Eurovision: Israel wins anyway

Surrounded by enemies, enter the Grand Prix!

This is a chronicle. Any opinions expressed in the text are the responsibility of the writer. If you would like to send an article proposal, you can read how here.

Israel debuted in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) on 7 April 1973, seven months and one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Black September’s deadly action against Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics.

No connection between the events can be documented. But every year Israeli TV, like all other EBU members, had been routinely invited to participate in the ESC. Only now did they accept.

It is reasonable to assume that the participation had more weighty reasons than to fill a couple of hours of airtime on a Saturday evening. In its 25-year history, Israel had experienced that its neighbors in the Middle East would land anything but well.

By participating in the ESC, one could highlight that the country’s real place was in the West, also in terms of popular culture. Surrounded by enemies, enter the Grand Prix!

Israel’s triumphal march

The reception was good; the contribution came in fourth place. But not everyone was equally enthusiastic. Referring to the extra security measures that Israel’s participation entailed, NRK proposed a new rule: Any country that was “involved in an international or internal conflict” should “be discouraged from participating”. The proposal was perceived by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) as political and rejected without merit.

Israel did not allow itself to be stopped, and the country’s first decade in the ESC was a triumph with, among other things, two victories and two second places. They had come to their own, and their own welcomed them with open arms.

In 1983, the country assertively marked its tenth ESC participation with a hard-hitting existential message, wrapped in a folk music-inspired kibbutz party song: “I’m still alive. The people of Israel are still alive.” The final took place in Munich.

The president must have intervened

Just over 50 years after its debut, the security measures caused by Israel’s ESC participation have grown to hitherto unimagined dimensions.

At the same time, it seems more important than ever for the country to retain its place in the competition. When the first draft of this year’s contribution was rejected by the EBU, Israel’s president Isaac Herzog is said to have intervened and asked the TV company to adjust the text so that the participation could be approved.

For obvious reasons, there will be little kibbutz party atmosphere this year. The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, 50 years, one month and one day after the Munich massacre, has caused a state of existential crisis in which Israel feels acutely threatened by collective annihilation. This is reflected in lyrics such as “Every day, I’m losing my mind” and “I’m still broken from this hurricane”.

Meeting opposition in the Nordics

How will the reception in ESC be then? We perhaps got a hint in NRK’s ​​”Address” programme, where some panelists apparently outbid each other in vicarious motives to give the song fewer points than it deserved.

In a similar program on Icelandic TV, viewers were spared such embarrassment. The panel made short work of it and did not hide the fact that the rationale was political.

But the mobilization against Israel in this year’s ESC is mostly limited to the Nordic countries. And the juries, which account for 50 percent of the final votes, are – at least on paper – obliged to keep politics out.

On the well-reputed website Eurovoix’s jury poll, Israel managed seventh place, not surprisingly without a single point from the Nordic members. A pretty decent result for one of the year’s best ballads, perhaps after a bit of a fine for bad behaviour.

Then there were these “people”, then. We have long known that the viewer vote in the ESC is vulnerable to political influence in the sense that it is often voted on a state or an issue rather than on a song or a singer. The most striking example so far is the crushing victory of the recently invaded Ukraine in 2022: The country scooped up 439 viewership points out of a possible 480 and would have needed just 28 points from the juries to win.

When non-musical circumstances can be so mobilizing, it is natural to think that Israel will be punished in this year’s ESC. But viewers can’t vote against a contribution, and the competition has no Palestinian contribution to protest vote on.

Indeed, it could have if Iceland had let the Palestinian artist Bashar Murad win the country’s national final. But after being the big favorite all the way through, he stumbled in the final round, which “the people” had to decide on their own.

Israel has many friends

This year’s big ESC question will be whether Israel’s friends, and there are many of them, will know their visiting time when the country’s artist Eden Golan takes the stage in Malmö. They did so after all sun marks on February 3, when VG asked its readers whether Israel should be allowed to participate in the competition. In the first few hours, the yes percentage was as high as 35. After a day, the proportion was down to around 20 per cent, and it remains there at the time of writing.

That 80 percent are negative plays little role in ESC since the resistance cannot be converted into points. Where the jury system advances decisions based on consensusnamely rewards the viewer vote dissent: In the final, each country’s viewer votes are distributed among approx. 25 songs, with an average of 4 percent to each. An entry that garners extra support from, say, 20 percent of viewers will end up with one of the highest scores. That the remaining 80 percent can’t stand the sound of it doesn’t help much.

From time immemorial it has been the lot of the people in and now the nation of Israel to fight with their backs against the wall for their own existence. Having your place in the good ESC company has therefore never been more important than this year, like a victory in a small battle in the big, big war.

If the supporters really mobilize on Saturday night, the country can face the viewership vote with joy and reassurance. But regardless of the outcome, Israel will emerge victorious by virtue of having participated.