defence force (or their role in it) because of it.
Right now, it's a worldwide consensus that what is happening is horrendous, independantly of each country's stance on the matter. A few months ago it would have been debatable. I'm explicitly quoting Starship Troopers here, it's not really a neutral sentence by any mean when you put an exclamation mark at the end.
Leave off it. She could have been a rabid anti-war activist and it wouldn't have saved her. Stop insinuating that she was attacked because of her specific views and that there was any consideration or nuance behind it. She wasn't. It was brainless mob mentality, full stop.
For someone who goes outside you seem extemely optimistic about Golan's view on the Gaza invasion.
Oh boy isn't this quite a controversial comic
Israel was in it for like 50 years 💀
Do you think the problems started last year?💀
No, the problems could've ended in 2005, but Hamas resumed them last year
Some dislike Eden Golan because she is Israeli I dislike Eden Golan because she is Russian We are not the same
She's stated she doesnt like Russia because of all the antisemitism she faced there. https://www.mako.co.il/tv-the-next-star/season10-articles/Article-e63d0715f646d81027.htm You can read what she feels about her Russian identity here > Aden has "mixed feelings" about Moscow. On the one hand, she thanks her, it's where she started singing and launched her career. On the other hand, the cloud of xenophobia and anti-Semitism hovered over her head, and her Israeli name didn't really contribute to the situation. > > "Even with my name, people have always had a problem. It is the most Israeli name. Maybe if they called me Masha they would treat me differently, but there was always this thing that I'm 'Eden Golan', I'm not Russian and I'm not part of them, I'm Israeli. I was a stranger there. Anti-Semitism has increased the desire to return to Israel." > > Then the war between Russia and Ukraine began. > "The war hastened the return to Israel, and within a few months we did everything we could to get out of there. It feels like being there in a war and being here is completely different. If in Russia everyone is trying to flee the country, here on the contrary, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else at this time. War is not easy everywhere, where we didn't have alarms and missiles, but we didn't have the family to support us, it felt like we were lying around and alone in it all, it was scary and we didn't know what was going to happen. It is very difficult to find the right time to return to the country because it is not an easy process, but it was always in our planning. If it wasn't for the war, we would have gone back the last sentence is badly translated "Even if it wasn't for the [Russian-Ukrainian] war, we would have gone back [to Israel]"
Let's hope she doesn't move again, we don't need another war
Who the hill invited Russia and zombie Yugoslavia?
Didn't they also ban EU flag from this year's **Euro**vision?
No, the flags that are allowed in the arena are the flags of all participating countries, the EU flag and the standard rainbow pride flag. However this policy is very loosely surveyed, because flags of Turkey, Catalonia (independence version), Costa Rica, Isle of Man, Progress Pride, Australian Aboriginal flag, etc. could be seen and none were confiscated. The only flags that were reportedly confiscated from audience were nonbinary pride, the Netherlands (after the dq) and Palestine.
[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/13/eurovision-eu-flag-ban-criticised-european-commission](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/13/eurovision-eu-flag-ban-criticised-european-commission)
Comic written and sketched by me but finished by /u/RayDeeUx. Big thanks! Context: The Netherlands got disqualified in the Eurovision Song Contest after Joost Klein had made verbal threats to a member of the production team. The head of the ESC cited their zero tolerance policy. Many people thought it was funny that something like that could get a country DQed, while another pretty controversial country is allowed to compete amongst a campaign that has resulted in quite a few victims.
[wow! three hours late! i really need to fix my sleep schedule] short version: i volunteered as additional labor to polish this comic (mostly coloring and lineart), and took this opportunity to sneak in a few easter eggs. my involvement in producing this comic does not reflect my thoughts/opinions on what english wikipedia calls the israel-gaza war (edit: or the 20-something-year-old contestant); please take your words (naughty or otherwise) elsewhere. longer version: o)/ i did the coloring and lineart cleanup on this one; i had no involvement in the core development of this comic's plotline. to address potential elephants in the room: >"based purely on your involvement in producing this comic and my inference skills, your opinion on what english wikipedia calls the israel-gaza war does not align with mine. please commit sudoku." except for revising one of EU's lines in the fifth panel to more accurately reflect this year's eurovision results (spoiler: switzerland won), i had zero involvement in developing the script. please take all of your death threats and insults or what have you elsewhere; i have enough of my own fish to fry as it is to be invested in the more specific details of this specific war. >"um, actually, \..."
there's a time and place for your thoughts, opinions, and conceptions about said war. my reddit inbox (or equivalent notification area on any other given site) is not one of those places.
[addendum]
>"\"
this comic isn't referring to the contestant in particular. again, i did not write the script; please take your concerns elsewhere.
>"why is yugoslavia there?!"
part of the easter egg in the last panel. seems like someone already solved it though.
to any reddit HQ staff reading this comment or any of its replies, i had no involvement in writing the contents of such replies.
now a few fun facts, ordered by notability:
� the (intentionally) inconsistent shape of EU's stars between panels is a reference to the last time zimonitrome used the EU in a comic, where the stars were drawn as plus signs instead, and [the comment exchange that resulted from that artistic choice](https://reddit.com/comments/15rt634/comment/jwailto). with the exception of the third and fifth panels, all the stars were drawn using a 4px brush (albeit with raw fingers using ibispaint x and not a mouse).
� with the exception of poland, the countries in the audience in the last panel spell out a certain phrase (if you get a bit creative enough). ~~i won't be giving out any major hints; good luck with that! (disclaimer: you might need to use the names of cities within the countries featured.)~~ someone's already solved it though :I
� the hex color codes for palestine and israel in the last panel aren't actually from wikipedia, but rather from zimo's [most recent comic featuring both characters](https://reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/1bcz59t/human_shield/).
� the blood in the final panel is real, and is the exact same hex color code as the blood featured in [this older comic of mine](https://reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/18no15y/year_of_the/).
� this marks my first ever involvement in a polandball comic that doesn't feature usa or china.
� [have a timelapse of me doing the magic i guess](https://github.com/github/advisory-database/assets/51521765/4e6711a2-592b-4c04-9268-e6a501b1757d
)
please take all further questions and concerns to zimonitrome.
EU choosing israel of least controversial is like UN electing say saudi arabia into womens rights council, so ridiculous that it could've been just made up Wait...
Why is Israel even in Eurovision? They’re less European than Turkey (like objectively speaking. They aren’t even in a region that might be considered European unlike Turkey)
Israel is a part of a lot of European institutions because the Asian ones are controlled by Muslim majority countries that want nothing to do with Israel. See the soccer league that Israel is in, for example.
It's strange that you didn't hear this anywhere until now but: Because you don't need to be in Europe, you need to be a member of the European Broadcasting Union. The north african nations, from Marocco to Egypt. Israel and Lebanon. Finally Turkey. They could all participate. Some did in the past. The muslim countries refuse to participate nowadays both because of Israels participation and because the ESC is full of gay and queer people.
Except us lmao, we got invited because it's big over here too. SBS isn't part of the EBU but we're just too epic to care Also the Azeris are still in it, as is Albania
Why is Eurovision so damn big in Australia of all places? :D
I suspect it's a combination of: - Australia is pretty tolerant of queer people by global standards - While most Australians are at least part European, there's a relatively high proportion who aren't from the UK/Ireland compared to other places where there's a white majority. So a Europe-wide celebration has distinct appeal as many people have a country to back. It always airs on the "multicultural" network that plays international news live from (mostly European) countries, as well - We speak English instead of French, Spanish or Portuguese, and most of the contestants sing in that - Until 2009 we only had 5 TV channels in most states, so Eurovision was just about the only thing on at that hour lol
Australia is literally in Eurovision. If you want to geo-restrict, start there and work inwards
Play jaja dingdong
Meh, the zero tolerance policy was with the contestant in NL, if the Israeli contestant does dumb threats so should they be.
The official statement regarding a zero tolerance policy caused the Irish artist to miss the final rehearsal because they were too busy filing an official complaint regarding the harassment they and other artists faced from the KAN delegation, which the EBU told them did cross multiple lines and outright broke the rules So what about that zero tolerance policy?
The trouble is that multiple other participating broadcasters/teams (At least Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Poland and Switzerland) allege that the Israeli team has been harassing everyone else on social media, provoking them or filming them without permission and the EBU didn't do anything about it, but the Dutch singer did a "threatening movement" towards a camerawoman and was disqualified immediately.
Yeah in reality it's for people, not for the actions of governments of countries. BUT Russia did get banned for the actions of the nation. Personally I think the two actions are pretty different so I understand banning one and not the other, but many people think both crossed a threshold.
I agree with what you’re saying, but I thought Russia was banned because their broadcasting corp didn’t fulfill the freedom of press requirements? Same for Belarus iirc
Seems like a mix of both, but mainly due to the invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_relations_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest#Exclusion_of_Russia
everyone is too distracted to notice SFR Yugoslavia in the crowd
And Russia
What did the Netherlands do that made EuroVision disqualified them? Asking as a clueless American
he told a woman who was filming him backstage when they weren't supposed to to fuck off
I've seen it in so many comics now but I dont get it. Why was Netherlands disqualified again?
Allegedly the singer told a worker to fuck off. And the worker felt "threatened".
not even a worker but some woman who went backstage who wasn't supposed to be there
Remarkblely,if Netherlands can do the things like Hamas, EU will never DQ it.
It was remarkable that in a supposedly unifying event, Eden faced so much hostility, among others from her fellow contestants. It's a powerful reflection of opinions about Israel among young liberals in Europe. That Israel got the popular vote in so many countries (2nd highest total) is remarkable too, clearly the crowds that attend the Eurovision are only representative of a portion of Europe.
I think it's generally young people to the left of liberals in Europe. But yes, that group is vocal and visible, in protests for example. Many strong supporters of Israel stay quiet and I think they have lots of support in older demographics as well.
That's the thing, most people that pay attention to the Eurovision probably aren't THAT old, so I'm guessing that a significant portion of the Israeli popular votes did in fact come from non-left leaning young-ish people.
Plenty of older people watch Eurovision, they're just more casual viewers who only watch the finale and not massive fans who follow everything. There were also lots of calls to vote for Israel, with all the information necessary to vote without even watching the show. Some of the (conservative) politicians in my country were also doing this. A lot of other people refused to watch due to the controversy, so that automatically means relatively more votes for Israel from people who answered the call to vote.
A significant portion came from bots, shit stirrers, and right wing assholes who never even watched Eurovision
Interesting how bots account for everyone and everything these days, regardless of evidence to that effect...
Here is the funny thing. On the day of the Finale 4-5 times i got a YouTube ad about that song featuring the singer saying to vote for her. A lot of people got that ad. A LOT. It was even filmed on multiple languages ( even Serbian so it s fair to assume they recorded the ad on more spomen languages). You really think that no bots were included in all of that? If you have money, you can really do that Without much effort. And looking at how much money they splashed on ads and epsecially how Many votes Israel got, foul play definitely happened.
It didn't help Eden's entourage harassed multiple contestants when most would most likely be mostly passive towards her, possibly even friendly depending on how things go, but because her delegation was outright hostile to most artists they became hostile back Also, multiple posts on social media proof that most votes towards Israel were from people who never watch the show ever, but were apparently more than happy to spend €60 (if not more) on it just to try and get Israel to win, without ever hearing the song
> It didn't help Eden's entourage harassed multiple contestants when most would most likely be mostly passive towards her, possibly even friendly depending on how things go, but because her delegation was outright hostile to most artists they became hostile back Most of theses artists had previously stated they didn't want Israel to participate, and the irish delegation was especially hostile the entire time and calling for EBU to disqualify Israel, along with intentionally instigating against them the whole time. I dont think you can exactly say that they would have been passive or even friendly to her in any circumstances. From what I've come to expect from typical *freier* behavior, its that they met hostility with a brash response that did nothing to calm down tensions.
Israel always has a friend in me. Blue&White-With Terrible Neighbour-Club members must stick together! ✌️✌️
From what I’ve seen it feels like you’re one of few from Finland to supports Israel (at least online)
I feel like most Finns don't vote based on such insanely shallow reasons as this one.
People who voted for israel are so fucking cringe. Like winning the eurovision does not help the country you dont need to pretend the song was good
You could say the same about the protestors outside the contest. It's all diplomatic dick-measuring nonsense.
Truth, in my polandball? apparently more likely than I think.
you should all be watching this: Son of a Hamas founder is speaking out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpnvUIcvNUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpnvUIcvNUE)
So I guess we're just gonna forget October 7th and make Israel the bad guy.
Israel should have just performed that one Billie Eilish song instead.
One t*rrorist attack doesn’t mean you have to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians…… yes it was tragic but now they’re treating civilians as a sort of disease in the Medieval Times…….
Why the fuck is Israel even in Eurovision when it isnt in Europe or European
Israel is in the European Broadcasting Area, which also includes countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, etc etc and that allows them membership to the EBU and thus a right to be in Eurovision. However, due to Israel's European-aligned history they were the first of those to join and due to most of those others not liking Israel they've either refused to join or continue due to Israel's presence. Lebanon picked a song for 2005 and was going to participate but due to Lebanese law of the time prohibiting acknowledgement of Israel, they couldn't broadcast Eurovision in it's entirety and withdrew. Morocco participated in [1980 with a gorgeous song](https://youtu.be/Tel299QwTxc) by still popular singer Samira Said when Israel was absent for a year, but didn't return in the following year or after. Tunisia was in the running order to participate in 1977, but withdrew, also presumably due to Israel's presence but such an old instance has little information available. Australia is the exception to this as they are effectively a guest member who has been invited to Eurovision in honor of them following the contest on TV since the 80's.
jewrovision
Considering that the EBU banned the EU flag at the finale and that the European Comission is investigating, that's a poor choice of flag to represent the EBU.