A new day rising in Europe

Why is a shell-shocked nation so obsessed with Eurovision?

On Saturday night, hundreds of thousands of Israelis sought shelter from Houthi missiles, though you wouldn’t know that if you opened the local news. That’s because the first four items on the country’s top news website were about a different geopolitical battle altogether - Eurovision.

Even the Yemeni terrorist group, despite having some killer dance moves themselves, couldn’t rain missiles on our parade. Israel, that is, 24-year-old Yuval Raphael who is for all intents and purposes Israel, won second place in the Eurovision Song Contest with her ballad “New Day Will Rise”.

If you’ve never heard of Eurovision, imagine the Olympics but everyone is so bad its good, the UN General assembly if the Finnish delegate took to the podium wearing a towel, the World Cup, yet the outfits are even gayer. The premise is simple – each country in the European Broadcasting Union picks a performer and an original song to represent their nation, and the gladiatorial crooners face each other in a series of preliminary sing-offs and eventually a final. The voting process, where professioal judges from all countries and viewers from the comfort of their homes rank their favorite performers, is where the real show begins.

Eurovision voting has always been geopolitical, but since October 7^th, the politics were dialed up to Douze Pois¹.

Last year year it started when Israel was kindly asked by the competition to change the offensive song title “October Rain” to “Hurricane”, and also made us remove the terribly political line “promise me that Never Again” from the lyrics. Thousands of artists from battle-worn countries like Finland and Iceland called to boycott the contest. The Norwegian lady who reads the points on TV quit in protest hours before the broadcast, leaving the country without a Norwegian lady to read the points on TV. Several gay bars and drag queens in the UK and the US, for which Eurovision is like the Superbowl and Christmas combined, decided not to host showings altogether, either in protest or fear, or both. Even Greta Thunberg took to the streets to protest the injustice of a Eurovision with Israel, taking a break from being angry at something else for a change.

This year, over 70 past performers signed a petition demanding Israel be excluded from the competition. Several of the broadcasters made reference to Gaza during Israel’s performance, with both Belgium and Spain going as far as airing a slide during the performance to remind their audience that “silence is not an option” when it comes to calling out the Jewish state. Heated debates about Israel’s participation took place on fan forums, with many expressing horror at the mere thought, while others arguing they have every right to perform, because poor Yuval is just a singer and is not responsible for the genocide we all know her nation is committing. On the ground in Basel, the Israeli delegation was greeted by hundreds of keffiyeh-clad protestors, not exactly Eurovision’s target audience, burning Israeli and American flags. Inside the hall, protestors waved Palestinian flags, and some even tried to storm the stage and threw paint at the crew during her performance. This year, like last, Israelis were strongly advised to lay low and get some rest in the safety of their hotel room.

Yuval herself is no stranger to terror. On October 7 she was at the Nova festival, another celebration of music and joy, when the world changed forever. She took refuge in a tiny shelter when Hamas stormed in and opened fire. And now, less than 2 years after hiding for hours under a pile of bodies with only a handful of survivors, she took to the world stage, not before rehearsing several times with her team booing at her, just so she could get the hang of it.

As far as we’re concerned, Yuval won when she stepped out of that shelter into the sunlight, alive. But to understand why a shell-shocked nation is so obsessed with how we do in an event where B list artists give C list performances of D list songs is to understand Israel. Our ranking in Eurovision is the ultimate popularity contest, a temperature check to see if we are accepted, an annual tally of who hates Jews, and who is inscribed in the Book of Life (all is forgiven, Ireland).

It’s more than acceptance though, it’s validation. Every Israeli likes to see themselves as part of the European west, ignoring the constant daily reminders that we are very much the Middle East. We can sit at the bar drinking espresso martinis one minute, and run to the bomb shelter the next. We talk about the latest start-up that sold for billions of dollars, and casually mention the founder’s brother was in reserve duty with us. We’ll talk about the season finale of the White Lotus on our way to Pilates sipping our Matcha Lattes, with a constant lump in our throat because 58 of our brothers and sisters are still being held hostage in Gaza. When the world’s ire turned on us shortly after October 7^th, it felt like a clear message: you may think you are like us, but you’re not. We embraced it. We had a suspicion that everyone hated us before, but now we knew. Yet despite the anger, there’s still a part of us that wanted to have seat at the cool kid’s table. It’s why Israelis hate the UN, but rejoice when they vote in our favor. It’s why we scorn at the Ivy League, and beam when our relative gets accepted to a top program. Sure everyone’s an antisemite and who cares what they think, but maybe if they just meet Yuval, or Gal, or our one guy that’s in the NBA – we’ll be proven wrong?

So on Saturday, after an objectively stellar performance of a subjectively good enough song, the jury portion of the voting had culminated, and Israel found itself in the disappointing yet unsurprising 15^th place of 26. But then came the popular vote, the unwashed Eurovision masses. The people of Europe had spoken, anonymously and without fear of mean Instagram comments. A shocking 16 countries awarded Israel at least 10 points, making it the number one audience pick, and launching it into the honorable second place, an upset not seen since <insert sports metaphor here>.

Paging Steve Kornacki

The only thing it could compare to is, well, last year. In 2024, the official jury’s yawned at “Hurricane” (it was a banger) and placed it in the non-contriversial 12th place, while the audience ranked it second from all the son, launching it to 5th overall.

Were the good people of Switzerland endorsing the Zionist project as an homage to Theodore Herzl? Was the Swedish vote an affront to Islamist extremism? Did Portugal just really love our song? I can’t tell you why people voted the way they did (though some antisemites on X have a few theories). But one thing was obvious all along: nobody likes a bully. When a show is disrupted, the crowd cheers harder. When media and celebrities tell us who we should hate, we love them out of spite. And when anyone scolds us about morality, we respond that we have our own eyes, ears and voting rights.

Maybe this has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with being the underdog of the moment. Either way, thank you Europe, for letting us sit at your table this weeknd. It means a lot to know we were wrong.

1. 12 points is the highest score you can get, and the only french words every Israeli knows.