For the second year in a row, Israel\u2019s entry received the most votes from the Swedish public and zero votes from the SVT jury in the Eurovision Song Contest. The trend was the same throughout the rest of Europe. Instead of training sights on their own jury members, the organizing public service companies claimed that the public had been persuaded to vote for Israel through advertisements.<\/p>\n
he European Broadcasting Union (EBU) stated that Israeli advertising was the reason Israel\u2019s song received so many votes from the public and so few from the state-run public service broadcasters\u2019 experts.\u2028The underlying assumption was thus that the EBU\u2019s own experts were correct and that the public had been duped by Israel, according to the reasoning from Eurovision News Spotlight, EBU\u2019s investigative journalism network launched in April.\u2028The network, which includes Swedish public service broadcasters SVT and SR, is described as a collaborative fact-checking joint-network intended to equip public service media across Europe with tools to combat \u201cdisinformation.\u201d
\n\u2013 \u201cIn a digitally focused world, we are facing an increasingly severe crisis of incorrect, false, and synthetic information that challenges our grasp on truth and reality,\u201d said Liz Corbin, EBU\u2019s head of news, ahead of the launch.
\nA number of countries ran advertisements for their Eurovision songs without being scrutinized by EBU\u2019s fact-checking network. The EBU was founded on February 12, 1950, because its predecessor, the International Broadcasting Union (IBU), was considered too involved on Nazi Germany\u2019s side during the war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ahead of this year\u2019s Eurovision, EBU was accused of trying to steer and control journalists\u2019 reporting. EBU forced journalists to forfeit their right to free and independent reporting, with a gag order that prohibited reporting on EBU and Eurovision that could be perceived as derogatory.\u2028After criticism from Sweden\u2019s evening newspaper Aftonbladet among others, the EBU will now revise its handbook for journalists ahead of next year\u2019s contest. The background is a controversial phrasing stating that media coverage \u201cmust not harm Eurovision or the reputation of the EBU.\u201d
\nAfter his victory this year\u2019s winner, Johannes Pietsch from Austria, expressed that he did not want Israel to participate in next year\u2019s song contest in Vienna.
\n\u2013 I\u2019m very disappointed that Russia was excluded, but Israel was allowed to participate, he told the Spanish newspaper ABC.
\n\u2013 If it were up to me, I would exclude Israel, he continued, and hinted at the possibility of election fraud:\u2028\u2013 Maybe next year the televoting will be properly monitored, without advertising or anything like that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Further commotion arose when Johannes Pietsch \u2018liked\u2019 a social media post about a report describing how two Israelis were murdered in Washington after a terrorist deliberately targeted a Jewish institution and shouted \u201cFree Palestine\u201d during the attack.
\nThe Israeli singer Yuval Raphael represented Israel and finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest 2025. She had participated in the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists attacked the festival killing 360 young attendees, and kidnapping another 40.\u2028Yuval Raphael hid together with about 50 others in a shelter near Kibbutz Be\u2019eri, where she sustained shrapnel injuries from grenades thrown into the shelter. Raphael was one of 11 survivors after hiding under dead bodies for eight hours, reported the BBC.
\nPrior to this year\u2019s Eurovision Contest, demands were made for the EBU to exclude the Israeli candidate from the contest in Basel, Switzerland. Similarly, ahead of last year\u2019s competition in Malm\u00f6, members of parliament from far-left and nationalist parties called for a boycott of Israel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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