Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine ) 17.05.2026
Even before the actual competition in Vienna, it was known that Israel was acting to win the Eurovision by conducting a coordinated campaign to use the contest for political image manipulation. Prior to 2026 a person could vote 20 times for a state and because it was known that Israel asked its supporters to vote for its singing group twenty times, the management changed the rule and allowed only 10 times. Still this new rule opened the back door for Israel, the most hated state in the world, to come second in this way.
Israel is located in the Middle East, not in Europe. Also, according to the management of the competition, Kan the Zionist broadcasting is independent and therefore Israel is entitled to participate. However, this is a lie as kan is a Zionist propaganda outlet that hides the crimes of the Zionist state.
This year’s event is caught up in a political storm, as five countries, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Iceland, and Slovenia withdrew as their broadcasters demanded Israel be excluded over its military actions in Gaza. They are boycotting the contest over Israel’s participation. The countries say their decision is due to Israel’s war in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis it has triggered.
Many thousands of Anti-Zionists participated on Saturday for the Zionist monster’ war crimes including the genocide in Gaza, the terror in the West Bank, and in defense of Iran. The crowd marched through Vienna chanting “boycott Israel, boycott ESC [Eurovision Song Contest]” and “no stage for genocide,” finishing up near the Weiner Stadthalle stadium where the event took place. Two protesters scaled the scaffolding of a nearby building to hang a Palestinian flag, drawing cheers from the crowd.
A New York Times investigation has found that Israel ran a coordinated, government-backed campaign to transform Eurovision into a soft-power tool, spending more than $1 million promoting its contestants while lobbying to remain in the contest amid growing backlash over the war on Gaza.
The investigation, published on Sunday, found that Israel spent more than $800,000 on advertising around the 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmö, Sweden, with funding linked to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public diplomacy office.
According to the report, Israeli officials, embassies and pro-Israel groups coordinated multilingual campaigns encouraging viewers to vote up to 20 times for Israel’s contestant, Yuval Raphael. Netanyahu himself reportedly posted graphics on Instagram urging supporters to maximise votes.
The Times found that Eurovision’s voting system made the contest highly vulnerable to coordinated influence campaigns because viewers were allowed to cast multiple paid votes.
Using internal voting data obtained during the investigation, the newspaper found that in somecountries only a few hundred coordinated voters were needed to secure a public vote victory.
In Spain, where polling showed widespread criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza, Raphael won the televote with more than 47,000 votes. However, the Times calculated that fewer than 500 people voting the maximum 20 times each could have been enough to secure first place.
The same method brought Israel to the second place. This brings to mind the 1936 Olympiad in Berlin. The alternative was Moscow. The organizers committee of the Olympiad were aware that Jews and Communists were sent to the concentration camps already in 1935. There were signs showing the way to the camps. The Olympiad committee demanded from Hitler to remove the signs and he agreed.
In Britain more than 250,000 people protested on Nakba day where Israel expelled 750-900,000 Palestinians, more than the racist anti-immigrants demo. The same day the Zionist singer in Vienna covering himself with a Zionist flag was allowed to sing as a representative of Israel.
For a red democratic state from the river to the sea!