Eurovision opens in Vienna amid scrutiny over Israel’s participation and voting campaigns

JTA – As Israel’s Eurovision contestant Noam Bettan walked the “turquoise carpet” at the annual song competition’s opening ceremony on Sunday in Vienna, he was already being eclipsed by controversy over his participation ‒ and a debate over how his fellow Israelis should show their support. 

The competition, which kicks off on Tuesday and ends with a grand final on Saturday, will proceed without five European public broadcasters that boycotted over Israel’s participation, namely Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia. Several of those countries will not even broadcast the competition. 

Bettan, a 28-year-old Israeli singer-songwriter who secured his spot by winning Israel’s reality singing competition Rising Star, is set to perform the ballad Michelle during Tuesday’s first semifinal. 

Michelle is a largely French-language pop ballad about leaving a toxic relationship. It was co-written by Yuval Raphael, Israel’s representative at last year’s competition and a survivor of the Hamas-led Nova massacre of 7 October. 

Raphael took home second place in the widely watched contest with her song New Day Will Rise, after also facing pro-Palestinian protests at last year’s competition. 

“I am very focused on what I am supposed to do right now,” Bettan told The Jerusalem Post ahead of the competition. “Everything else, for me, is background noise. I am trying very, very hard just to concentrate on rehearsals, to give it everything I have, to work as hard as I can, and to maintain a healthy mentality.” 

The competition is beginning with a cloud of scrutiny over Israel’s track record in the audience vote. 

Raphael’s high placement last year, driven by a first-place finish in the audience vote, drew scrutiny from participating countries that accused Israel of interfering in the votes. 

While the organisers of Eurovision initially defended the voting system amid the outcry, in November, they announced a new set of audience voting guidelines, including a reduction in the number of votes allotted to each fan from 20 to 10, splitting fan votes with input from a professional jury and discouraging promotional campaigns by third parties. 

On Monday, The New York Times published an investigation alleging that the Israeli government had coordinated a large-scale campaign to boost the country’s Eurovision vote totals in recent years. 

The investigation was published shortly after Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, issued a warning letter on Friday to Israel’s public broadcaster KAN over an online campaign calling for the public to “vote 10 times for Israel”. 

“The voting instructions of the Eurovision Song Contest that cover promotion are predominantly directed at discouraging large-scale funded third-party campaigns, and we are satisfied that this video did not form part of such a campaign,” Green wrote in a statement on Saturday. “However, employing a direct call to action to vote 10 times for one artist or song is also not in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition.” 

Bettan will compete on Tuesday against performers from countries including Sweden, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, Lithuania, Italy, and Poland. The second semifinal, slated for Thursday, will feature countries including Australia, Ukraine, France, and the United Kingdom.