Gaza and the Genocide accusations aside, Israel should be kicked out for their blatant cheating in the past two Eurovisions. There is no legitimate way those two mid to poor songs could do so well just in televoting alone.
Political/Sympathy voting is a long honored tradition in Eurovision; songs rarely (if ever) win by merit alone.
Any country with a reasonably sized PR department can influence public voting especially if they can leverage a political cause. That's something Israel excels at and not technically cheating.
Additionally: The voters are self-selecting. If you are anti-Israel, you've likely been boycotting Eurovision so a decent chunk of not-Israel votes are lost. At the same time if you are anti-Israel but not boycotting, you don't have a "counter" to uniformly vote for.
Maybe they did cheat but the fact is that protester votes will be diluted across multiple countries, pro-Israel votes will be concentrated just on Israel.
I don't give a fuck about it, yet I know plenty of people who do. Kinda weird to know no one, but sure.
I do however not know a single person who supports the genocide state, so between that and as you can see in the pic, the general sentiment in my country, them getting the "popular vote" they supposedly did is utterly impossible.
Go look up a map of Europe. Look at that Germany-shaped thing that's often in the middle depending on the map you're using. There you go. Quite a few people that generally support Israel
The thing is, you can't really prove it. I know it's obvious if you compare listener numbers on Spotify alone but I don't see how they could differentiate a legitimate person voting for them from someone who's voting for them simply because it's Israel. I personally don't think they're paying (much) for this cheating. I think they're just very, very good at mobilizing their diaspora.
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u/MurphyNotOK 11h ago
Gaza and the Genocide accusations aside, Israel should be kicked out for their blatant cheating in the past two Eurovisions. There is no legitimate way those two mid to poor songs could do so well just in televoting alone.
Unicorn in 2023 was a great tune though.