This Saturday, May 11, one of the most tense Eurovision finals in history was held at the Malmö Arena in Malmö (Sweden). The 2024 edition has been one of the most controversial editions in recent years, since Israel’s participation was not very welcome among the rest of the delegations due to its conflict with Palestine. At each appearance of his representative, Eden Golan, the public burst into boos. The same thing happened every time a jury gave points to the Middle Eastern country. Precisely, Spain was one of the countries that gave the highest score to Israel through televoting. Something that the Israeli ambassador to Spain has spoken about.
Although the professional jury did not award any points to the Asian country, the Spanish televoting gave Israel the highest score. This generated a large number of reactions on social networks, one of them, that of the Israeli Ambassador in our country. “Thank you to the Spanish public who gave Eden Golan, Israel’s representative in Eurovision, the highest score – 12 points!” Rodica Radian-Gordon said through her official profile on X (formerly Twitter) .
This publication has cost him a lot of criticism on social networks. “Now that Eurovision is over, what is going to be your victimization strategy to hide the genocide?” said one Internet user. “With those 12 points will you bomb more hospitals?” read another comment. “I am ashamed to be Spanish” and “The majority of the public in Spain did not see Eurovision, we were disgusted by the insult of seeing a genocidal country, present at this event, do not sing victory, you are as heartless as the Nazis”, are some of the comments that the publication collects. There are also signs of support for the Ambassador.
The truth is that Saturday’s day began very tense after the expulsion of the candidate from the Netherlands, Joost Klein, who was disqualified after having “an incident” with a member of the production team. On the other hand, Bambie Thug, the representative of Ireland, decided to be absent from the dress rehearsal to inform the European Broadcasting Union of a complaint about the pejorative comments made about her by the Israeli broadcasting corporation (KAN).
During the official rehearsal of the flag parade, three delegations did not come out: Ireland, Greece and Switzerland – something that ultimately did not happen in the grand final. Nor did France agree with everything that happened, especially with Israel’s participation. During the rehearsal, Slimane, his representative, interrupted his performance to speak out and ask for peace. Already during the grand final, several delegations chose to lend their support to Palestine with subliminal winks.
Likewise, Alessandra Mele, who was supposed to be the spokesperson for the votes of the Norwegian jury, announced hours before the start of the gala that she would not finally participate in the contest and was positioning herself against the participation of Israel. Loreen, winner of the last edition, assured that she would not come out to present the trophy if the country won the contest. The gala became one of the most controversial and tense.
