In the European singing competition – Eurovision, most of the official representatives of the countries did not award points to the representative of Israel (which seems to be political considerations in light of the quality of the performance), statements against Israel were harsh during the course of the competition, and while playing Aden Golan’s song (including booing in the audience and including slides on television against Israel) But then came the vote of the non-institutional audience that gave Israel the most votes after Croatia and hope that maybe the general public, those who do not dare to express their voice, in front of the official policy of their country, have love for the State of Israel.
The song “Hurricane” by Aden Golan won the second semi-final thanks to the audience’s votes – and came in second place in the entire competition if you consider only the audience’s votes. Yes, only the Croatian representative received more than Aden Golan from the crowd at home.
No less than 14 countries gave Israel the highest score, “Duz Poa”, 12 points, from the audience – the most of all the participants of the competition. Among other things, Aden Golan won 12 points from the Belgian audience – who before the broadcast in their country had to watch a slide that said “We condemn Israel’s violation of human rights” – and also from the Spanish audience, whose government plans to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state soon. Even in Portugal, whose representative for Eurovision chose to come up with a painting of baking with nails, Israel won 12 points from the audience.
The other countries where Israel received 12 points from the audience are Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland and Great Britain. In addition, Israel received 12 points from “the rest of the world” – the votes from all countries that do not participate in Eurovision. Contrary to the well-known saying and popular feeling, the world, it seems, is not “against us”.
In the list of countries that gave us 10 points from the audience at home, the most surprising is Ireland – which is also considered one of the most hostile countries to Israel in Europe, and in the competition itself the Israeli delegation got into trouble with its candidate. We also received 10 points from Albania, Austria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Moldova and Slovenia.
Israel received 8 points from Denmark, Georgia and Iceland – another well-known “lover of Israel”. We got 7 points from Azerbaijan, Greece and Latvia, and another 6 points from Estonia. 5 points were given to Israel by Malta, Poland and Norway – which was also declared not long ago as one of the countries most hostile to Israel on the continent, with a foreign minister who (according to him by mistake) took a picture with the daughter of a terrorist waving a “Pac Israel” sign.
In fact, only in Ukraine and Croatia did Israel not receive points from the audience. For Ukraine, it seems, the reason is that Golan starred in Russia in the past – and even appeared in the Crimea. Among the Croatians, it seems that there was a clear interest in not giving points to Israel, because while the country was leading in the betting table in the competition – Israel was established after it in second place.
The huge gaps between the audience and the judges, it seems, indicate that it was not only considerations of the quality of Aden Golan’s performance that stood before the eyes of the judges in most countries. In fact, Israel did not receive 12 or 10 points from the judges in any country, and settled for 8 points from Cyprus, Germany and Norway; 5 from Belgium and Estonia; 4 from Lithuania; 3 from France, Georgia, Malta and Moldova; and 2 from Latvia. All the other 26 countries gave Aden zero points.
If there was any doubt – a member of the Norwegian judging team admitted that he did not give Israel a score because of the war in Gaza. In a video he uploaded to the X network, 24-year-old Daniel Owen explained why he avoided awarding points to the Israeli song.
Here are the biggest differences between the score we received from the audience and the score received from the judges:
Sweden, Portugal, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Great Britain, Finland, Spain, Switzerland and Australia – all awarded Israel 12 full points from the audience at home, compared to a round zero from the judges. Slovenia, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Albania gave Israel 10 points in televot (audience voting) and zero from the judges.
Iceland and Denmark awarded 8 points from home with no score from the judges. Even the judges in Greece and Azerbaijan didn’t give us a score, but the crowd at home gave Aden Golan 7 points.
The judges in Germany awarded 8 points plus 12 from the audience, a total of 20 points. The Cypriots awarded 8 points plus 10 points from the audience, a total of 18 points. The Norwegian judges awarded 8 points from the hostile country plus 5 points from the audience, a total of 13 points.
