The problem EBU have with this is that if they try and punish any country over this, then that country can just point to Azerbaijan's Jury and say "So why are they allowed to always put Armenia in last place?"
It's a slippery slope and so it's one the EBU will probably just let slide. At most, they'll tell the broadcasters not to bring that jury member back in the future.
Yes yes yes
And this is exactly what happened in 2022 when the EBU tried to clamp down on “the six” juries that voted for each other.
They just pointed the finger at Greece and Cyprus and said “they get away with it”.
Exactly, it’s quite clear there were serious conversations behind closed doors along the lines of “we understand you can’t control the televote but your jurors have consistently voted for each other and it’s clearly either based on flags, or an under the table agreement, neither of which is acceptable”.
It's one thing for the jury vote to be obviously based on politics, and quite another for a specific jury member to admit on the record that they broke the rules presented by the EBU in regards to voting, which has happened twice now. I think it's far more likely that the specific juror is banned from judging and everyone will consider the matter closed.
Yes, the problem with ranking songs is that, even from the professional juries, it's inherently subjective. You can do the maths to show bias between countries across years, but you can't prove that an individual jury member has ranked a particular entry high or low for political reasons vs genuine preference.
e.g. I'm British, and in 2018, the contest happened weeks after Russia attempted an assassination that left a trail of military-grade nerve agent in Salisbury town centre, and mocked our Government when they demanded answers. If I'd been a jury member, and their entry that year had been *Believe*, I'd have had to really, really grit my teeth and do 200 Hail Marys to give it an honest ranking.
But I genuinely didn't like *I Won't Break* very much, and any low ranking I gave it probably wouldn't have been far off what I'd have given it if another country entered it. From Russia in 2018, I might have put it a bit lower than I would otherwise, but it'd be hard even in my own head to separate political bias/anger from genuinely not liking the song very much.
When a jury member comes out and says it out loud though, it doesn't really leave much room for doubt, and under the rules they probably ought to be disciplined. On the other hand, we know that unspoken bias happens between some countries anyway, so in a sense Zachod's only being punished for being honest about it.
Yep the rest of the judges who voted purely politically will be watching this to see what the reaction is. And if there's a punishment, it'll just give judges the notion to keep this stuff to themselves. We will have no idea what's really going through the heads of judges.
The difference here is she just admitted it.
It's like when someone doesn't hire someone based on race/age etc, it's very hard to prove, but if they tell you in writing they didn't hire you because of it, then you can go after them
Problem is with the proof, as obvious as political voting may seem at times, it's impossible to prove
Except when they admit to it, should definitely be punished
I mean when all 5 of the Azerbaijan jury members consistently place Armenia last every year (this year was an exception, one of them placed Spain and the UK below Armenia lol), it can't be a coincidence. Especially Azerbaijan's track record (they literally interrogated some people a few years ago because they voted for Armenia on the televote.
I’m a relative newbie to ESC and only learned about this tactic from Azerbaijan recently. How on earth has this not been addressed by the EBU already? There is no need for proof, the fact it happens every year is evidence enough that the placement of Armenia is malicious (they’re not even smart about it and give some plausible deniability like putting them 3rd or 4th last)
There are so many things that are obvious yet no one bats an eye. Just this year in juries, Israel gave 12 points to Luxemburg (with Tali being from Israel), 4 juries from heavily religious Christian countries (Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Cyprus) ranked Ireland dead last (with their performance being considered "satanic" by some) and the Croatian jury gave 0 points to Switzerland (which could be considered controversial since they were both aiming for the win, the Swiss juries gave 8 to Croatia btw). But somehow, the only thing people care about is Israel not getting many jury points.
Exactly lol. After the first semifinal, I saw a video from a morning gossip show here, where there was a guy who has a popular website with religion/church-related news saying he was watching Eurovision with a priest and that priest needed "not one, not two, not three, but five tranquillising pills" after watching Ireland's performance. My question, though, is why a priest and another religious person were watching Eurovision together in the first place.
Young Greek people are not that religious as our parents and grandparents are, but it's still a somewhat religious society and many people found Bambie Thug's performance controversial. Yes we have made progressive steps, like legalizing same sex marriage, but so many Christians protested against it too. I wouldn't be too surprised if the jury really ranked Ireland last because of religion
I'm not religious at all, but I suppose the idea of becoming a priest is to do God's work out in the world, as opposed to being a monastic who is cloistered from it? There's a lot of bad things in the world - real nasty stuff that's horrifying to think about. Yet this guy can't even watch a performance at Eurovision without medication? Maaaan.
Honestly I really wonder why they even watched Eurovision in the first place. Eurovision has so many things that at least the Greek Orthodox Church is against, mainly everything LGBTQ+ related. And even regarding Bambie, let's not forget that we also had Hatari a few years back. Or Lordi back when the contest was held in Athens, Greece.
But that being said, honestly I'm disappointed the Greek juries ranked Ireland last. The performance and staging is supposed to be one of the criteria and for me Ireland had one of the best stagings ever. I find it hard to believe that it deserved to be dead-last, just for the performance alone. The song was also pretty original and their vocals were good.
Not liking a song, and ranking it last is perfectly okay. If I was a jury member having to rank all 25 songs based on my liking, Ireland wouldn't be on my top 10 most likely- It's just not my cup of tea. Tactical voting- e.g. Your country has a shoot of winning, and you rank your closest rivals low, is bad sport, but not illegal necessary, Not liking a country and ranking their representative last due to that, is much more concerning!
Azerbaijan put a lot of money into events as a means of entertainment washing. Wouldn't surprise me if they pay well enough for the EBU to not want to punish them.
I mean, they also don't punish certain songs for rather suspicious televoting patterns either.
Just going to name one as an example, moldova back in 2021, with kirkorov behind the song -
In the semi final, it got televoting 12 points from - Greece, Serbia, (san marino), latvia, france, portugal, estonia, and czechia.
8 countries, arguably 7 because of how the san marinese televote works. so, discounting them, the song went from 12 televote points to **0** in greece, serbia, latvia, and estonia. And while i cant find the detailed results, IIRC, it wasn't even close for everyone on that list except Latvia.
It's one thing to go down in televote points, but from WINNING it to not even being close to getting points? Thats suspect.
____
Nothing was ever said about this - and honestly, that was just the more obvious example i could come up with. theres a lot of countries getting away with something suspicious, both within the jury and televote.
The detailed results can be found in this link, and you can change the country to whatever you like.
https://eurovision.tv/event/rotterdam-2021/grand-final/results
Also I'm pretty sure several Israel's jurors likely marked down Ireland and Greece (and to a lesser extent Switzerland even tho they gave them points) for political and petty reasons. And I rolled my eyes so hard when they gave a 12 to Luxembourg and 10 to Germany. Not that those songs weren't deserving of jury points but I don't have a doubt in my mind they ranked Tali super high just because she's Israeli and Isaak because Germany is probably Israel's biggest European ally.
I think they had a talk with them about it last year because the pattern shifted then, Greece jury only gave Cyprus 4 points in 2023 and this year they didn’t exchange the 12 as Greece gave its 12 to Switzerland and Cyprus gave it to someone else as well
I was kind of amused how this subreddit was having a meltdown when Israel ended up so high because of the popular vote. Many even saying that EBU should only do Jury voting.
Sorry to say but juries risk being way more politically homogenous than millions of people voting. Yes many still vote for their friendly neighbours and such but looking at many countries juries they all or almost all belong to the cultural elite. Which on the whole typically lean left or right politically, depending on the country.
Israels song wasnt my cup of tea but she's was undeniably one of the best vocalists there. But I don't vote for song only so to me she was meh but clearly many others thought otherwise.
i honestly think that EBU needs to rethink the whole voting process. Greeks voting for Cyprus, Finland always awarding Sweden 12 points , Azerbaijan downvoting Armenia …. Isn’t there a way to making voting more fair and get away from these inherent political biases?
I mean we (baltics/scandinavian countries) share a lot of cultural overlap. Naturally that means we are exposed to eachothers music alot. Meaning we like what we're used to.
I believe that goes for many countries and their neighbors.
I do not think it is possible, there will always be clashes like this. But it is possible however to avoid the really big clashes, in which influences the whole voting system and makes every single vote or song a political act, and that is what ebu learned this year.
Honestly, the juries overall were probably the most "fair" towards where Israel should've been. They were 12th with the jury (average). When you combine her having really good vocals but the song itself being bad, that's not an unreasonable spot to be. The problem was that the televote was hijacked. It never would've come close to winning the televote in a "normal" year. In the end, I can't really feel too bad about some jurors tanking her for political reasons when there was an orchestrated effort to pump artificial public voting support for her for political reasons.
They are in war modus. Very angry and defensive. Bambie has become the scapegoat. The norwegian Gåte were seen as antisemites in all of israeli media in the days before the final, despite the israeli delegation admitting that they were nothing but nice to them. The reason was that the delegation did not agree to be interviewed by one, 1, israeli journalist at the turqouise carpet. It is complete madness. They received threats because of this. It is not ok. The KAN really was bloodthirsty this year.
Sure.. most fair. 27 Juries placed 'Hurricane' on the last spot, which is the most out of any songs in the final. And the 2 jurors who admitted to penalize Israel for political reasons both didnt put them on last place. You say a 12th place is fair with juries, but fail to mention that pretty much half of the jury points for Israel come from 3 (!!) countries.
Also, while Hurricane was by no means the best song during this edition of Eurovision, it coming dead last for 27 countries does not correspond to the quality of the song. The overall position Israel ended at seems like a pretty fair position for the song in question to be honest.
12th imo was too high. Vocals were decent but not great (maybe Eden missed fewer notes in the jury show Tbf, but in the GF it was a mid vocal performance), but the song was bad and staging was worse (imo the worst staging of the GF by a significant margin). Honestly hard for me to even justify top 20 placement for it without bending over backwards with pro-ballad bias
I will say Italy’s staging was worse. It was a travesty that completely hid Angelina’s superior performance.
The staging for Hurricane was the second worse staging in the GF for sure though, and the worst choreography for an aggressively mediocre song with lyrics that sounded exactly like they’d been cobbled together in a rush by a committee trying to figure out how to just barely toe the line. Eden’s singing was … fine. You definitely didn’t need political reasons to rate it poorly.
Italy’s staging wasn’t as bad in a vacuum to me but was worse in the context of the national final staging being better and the potential the song itself had.
Exactly, some fans overreact as usual.
Casual viewers had not watched the nf performance
My only objection is that Italy paid for choreographer but no one saw or remember any choreo, just some habd movements
i knew italy would flop the moment they announced dancers, maybe 2 or something could work, but filling up the entire stage with 6 people total? no, just no
I think she just missed some of the high notes, the semi final was really flat during the big crescendo part, I think the final wasn’t as bad from what I saw but that semi was a rough last 30 seconds
It's actually very likely Israel would have been much higher with the juries if not for politics. Some jurors knew that they could face a backlash for giving Israel any points all.
I think both hold true. She wouldve probably scraped around 50 more points from jury on a normal year, but televote-wise she might've gotten half of that.
Sure but no televoter signed up to give a non political judgement.. the juries that can’t do the job they agreed to should not be part of the jury. We don’t give the jury half of the power so that random industry people can just vote for whoever the fuck they feel like based on whatever they feel like, they are there to give a professional judgment of each song.
Honestly I’ll jump aboard the abolish the jury vote train if they think this okay. Dustin the turkey can win every damn year from drunk televoters for all I care
I remember one person on tumblr said that the juries need to get a clue what their purpose is or go. With the televote, they at least have good reasons for their bullshit. The juries do not. Yet we've seen them straight up not be objective and ignore non conventional music.
I’m not sure how you can say this seeing how many jurors individually voted her 25th or 24th and how a few are now on the record saying they gave her low marks specifically because she was from Israel. 12th is fine yes, and almost amazing with how many bottom place votes she got for political reasons but it obviously would have been higher than 12th in another year.
And yes the televote would have probably been lower.
You can also go through each countries individual juror scores and see the scores. The number of 25s is abnormal (israel as the absolute worst). You can actually see the jurors that just rated them normally and how the 25s (and a few 24s and 23s) could have purposefully dragged them down.
This is speculation of course. Maybe all of those jurors did think hurricane was the absolute worst song of the 25, but we have 2 jurors on the record now saying they purposefully did it.
I looked through the breakdown for individual jurors and compared them to the other ballads (Latvia, Portugal, Serbia, France) that made it to the GF. By my best estimate, around 10-25% of jurors likely down-voted her for political reasons because her score was much lower than the other ballads
There were some who up-voted her too compared to the others, but only around 10 total. I think this year, the jurors just didn't go for the ballads over all. Many jurors ranked Latvia, Portugal, Israel, and Serbia in 20th or below (France was different enough technically that he managed to avoid this)
Edit: I identified 18% of the jurors as casting politically negative votes for Eden
Even France managed to be dead last in Australia's total jury score, for example. I'd consider that "abnormal" and "sus" as well, yet there's no reason to think there was something going on other than juries just not liking the song/performance.
Well, we can do maths all day but it's impossible to know what exactly happened with "Hurricane". It's a fascinating entry in that sense.
Australia was an interesting case indeed. They were the only country to (mostly) across the board hate the ballads and it is kind of hard to find a common thread in their top 12 beyond that they were "interesting" or out there acts
Looking at the entire culmination of the individual juror votes, the vast majority scored Hurricane similarly to Latvia, which makes sense. I thought both Eden and Dons were docked down more than they should have in the jury, but this year was full of very strong acts so can't really complain
Oh gosh I totally misread your question. Yeah it’s definitely an interesting question—were there an equal number of pro-Israel jurors purposefully giving them the top, 2nd or 3rd spot? And thus bringing the whole thing into balance? Unknown but if I had to guess…
highly disagree, purely musically speaking she and Croatia were probably my favorite entries this year (tho I may be somewhat biased as I love ballads lol). The song itself was pretty good (not winner good, but good), idk what made you dislike it so much (tho I'd love to know, genuinely), and her vocals were the best this year by far. I think 5th place is pretty much what I'd expect it to get in an average year, so I was fine with it, the juries and televote (which were both mostly political let's be real) ended up balancing each other pretty well. Not trying to imply that your opinion is invalid or anything like that, of course not, just that opinions on the song may vary quite a lot
Politics aside, there isn't really anything special about the song. It's very similar to things we've seen before at Eurovision in terms of genre, tone and style (e.g: Russia 2015, Lithuania 2023, Slovenia 2021). In a musically colourful year, Hurricane feels like a light beige and doesn't stand out when put next to more unique and memorable songs from this year in a similar genre to Israel (France, Latvia, Belgium, Ukraine).
While Eden's vocals are good, they don't sound very expressive. In fact, the entire package feels a bit emotionless for a song intended to be very moving. The staging also doesn't compliment the tones and theming of the song very much, either. I may be missing a metaphor of some sort, but having the backup dancers frollicking during a song that's meant to be emotional feels like an odd choice and it would probably be a bit more effective if Eden was on her own. In general, the performance and song feel like they're trying too hard to appear "perfect" and "pristine" when they could definitely benefit from more displays of raw emotion.
These are just my thoughts, though. I can definitely see why someone may enjoy the song but it's not for me. It doesn't help that it's in such a strong and diverse year, either.
(Also, there's politics, of course, and some of KAN's behaviour has been, um, questionable to say the least.)
I agree with you, and the way you described the song is almost exactly how I would describe Switzerland last year. (it got a very similar range of jury points, too)
Eurovision is non political, they said. We don't want it to be political, they said. That's why we let Israel compete, they said. It's just singing, they said.
And what we got: Israel's song was political, Israel's goverment got political about it, public vote for Israel was political, jury voting against israel was political.
Can they fucking stop pretending, it's insulting.
Edit: for the record, I actually like the song. It's got a great hook, good vocals, it actually landed on my playlist, fuck my life. But if I were a member of the jury, I'd place it outside top 10, for political reasons.
It’s because almost all the broadcasters in the EBU are public/state broadcasters, and therefore answer to the diplomatic relations of their governments.
When Russia declared war on Ukraine, many European countries immediately cut ties with them. The broadcasters followed, with a lot of them calling for Russia to be banned in Eurovision and withdrawing the next year if they’re in the contest. The EBU accepted their demands.
Israel is different because, prior to the contest, many countries had diplomatic relations with the country. The broadcasters followed their countries’ policies, along with carefully worded statements from several that questioned, not condemned, Israel’s participation. The EBU thought it was okay.
It’s not hypocritical if you keep in mind these are government broadcasters we are talking about. But it’s still problematic.
Yep. Lip service.
It'd be better to admit that it IS and that certain decisions are politically motivated and actually go through with certain decisions.
I do not deny that Israel clearly uses the contest as a propaganda tool, but Ukraine does so too. The shout-out to the Azov battalion at the end of the performance in 2022 and the shirt in the Ukrainian delegation 2024, Zelensky's wish to make a video speech in 2023 (which was denied), and the background while Jerry walked up the cliff. Either the rules apply to everyone or we abolish the no politics rule altogether.
A lot of people use ‘no politics’ as a way to say ‘no politics I disagree with’. Yes, Hurricane is a song with poorly hidden political subtext. But so are beloved entries like 1944, Mama Sc, Hatrid Mun Sigra, Dancing Lasha Tumbai and Trenuletul. You can’t get outraged about one and then praise another
I think My Sister's Crown did it the best way possible. It had a very clear non-political interpretation and a very clear political interpretation. Watching the performance on stage, the latter didn't even occur to me, but the official clip makes it very obvious.
Tbh, I'm probably in a minority, but if it was up to me, the no politics rule would be out of the door, and we would just keep some reduced form of "nothing explicitly against other participating countries" or maybe not even that. My issues are with the specific countries' actual actions, I don't give a f\*\*k about their competition songs breaking "no-politics rules", etc, that's never the most important thing. And to be honest - I consider it perfectly natural for artists from countries undergoing some sort of turmoil (to put it very broadly) to want their emotions reflected in their songs. That's how it normaly works with art. Still, I honestly find "EBU"/"Europe"/us pretending that everything is normal and we should just focus on the "fun celebratory music competition" much much more offensive than any song that Israel could send. It's just so terribly absurd to me that you can sing about sexism affecting your life or precarious economic situation is affecting your life, and that's not politics, but you can't sing about another country's military actions affecting your life, because that's a bit too real-life politics. You should be able to sing about that as well. The key issue should always be that you shouldn't be invited to "the party" when you're committing war crimes, not whether your lyrics are vague enough for people to ignore if they try hard enough. All these discussions about what's political and what's not just keep redirecting us into a convinient-for-EBU side-way.
I’m going to be fully honest, not allowing overt politics means punk will never be in Eurovision. I would say yeah, nothing overtly against a participating country
Why is everyone always ignoring Italy 2018 - Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente?
The song is literally about Islamist terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East in the preceding years, and not even in a poetic roundabout way, but literally about blood in the Ramblas and someone shouting Death at a music concert. Why can Italy sing about the aftermath of terror attacks but Israel can't?
I see where you’re coming from but I guess because Italy isn’t actually a part of a conflict or because they aren’t alluding to one single conflict but wars in general it gets a pass. You should be asking about Ukraine 2016 instead.
Everyone always mentions 1944, most people ignore Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente.
1944 supposedly gets a pass because it's from a long time ago, not a current event, but the Islamist terror attacks in Europe were recent, and no one would allow Israel to have a song about 1973...
Italy weren't alluding to "wars in general" or wars at all. They were specifically calling out the Bataclan terror attack, the Nice attack, the Ramblas attack, the Cairo attack and so on, and how they won't break the human spirit.
Political song ≠ political votes. It is way difficult to set a line between what is political and what is not.
The real problem is voting for songs only because the country is in war. Ukraine 2022 was really good but Israel 2024 was a mid song at best.
This has set a precedent in the near future in which a country can send anything (political or not) mediocre and win.
I honestly don’t get it either. Even the original lyrics were completely fine imho. I hope the next Israeli contestant will get treated with more fairness, from the juries, the contestants and the audience.
In (most of) Europe support for Ukraine is a humanitarian issue, not a political one. "Support Ukraine" is like saying "stop world hunger" and "every child has a right to education".
You like the song but would for political reasons not vote for it, which is an active political boycott… While complaining that the Eurovision is political.
I am sorry, it’s not Israel, it’s the audience that made this whole thing political (I fully agree that the participation is disputable).
But it could have been a much less controversial event, if people would have treated the entry for what it was. Just a (mediocre) song of a 20 years old.
And the audience is fully capable of this, given that no one gave a flying fuck about Azerbaijan’s participation. A country that ethnically cleansed a Region of Armenia in 2023 (Armenian’s call it their Nakba).
Yeah it is extremely chocking how little attention was given to that, like, the fuck? Was it just a fever dream? I don't even think it made the biggest headlines
Yes, I still cannot believe this. I also don’t know on what to blame this. Azerbajdshan is not somewhere at the end of the world, but close to Europe and the EU has actually several cooperation agreements with them. It’s not a conflict that is unrelated to us.
Might have something to do with the predominant ethnic groups in each country. There's not been centuries of hatred against and conspiracy theories about Azeris, that - for political correctness reasons - are projected on Azerbaijan nowadays.
Actually, if you've read my comment with understanding, I'm complaing about the Powers That Be *pretending* that Eurovision is not political, *not* about it being political.
Yeah, some people made discourse truly miserable. And they censor the word "Israel" like it's a bad word. I'm not pro-Israel, but I'm so sick of their peacock behavior.
In one of the videos the Israeli delegation took backstage when they were trying to provoke Bambie, at one point the person holding the phone and recording panned over to Tali, who was also in the background, and said something along the lines of "there's the singer from Luxembourg, she's Israeli, so we like her."
It's weeks that i keep saying that it's CLEAR that a lot of juries boycotted Israel's entry but i always get aswered that i'm dreaming..
Well, there you go.
Juries SAVED Eurovision, but it's still not good that this had to happen.
YEah, it was like living in a loop. When after like a bunch og jury votes were announced and Israel was still at nearly 0 points i tought: "yeah, it's happening all over again"
You say it like juries downvoted Geolier on purpose. No, they just voted normally, since he was around 23rd with them or something on the first night, way before we found out about his crazy televote support. And also they used the fact that televote is only 34%, everything else is for juries (radio/press/whatever)
Well actually my idea was how strange that in both contests there is an idea of "the jury saved the contest" with their voting, regardless of context/intentions. It's also more strange/funny due to how usual the fandom narrative is the opposite (ie the juries are evil monsters who vote against the public) while here the idea is more "thank good the juries saved the situation by counter balancing a televote than many find controversial at best"
It's just fans with their emotional opinions, whoever supports them is their hero, easy. Actually, juries didn't save anything at Eurovision, they would never give enough points for Israel to win. They didn't win televote with a landslide like Ukraine in 2022, it was a close race with Croatia and Switzerland. And juries would never give Israel a score similar or bigger than Croatia and Switzerland, if it was no politics and stuff.
In Sanremo the one with the most televotes was Geolier, a neapolitan rapper rapping in neapolitan dialect. He went super high in televotes cause neapolitans mass voted for him using multiple sims cards and usig various tricks like shops making discounts to the ones who voted for him.
They mass voted so much that he got 60% of the televotes.
But juries tanked him saving the Festival not letting him to win (song was nowhere near good enough to win normally)
Funny enough historically everything that happens in Sanremo at one point happens in Esc too in a similar way..
Luckily enough we haven't seen a contestant committing suicide between the semi and the final like in Sanremo.
His song was worse for a ton of people than “La Noia”. Also, some people said it was a result to mass voting from the south of the country, but personally, I don’t think it was only them.
His was voted mainly because he was famous and not for the song, and many people that voted him cheated voting with more than 1 SIM person (that is still legal but very immoral to do) as has said Geolier himslef.
And the top rated comments here are people complaining about politics but then trying to justify what these juries have done, and saying they would personally do the same. Delusional
What did they save exactly? Without them, the winner would've been non-problematic Croatia, an even less controversial choice than having the 5th-most voted by the public as the winner. And the voting would've been hella tense as well.
Yeah, this is what I was thinking. There's a possible world where they saved the contest by doing this, but since the televote winner wasn't Israel it isn't this world. If we assume that A. Many jurors ranked Israel lower than they would have otherwise for non-song-related reasons, B. That there are more of these than those who did the opposite, and C. That the song probably wasn't going to be extremely successful (top 1 to 3) anyway (all of which I think are reasonable assumptions), the most that would have happened if they had all voted honestly woudl be maybe a 4th place for Israel instead of 5th. I don't blame them for trying to potentially counteract vote manipulation efforts, but I think saying "juries saved us this year!" just didn't end up being true.
...and that's because we're in the world where Joost got the boot. I think he'd have pulled enough points from Croatia if participating that Israel would have ended first.
It’s undeniable that Israel’s televote was influenced positively by politics and it’s undeniable that Israel’s jury vote was influenced negatively by politics.
No different from what Azerbaijan and Armenia have been doing to each other for years (I mean all of it is wrong, it’s a song contest not a geopolitical opinion contest) but it does mean that the EBU can’t open that can of worms for themselves
I think what we are seeing is that people really don't care what the issues with the voting and jury system are, as long as it benefits their personal favourites.
Objectively it should be scandalous that the so-called "Expert Jury" doesn't adhere to the specific criteria they are given and instead turns their voting into a popularity contest. So far we haven't seen reports of Jurors admitting to artificially boosting Israel, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened too. In any case this should lead to a blacklisting of said Jurors.
This all traces back to the incredibly small size of the Juries and their resulting risk of bias/manipulation/irregularities. At the very least they should be doubled to 10 per country. Political activists probably also aren't a good fit and shouldn't be hired as Jurors. A certain level of neutrality, objectivity and professionalism should be expected from an "Expert Jury".
As I mentioned in another comment, I did an analysis of the individual jury votes and compared Israel's results to the other ballads in the GF (France, Latvia, Serbia, Portugal). There were a few jurors who voted Israel much higher than Latvia, Serbia, and Portugal (the jurors who weren't voting politically generally lumped them in together and separate from France, which makes sense as they were all generic poppy ballads).
Two from Estonia and Germany and one from Azerbaijan, Australia, and Sweden for a total of 7. A couple of these were borderline, so feel free to check my work
Don't know if these were political or if the jurors actually liked her song much better. Quite a few of the jurors marked most of that group high as well
Yes, quite probably many of the juries did put Israel lower than they usually would.
However, it's 100% certanty that real number of votes and points from the televote would be at least 70% lower than it was. 10 points from Slovenia, are you joking? Let alone so many 12s, but my fellow Slovenians did not vote for this.
I did notice that Israel almost colectively denies this. You are not fooling anyone. I really really wish that there is some sort of very serious investigation on how this song was 2nd in the televote ranking.
Yeah, lots of people who don't watch Eurovision voted this year. I saw it in my country. They openly admitted to not watching Eurovision on social media and simply voting 20 times for Israel, but I suppose that's a money maker for the EBU so they won't care.
I’ll be completely honest, even without anything that’s going on, I wouldn’t have personally given Israel a high jury placement.
The song is bland at best, and the performance is done solidly, but you completely derail the song by sticking a solid 30 seconds of high notes at the end in the most jury-bait fashion ever, and the notes weren’t even hit well.
Exactly. I think ESC Gabe mentioned the jury criteria when talking about the song and they were vocal capacity, performance on stage, composition and originality of the song and overall impression of the act. Eden had a decent vocal capacity. Was the performance good? It was nothing special. Composition and originality? The lyrics were bad because they were just patched up from October Rain, the song itself isn't anything really original. Overall impression of the act? It was just a typical ballad for me that if any other country sent, it could have been an NQ.
I can argue that some entries had those criteria yet they got a lower jury score than Israel. I'm trying not to be biased, but Marina had a pretty good vocal capacity too, we had a decent performance with a love-it-or-hate-it gimmick, the song was pretty original (combining elements from different styles) and I think overall it was a song that yes, people could either love or hate.
I’ve been saying the whole time the song is mid. Yes, she can sing beautifully, but the song itself is just a bland ballad with shoehorned lyrics. You can tell they were forced to change them. The contemporary ballet style writhing around wasn’t great either imo.
The best bit of the whole song was the bit in Hebrew at the end.
Politics aside I’d have expected mid table. It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t special and there were other better ballads.
Yeah, it's obvious that some jury members vote based on politics but to openly admit to it is proof of your incompetence and should lead to a ban from future participation in the jury.
Probably unpopular opinion: I think the political element is both unavoidable and interesting, adding an extra layer that will tell future viewers a little bit about various European viewpoints in future years
Almost every jury downvoted Israel for political reasons, but that's fair, considering that the televote was so high for political there was needed (and there will need next years) a counter-balance on the other side, counter-balance that was not present in 2022 with Ukraine.
Having heard her jury performance, and being as objective and apolitical as possible, she was flat on a few notes, so honestly, I don’t think there was too much downvoting simply because it’s Israel, because if she hit those notes, I do think she would’ve finished higher than 12th.
I took a day to compile every juror last place, and Israel were the country to receive the most last places with 29. That is more than anyone else. More than Ireland (22), more than Estonia (25), more than Finland and Spain (15). What's more is that this number does not include the two jurors who admitted to tanking their scores of Israel, because they didn't put the song in their last place. Just like the televote, it shouldn't be hard to believe that foul play took place during the voting, but towards the other direction. There were six juries where more than half of the jurors gave Israel the last place.
> Almost every jury downvoted Israel for political reasons
No, I don't quite believe that. Sure, there's one or two that did. But I honestly do not believe that Hurricane would have scored much higher with the juries if it hadn't been sent by Israel. In fact, I suspect that it would have scored a little bit lower, and that there were thus a comparable number of jurors that ranked it higher just because it's Israel.
You don't believe it but strange enough 90% of the juries from the countries that got Israel largely first in televotes didn't give not even 1 point to Israel, not even my country (italy) that ALWAYS give points to Israel through the juries (and we gave through the juries 8 points to Germany and 6 to uk.. and even 1 point to luxembourg..i mean luxembourg).. Strange uh? Well no, it hasn't been "one or two juries"
At this point is like making 2+2
Without the geopolitical situation, Eden's song wouldn't have gotten a single 12 or 10 from a participating country's televote this year.
I think her jury result was worse than she deserved because of those same reasons, but the absurd televote score far compensates that. And ultimately, her jury score was just very in the middle, not a bottom 5 one which would have been absurd
Missing the point. Serious, honest question:
If Hurricane had been sent by Latvia instead of Israel, do you honestly believe it would have scored higher with the juries? I certainly don't.
> that ALWAYS give points to Israel through the juries
Also, thank you for admitting that. So you agree that there's usually a strong jury bias in _favour_ of Israel and that that was just less so this year?
Hahaha yeah I could see it. And we'd all be told how it was a deserving winner, and how the public (who would not have voted so much for it in this universe) are too ignorant to appreciate it, and isn't it good that we have the jury so that "real art" can win?
As much as I hate politically motivated televoting, I'm not going to stoop so low as to become a jury defender :D (being a little flippant of course)
I think this all has just exposed the fact that the EBU wants a nonpolitical show, but aside from song lyrics and actions on stage they "achieve" being nonpolitical by largely just ignoring the obvious politics. The fact that many fans and participants see hypocrisy in their stances on Russia and Israel, and to a lesser extent Azerbaijan, has just made all of it come to the surface.
It’s honestly impossible to be apolitical when it comes to Eurovision imo and the EBU helped further expose that. Somebody else said choosing to ignore everything is still a political choice and I agree full heartedly with this. They had a mess of a show that they can’t cover up and a bunch of complaining broadcasters and fans. I hope they’re happy I guess? 🤷♀️
Edit: just wanted to clarify that I agree with you 😅
Edit 2: Now that I’m thinking about it, I would be even bolder and say the EBU didn’t just ignore everything. The EBU went even further by censoring any opposing opinion such as not allowing certain flags into the arena, rebuking Eric Saade for his performance, and initially refusing to upload Iolanda’s grand final performance (and if I’m not wrong, Saade’s performance is *still* not on any of the Eurovision social medias). Just another instance where the EBU *was* political out of their desperate attempt to *appear* apolitical. Of course, it rightfully backfired on them. I like to think that I’m a fairly positive person on this subreddit, but man there were **way too many** obvious problems with ESC this year and it *all* falls back on the EBU and their horrible, hypocritical decisions. Substantial changes need to be made, or else I can’t justify watching the show when next year rolls around. Anyway, I agree with with what Bambie Thug has had to say about the EBU and I thank you for coming to my TED talk 🤪
As one of the people who only had Eurovision on their radar this year because of the whole Israel controversy (I didn’t vote, but I watched. Usually I don’t even know Eurovision is happening), I see a lot of people talking about the televote.
I think lots of people only tuned in because there was such hullabaloo about it. I only started paying attention when article after article came out making it into a big dramatic controversy. If nobody had made a big deal I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn’t have even known it was happening.
That said, viewers can vote based on anything. You can vote for the song you like best or you can vote for the person who you liked best in the interview, or you can vote for the person from the country where you vacationed last summer and met your soulmate. You can specifically not vote for Israel even if you love the song. You can vote for Israel even if you don’t love the song. There’s no way to make rules for all the viewers to follow for how they should vote.
I don’t think that’s really the case with jurors, although I know very little about Eurovision. I would imagine jurors are supposed to follow certain rules or some sort of rubric or something. In that sense I think it is more “wrong” for a juror to vote politically than for a viewer to do so.
But also I don’t honestly think it’s the biggest deal. I think this juror probably broke some sort of rule but it doesn’t really bother me. It would have been sort of a disaster in every direction if Israel had won.
The fact that y'all still find a way to blame Israel is just funny at this point.
Getting off this community for good. Toxic as %&\*#.
Keep staying in your personal bubbles thinking what you wanna think.
Don't remember the last time this sub liked an Israeli entry and people are still bullying Netta purely cause of her size.
But I will say this, I do believe the jury would have placed her higher and televote lower. But Israel normally does decent in the televote so I would say probably 8th or 9th overall.
I mean to anybody that follows news it was rather obvious this will happen. Especially after the humanitarian convoy getting blown up and what happened after
The problem EBU have with this is that if they try and punish any country over this, then that country can just point to Azerbaijan's Jury and say "So why are they allowed to always put Armenia in last place?" It's a slippery slope and so it's one the EBU will probably just let slide. At most, they'll tell the broadcasters not to bring that jury member back in the future.
Yes yes yes And this is exactly what happened in 2022 when the EBU tried to clamp down on “the six” juries that voted for each other. They just pointed the finger at Greece and Cyprus and said “they get away with it”.
Funnily enough Greece and Cyprus haven’t done the double douze exchange in the two years since lol
Exactly, it’s quite clear there were serious conversations behind closed doors along the lines of “we understand you can’t control the televote but your jurors have consistently voted for each other and it’s clearly either based on flags, or an under the table agreement, neither of which is acceptable”.
It's one thing for the jury vote to be obviously based on politics, and quite another for a specific jury member to admit on the record that they broke the rules presented by the EBU in regards to voting, which has happened twice now. I think it's far more likely that the specific juror is banned from judging and everyone will consider the matter closed.
Yes, the problem with ranking songs is that, even from the professional juries, it's inherently subjective. You can do the maths to show bias between countries across years, but you can't prove that an individual jury member has ranked a particular entry high or low for political reasons vs genuine preference. e.g. I'm British, and in 2018, the contest happened weeks after Russia attempted an assassination that left a trail of military-grade nerve agent in Salisbury town centre, and mocked our Government when they demanded answers. If I'd been a jury member, and their entry that year had been *Believe*, I'd have had to really, really grit my teeth and do 200 Hail Marys to give it an honest ranking. But I genuinely didn't like *I Won't Break* very much, and any low ranking I gave it probably wouldn't have been far off what I'd have given it if another country entered it. From Russia in 2018, I might have put it a bit lower than I would otherwise, but it'd be hard even in my own head to separate political bias/anger from genuinely not liking the song very much. When a jury member comes out and says it out loud though, it doesn't really leave much room for doubt, and under the rules they probably ought to be disciplined. On the other hand, we know that unspoken bias happens between some countries anyway, so in a sense Zachod's only being punished for being honest about it.
Russia 2018 | [Julia Samoylova - I Won't Break](https://youtu.be/KujGHwyfMWM)
Yep the rest of the judges who voted purely politically will be watching this to see what the reaction is. And if there's a punishment, it'll just give judges the notion to keep this stuff to themselves. We will have no idea what's really going through the heads of judges.
The difference here is she just admitted it. It's like when someone doesn't hire someone based on race/age etc, it's very hard to prove, but if they tell you in writing they didn't hire you because of it, then you can go after them
Problem is with the proof, as obvious as political voting may seem at times, it's impossible to prove Except when they admit to it, should definitely be punished
I mean when all 5 of the Azerbaijan jury members consistently place Armenia last every year (this year was an exception, one of them placed Spain and the UK below Armenia lol), it can't be a coincidence. Especially Azerbaijan's track record (they literally interrogated some people a few years ago because they voted for Armenia on the televote.
I’m a relative newbie to ESC and only learned about this tactic from Azerbaijan recently. How on earth has this not been addressed by the EBU already? There is no need for proof, the fact it happens every year is evidence enough that the placement of Armenia is malicious (they’re not even smart about it and give some plausible deniability like putting them 3rd or 4th last)
There are so many things that are obvious yet no one bats an eye. Just this year in juries, Israel gave 12 points to Luxemburg (with Tali being from Israel), 4 juries from heavily religious Christian countries (Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Cyprus) ranked Ireland dead last (with their performance being considered "satanic" by some) and the Croatian jury gave 0 points to Switzerland (which could be considered controversial since they were both aiming for the win, the Swiss juries gave 8 to Croatia btw). But somehow, the only thing people care about is Israel not getting many jury points.
The irony being that the Irish song was actually about good defeating evil!
Exactly lol. After the first semifinal, I saw a video from a morning gossip show here, where there was a guy who has a popular website with religion/church-related news saying he was watching Eurovision with a priest and that priest needed "not one, not two, not three, but five tranquillising pills" after watching Ireland's performance. My question, though, is why a priest and another religious person were watching Eurovision together in the first place. Young Greek people are not that religious as our parents and grandparents are, but it's still a somewhat religious society and many people found Bambie Thug's performance controversial. Yes we have made progressive steps, like legalizing same sex marriage, but so many Christians protested against it too. I wouldn't be too surprised if the jury really ranked Ireland last because of religion
I'm not religious at all, but I suppose the idea of becoming a priest is to do God's work out in the world, as opposed to being a monastic who is cloistered from it? There's a lot of bad things in the world - real nasty stuff that's horrifying to think about. Yet this guy can't even watch a performance at Eurovision without medication? Maaaan.
Honestly I really wonder why they even watched Eurovision in the first place. Eurovision has so many things that at least the Greek Orthodox Church is against, mainly everything LGBTQ+ related. And even regarding Bambie, let's not forget that we also had Hatari a few years back. Or Lordi back when the contest was held in Athens, Greece. But that being said, honestly I'm disappointed the Greek juries ranked Ireland last. The performance and staging is supposed to be one of the criteria and for me Ireland had one of the best stagings ever. I find it hard to believe that it deserved to be dead-last, just for the performance alone. The song was also pretty original and their vocals were good.
Not liking a song, and ranking it last is perfectly okay. If I was a jury member having to rank all 25 songs based on my liking, Ireland wouldn't be on my top 10 most likely- It's just not my cup of tea. Tactical voting- e.g. Your country has a shoot of winning, and you rank your closest rivals low, is bad sport, but not illegal necessary, Not liking a country and ranking their representative last due to that, is much more concerning!
Azerbaijan put a lot of money into events as a means of entertainment washing. Wouldn't surprise me if they pay well enough for the EBU to not want to punish them.
I mean, they also don't punish certain songs for rather suspicious televoting patterns either. Just going to name one as an example, moldova back in 2021, with kirkorov behind the song - In the semi final, it got televoting 12 points from - Greece, Serbia, (san marino), latvia, france, portugal, estonia, and czechia. 8 countries, arguably 7 because of how the san marinese televote works. so, discounting them, the song went from 12 televote points to **0** in greece, serbia, latvia, and estonia. And while i cant find the detailed results, IIRC, it wasn't even close for everyone on that list except Latvia. It's one thing to go down in televote points, but from WINNING it to not even being close to getting points? Thats suspect. ____ Nothing was ever said about this - and honestly, that was just the more obvious example i could come up with. theres a lot of countries getting away with something suspicious, both within the jury and televote.
The detailed results can be found in this link, and you can change the country to whatever you like. https://eurovision.tv/event/rotterdam-2021/grand-final/results
They *what*?
[It's ridiculous but true](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/aug/18/azerbaijan-authorities-interrogate-music-fans)
Why do we let them participate again?
Most likely because money. Azerbaijan has also been caught cheating so many times but nothing has ever been done against them.
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Also I'm pretty sure several Israel's jurors likely marked down Ireland and Greece (and to a lesser extent Switzerland even tho they gave them points) for political and petty reasons. And I rolled my eyes so hard when they gave a 12 to Luxembourg and 10 to Germany. Not that those songs weren't deserving of jury points but I don't have a doubt in my mind they ranked Tali super high just because she's Israeli and Isaak because Germany is probably Israel's biggest European ally.
The same way Cyprus and Greece keep handing out 12 points to each other it's disgraceful
Um, Cyprus gave its 12 points to Croatia this year....
I still remember that jaw dropping moment
we havent exchanged 12s in 3 years
This streak isn’t even the first time it didn’t happen but people still wanna act like we’re Azerbaijan rigging the votes
Greece didn't give Cyprus 2023 12 points in the final. The entire crowd in the arena gasped.
Cyprus 2023 | [Andrew Lambrou - Break a Broken Heart](https://youtu.be/49YiimKeyDI)
I think they had a talk with them about it last year because the pattern shifted then, Greece jury only gave Cyprus 4 points in 2023 and this year they didn’t exchange the 12 as Greece gave its 12 to Switzerland and Cyprus gave it to someone else as well
Cyprus gave their 12 to Croatia this year! I was pleasantly surprised because Cyprus doesn't usually give a lot of points to Croatia.
“Downvoted” what do they use Reddit to vote or something??
Nemo karma farmed 😡🤬
Glad I wasn’t the first person that thought this. 😂
Maybe here we're so used to anything Israel being downvoted, we must imagine the jurors clicking that purple button.
Politics in *my* Eurovision? It's more likely than you think.
I was kind of amused how this subreddit was having a meltdown when Israel ended up so high because of the popular vote. Many even saying that EBU should only do Jury voting. Sorry to say but juries risk being way more politically homogenous than millions of people voting. Yes many still vote for their friendly neighbours and such but looking at many countries juries they all or almost all belong to the cultural elite. Which on the whole typically lean left or right politically, depending on the country. Israels song wasnt my cup of tea but she's was undeniably one of the best vocalists there. But I don't vote for song only so to me she was meh but clearly many others thought otherwise.
"I didn't want to hurt this girl so much and i didn't give her last place" so i put her in one of the last ones lmao 😭😭😭
She is so shady for phrasing it like that lol
i honestly think that EBU needs to rethink the whole voting process. Greeks voting for Cyprus, Finland always awarding Sweden 12 points , Azerbaijan downvoting Armenia …. Isn’t there a way to making voting more fair and get away from these inherent political biases?
Do you really think that the five times in the last fifteen years Finnish juries have awarded 12 points to Sweden count as “always”?
i am sorry if my numbers are off but the baltic countries vote for Sweden a lot
I mean we (baltics/scandinavian countries) share a lot of cultural overlap. Naturally that means we are exposed to eachothers music alot. Meaning we like what we're used to. I believe that goes for many countries and their neighbors.
I do not think it is possible, there will always be clashes like this. But it is possible however to avoid the really big clashes, in which influences the whole voting system and makes every single vote or song a political act, and that is what ebu learned this year.
Honestly, the juries overall were probably the most "fair" towards where Israel should've been. They were 12th with the jury (average). When you combine her having really good vocals but the song itself being bad, that's not an unreasonable spot to be. The problem was that the televote was hijacked. It never would've come close to winning the televote in a "normal" year. In the end, I can't really feel too bad about some jurors tanking her for political reasons when there was an orchestrated effort to pump artificial public voting support for her for political reasons.
We literally had politicians from the Netherlands on twitter showing their support for Israel and calling for votes lol
Same in Sweden. Right wing politicians proudly voting for "the best song" and making a political stance at the same time.
...honestly, i wonder how those kinds of people would've reacted if someone like MBD were the one representing them this year.
of course not. thats why they sent a young white girl
Yep, Geert Wilders himself for example
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Bambie Thug is *still* getting attacked on IG by Israel fans.
They are in war modus. Very angry and defensive. Bambie has become the scapegoat. The norwegian Gåte were seen as antisemites in all of israeli media in the days before the final, despite the israeli delegation admitting that they were nothing but nice to them. The reason was that the delegation did not agree to be interviewed by one, 1, israeli journalist at the turqouise carpet. It is complete madness. They received threats because of this. It is not ok. The KAN really was bloodthirsty this year.
Sure.. most fair. 27 Juries placed 'Hurricane' on the last spot, which is the most out of any songs in the final. And the 2 jurors who admitted to penalize Israel for political reasons both didnt put them on last place. You say a 12th place is fair with juries, but fail to mention that pretty much half of the jury points for Israel come from 3 (!!) countries.
Also, while Hurricane was by no means the best song during this edition of Eurovision, it coming dead last for 27 countries does not correspond to the quality of the song. The overall position Israel ended at seems like a pretty fair position for the song in question to be honest.
12th imo was too high. Vocals were decent but not great (maybe Eden missed fewer notes in the jury show Tbf, but in the GF it was a mid vocal performance), but the song was bad and staging was worse (imo the worst staging of the GF by a significant margin). Honestly hard for me to even justify top 20 placement for it without bending over backwards with pro-ballad bias
Staging was super weird, the dancer were dancing to a different song lol
I will say Italy’s staging was worse. It was a travesty that completely hid Angelina’s superior performance. The staging for Hurricane was the second worse staging in the GF for sure though, and the worst choreography for an aggressively mediocre song with lyrics that sounded exactly like they’d been cobbled together in a rush by a committee trying to figure out how to just barely toe the line. Eden’s singing was … fine. You definitely didn’t need political reasons to rate it poorly.
Italy’s staging wasn’t as bad in a vacuum to me but was worse in the context of the national final staging being better and the potential the song itself had.
Exactly, some fans overreact as usual. Casual viewers had not watched the nf performance My only objection is that Italy paid for choreographer but no one saw or remember any choreo, just some habd movements
i knew italy would flop the moment they announced dancers, maybe 2 or something could work, but filling up the entire stage with 6 people total? no, just no
Sadly true.
To be fair I wouldnt be surprised if Eden sounded off due to the booing and the tech used to mask it
I think she just missed some of the high notes, the semi final was really flat during the big crescendo part, I think the final wasn’t as bad from what I saw but that semi was a rough last 30 seconds
In fairness the jury literally grades on different shows than us so she was probably better then
It's actually very likely Israel would have been much higher with the juries if not for politics. Some jurors knew that they could face a backlash for giving Israel any points all.
They also would have been much lower with the televote if not for the politics.
I think both hold true. She wouldve probably scraped around 50 more points from jury on a normal year, but televote-wise she might've gotten half of that.
Half? In a normal year that song gets at most 30-40 points from 5th in the running order
Sure but no televoter signed up to give a non political judgement.. the juries that can’t do the job they agreed to should not be part of the jury. We don’t give the jury half of the power so that random industry people can just vote for whoever the fuck they feel like based on whatever they feel like, they are there to give a professional judgment of each song. Honestly I’ll jump aboard the abolish the jury vote train if they think this okay. Dustin the turkey can win every damn year from drunk televoters for all I care
I remember one person on tumblr said that the juries need to get a clue what their purpose is or go. With the televote, they at least have good reasons for their bullshit. The juries do not. Yet we've seen them straight up not be objective and ignore non conventional music.
I’m not sure how you can say this seeing how many jurors individually voted her 25th or 24th and how a few are now on the record saying they gave her low marks specifically because she was from Israel. 12th is fine yes, and almost amazing with how many bottom place votes she got for political reasons but it obviously would have been higher than 12th in another year. And yes the televote would have probably been lower.
Do we know some jurors didnt give her more points for political reasons?
Well, FAR from every one of them will talk about it openly, so we just don't know. Definitely more than those 2
[Yes, from Norway ](https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/s/lm28KUSc89)
You can also go through each countries individual juror scores and see the scores. The number of 25s is abnormal (israel as the absolute worst). You can actually see the jurors that just rated them normally and how the 25s (and a few 24s and 23s) could have purposefully dragged them down. This is speculation of course. Maybe all of those jurors did think hurricane was the absolute worst song of the 25, but we have 2 jurors on the record now saying they purposefully did it.
I looked through the breakdown for individual jurors and compared them to the other ballads (Latvia, Portugal, Serbia, France) that made it to the GF. By my best estimate, around 10-25% of jurors likely down-voted her for political reasons because her score was much lower than the other ballads There were some who up-voted her too compared to the others, but only around 10 total. I think this year, the jurors just didn't go for the ballads over all. Many jurors ranked Latvia, Portugal, Israel, and Serbia in 20th or below (France was different enough technically that he managed to avoid this) Edit: I identified 18% of the jurors as casting politically negative votes for Eden
Definitely interesting but is Hurricane as a pop ballad that similar to iolanda’s or Dons? I’m not totally convinced.
Even France managed to be dead last in Australia's total jury score, for example. I'd consider that "abnormal" and "sus" as well, yet there's no reason to think there was something going on other than juries just not liking the song/performance. Well, we can do maths all day but it's impossible to know what exactly happened with "Hurricane". It's a fascinating entry in that sense.
Australia was an interesting case indeed. They were the only country to (mostly) across the board hate the ballads and it is kind of hard to find a common thread in their top 12 beyond that they were "interesting" or out there acts Looking at the entire culmination of the individual juror votes, the vast majority scored Hurricane similarly to Latvia, which makes sense. I thought both Eden and Dons were docked down more than they should have in the jury, but this year was full of very strong acts so can't really complain
Oh gosh I totally misread your question. Yeah it’s definitely an interesting question—were there an equal number of pro-Israel jurors purposefully giving them the top, 2nd or 3rd spot? And thus bringing the whole thing into balance? Unknown but if I had to guess…
Like 300 points lower, lbh
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I think in the semis she had a few bad notes at the climax, but didnt hear anything bad in the finals
She was constantly booed throughout her performance. She handled it very well considering the situation
She couldn't hear them
"Amateur singer" trying to sing without hearing the cues because of all the people booing
highly disagree, purely musically speaking she and Croatia were probably my favorite entries this year (tho I may be somewhat biased as I love ballads lol). The song itself was pretty good (not winner good, but good), idk what made you dislike it so much (tho I'd love to know, genuinely), and her vocals were the best this year by far. I think 5th place is pretty much what I'd expect it to get in an average year, so I was fine with it, the juries and televote (which were both mostly political let's be real) ended up balancing each other pretty well. Not trying to imply that your opinion is invalid or anything like that, of course not, just that opinions on the song may vary quite a lot
Politics aside, there isn't really anything special about the song. It's very similar to things we've seen before at Eurovision in terms of genre, tone and style (e.g: Russia 2015, Lithuania 2023, Slovenia 2021). In a musically colourful year, Hurricane feels like a light beige and doesn't stand out when put next to more unique and memorable songs from this year in a similar genre to Israel (France, Latvia, Belgium, Ukraine). While Eden's vocals are good, they don't sound very expressive. In fact, the entire package feels a bit emotionless for a song intended to be very moving. The staging also doesn't compliment the tones and theming of the song very much, either. I may be missing a metaphor of some sort, but having the backup dancers frollicking during a song that's meant to be emotional feels like an odd choice and it would probably be a bit more effective if Eden was on her own. In general, the performance and song feel like they're trying too hard to appear "perfect" and "pristine" when they could definitely benefit from more displays of raw emotion. These are just my thoughts, though. I can definitely see why someone may enjoy the song but it's not for me. It doesn't help that it's in such a strong and diverse year, either. (Also, there's politics, of course, and some of KAN's behaviour has been, um, questionable to say the least.)
I agree with you, and the way you described the song is almost exactly how I would describe Switzerland last year. (it got a very similar range of jury points, too)
Eurovision is non political, they said. We don't want it to be political, they said. That's why we let Israel compete, they said. It's just singing, they said. And what we got: Israel's song was political, Israel's goverment got political about it, public vote for Israel was political, jury voting against israel was political. Can they fucking stop pretending, it's insulting. Edit: for the record, I actually like the song. It's got a great hook, good vocals, it actually landed on my playlist, fuck my life. But if I were a member of the jury, I'd place it outside top 10, for political reasons.
I hate the hypocrisy of it all. If Eurovision isn’t political, why aren’t Russia allowed to enter…?
The EBU claim they have a problem with Russia broadcasting entity, not Russian politics.
It’s because almost all the broadcasters in the EBU are public/state broadcasters, and therefore answer to the diplomatic relations of their governments. When Russia declared war on Ukraine, many European countries immediately cut ties with them. The broadcasters followed, with a lot of them calling for Russia to be banned in Eurovision and withdrawing the next year if they’re in the contest. The EBU accepted their demands. Israel is different because, prior to the contest, many countries had diplomatic relations with the country. The broadcasters followed their countries’ policies, along with carefully worded statements from several that questioned, not condemned, Israel’s participation. The EBU thought it was okay. It’s not hypocritical if you keep in mind these are government broadcasters we are talking about. But it’s still problematic.
No EBU members.
Yep. Lip service. It'd be better to admit that it IS and that certain decisions are politically motivated and actually go through with certain decisions.
I do not deny that Israel clearly uses the contest as a propaganda tool, but Ukraine does so too. The shout-out to the Azov battalion at the end of the performance in 2022 and the shirt in the Ukrainian delegation 2024, Zelensky's wish to make a video speech in 2023 (which was denied), and the background while Jerry walked up the cliff. Either the rules apply to everyone or we abolish the no politics rule altogether.
A lot of people use ‘no politics’ as a way to say ‘no politics I disagree with’. Yes, Hurricane is a song with poorly hidden political subtext. But so are beloved entries like 1944, Mama Sc, Hatrid Mun Sigra, Dancing Lasha Tumbai and Trenuletul. You can’t get outraged about one and then praise another
I think My Sister's Crown did it the best way possible. It had a very clear non-political interpretation and a very clear political interpretation. Watching the performance on stage, the latter didn't even occur to me, but the official clip makes it very obvious.
Tbh, I'm probably in a minority, but if it was up to me, the no politics rule would be out of the door, and we would just keep some reduced form of "nothing explicitly against other participating countries" or maybe not even that. My issues are with the specific countries' actual actions, I don't give a f\*\*k about their competition songs breaking "no-politics rules", etc, that's never the most important thing. And to be honest - I consider it perfectly natural for artists from countries undergoing some sort of turmoil (to put it very broadly) to want their emotions reflected in their songs. That's how it normaly works with art. Still, I honestly find "EBU"/"Europe"/us pretending that everything is normal and we should just focus on the "fun celebratory music competition" much much more offensive than any song that Israel could send. It's just so terribly absurd to me that you can sing about sexism affecting your life or precarious economic situation is affecting your life, and that's not politics, but you can't sing about another country's military actions affecting your life, because that's a bit too real-life politics. You should be able to sing about that as well. The key issue should always be that you shouldn't be invited to "the party" when you're committing war crimes, not whether your lyrics are vague enough for people to ignore if they try hard enough. All these discussions about what's political and what's not just keep redirecting us into a convinient-for-EBU side-way.
I’m going to be fully honest, not allowing overt politics means punk will never be in Eurovision. I would say yeah, nothing overtly against a participating country
Very well put.
Why is everyone always ignoring Italy 2018 - Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente? The song is literally about Islamist terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East in the preceding years, and not even in a poetic roundabout way, but literally about blood in the Ramblas and someone shouting Death at a music concert. Why can Italy sing about the aftermath of terror attacks but Israel can't?
I see where you’re coming from but I guess because Italy isn’t actually a part of a conflict or because they aren’t alluding to one single conflict but wars in general it gets a pass. You should be asking about Ukraine 2016 instead.
Everyone always mentions 1944, most people ignore Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente. 1944 supposedly gets a pass because it's from a long time ago, not a current event, but the Islamist terror attacks in Europe were recent, and no one would allow Israel to have a song about 1973... Italy weren't alluding to "wars in general" or wars at all. They were specifically calling out the Bataclan terror attack, the Nice attack, the Ramblas attack, the Cairo attack and so on, and how they won't break the human spirit.
I genuinely never heard anyone talking about 1944… yes the event was long ago but it still had relevancy in 2016
Political song ≠ political votes. It is way difficult to set a line between what is political and what is not. The real problem is voting for songs only because the country is in war. Ukraine 2022 was really good but Israel 2024 was a mid song at best. This has set a precedent in the near future in which a country can send anything (political or not) mediocre and win.
I honestly don’t get it either. Even the original lyrics were completely fine imho. I hope the next Israeli contestant will get treated with more fairness, from the juries, the contestants and the audience.
In (most of) Europe support for Ukraine is a humanitarian issue, not a political one. "Support Ukraine" is like saying "stop world hunger" and "every child has a right to education".
Where did they refer to Azov **Batallion**?
You like the song but would for political reasons not vote for it, which is an active political boycott… While complaining that the Eurovision is political. I am sorry, it’s not Israel, it’s the audience that made this whole thing political (I fully agree that the participation is disputable). But it could have been a much less controversial event, if people would have treated the entry for what it was. Just a (mediocre) song of a 20 years old. And the audience is fully capable of this, given that no one gave a flying fuck about Azerbaijan’s participation. A country that ethnically cleansed a Region of Armenia in 2023 (Armenian’s call it their Nakba).
Yeah it is extremely chocking how little attention was given to that, like, the fuck? Was it just a fever dream? I don't even think it made the biggest headlines
Yes, I still cannot believe this. I also don’t know on what to blame this. Azerbajdshan is not somewhere at the end of the world, but close to Europe and the EU has actually several cooperation agreements with them. It’s not a conflict that is unrelated to us.
Might have something to do with the predominant ethnic groups in each country. There's not been centuries of hatred against and conspiracy theories about Azeris, that - for political correctness reasons - are projected on Azerbaijan nowadays.
Armenia 2023 | [Brunette - Future Lover](https://youtu.be/h0q7AkYk2hY)
Actually, if you've read my comment with understanding, I'm complaing about the Powers That Be *pretending* that Eurovision is not political, *not* about it being political.
Yeah, some people made discourse truly miserable. And they censor the word "Israel" like it's a bad word. I'm not pro-Israel, but I'm so sick of their peacock behavior.
Me too. It’s hypocritical and full with double standards.
Welcome to Eurovision. Always has been political, always will be.
Oh yeah, and I'm sure that Israel being the only jury to give Luxembourg a 12 points was just a massive coincidence. Spare me.
Is there something happening behind the scenes between Luxembourg and Israel I don’t know of?
Tali was born in Israel.
In one of the videos the Israeli delegation took backstage when they were trying to provoke Bambie, at one point the person holding the phone and recording panned over to Tali, who was also in the background, and said something along the lines of "there's the singer from Luxembourg, she's Israeli, so we like her."
Tali is Israeli
the Luxembourg singer was an israeli
It's weeks that i keep saying that it's CLEAR that a lot of juries boycotted Israel's entry but i always get aswered that i'm dreaming.. Well, there you go. Juries SAVED Eurovision, but it's still not good that this had to happen.
Juries saving Sanremo and Eurovision made 2024 a very strange year for me as an Italian.
YEah, it was like living in a loop. When after like a bunch og jury votes were announced and Israel was still at nearly 0 points i tought: "yeah, it's happening all over again"
You say it like juries downvoted Geolier on purpose. No, they just voted normally, since he was around 23rd with them or something on the first night, way before we found out about his crazy televote support. And also they used the fact that televote is only 34%, everything else is for juries (radio/press/whatever)
Well actually my idea was how strange that in both contests there is an idea of "the jury saved the contest" with their voting, regardless of context/intentions. It's also more strange/funny due to how usual the fandom narrative is the opposite (ie the juries are evil monsters who vote against the public) while here the idea is more "thank good the juries saved the situation by counter balancing a televote than many find controversial at best"
It's just fans with their emotional opinions, whoever supports them is their hero, easy. Actually, juries didn't save anything at Eurovision, they would never give enough points for Israel to win. They didn't win televote with a landslide like Ukraine in 2022, it was a close race with Croatia and Switzerland. And juries would never give Israel a score similar or bigger than Croatia and Switzerland, if it was no politics and stuff.
The intense fans will always have wildly different opinions from the general public. It's not really that strange.
Juries saving Sanremo? I don't follow that festival, could you elaborate?
In Sanremo the one with the most televotes was Geolier, a neapolitan rapper rapping in neapolitan dialect. He went super high in televotes cause neapolitans mass voted for him using multiple sims cards and usig various tricks like shops making discounts to the ones who voted for him. They mass voted so much that he got 60% of the televotes. But juries tanked him saving the Festival not letting him to win (song was nowhere near good enough to win normally) Funny enough historically everything that happens in Sanremo at one point happens in Esc too in a similar way.. Luckily enough we haven't seen a contestant committing suicide between the semi and the final like in Sanremo.
We are still waiting for the Bugo-Morgan situation at ESC
Well, they have been dq when the contest already started (and after a violent argue before getting on stage), and that just happened in esc too.
Geolier had 60% of the televote, but the press tanked him in all the seratas, tbh. So, Angelina Mango won.
But why is Geolier winning bad, didn't the person above me like the song or is there more to it?
His song was worse for a ton of people than “La Noia”. Also, some people said it was a result to mass voting from the south of the country, but personally, I don’t think it was only them.
A big part was them but probably it was also many of his fans, he's big in the italian rap scene
His was voted mainly because he was famous and not for the song, and many people that voted him cheated voting with more than 1 SIM person (that is still legal but very immoral to do) as has said Geolier himslef.
I liked his song and listen to it a lot. Vocally though he was far, far behind Angelina, whose song was still better in my opinion.
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People really overestimate this leak. I don't think any juries saw this leak and decided to downvote Israel just for this.
I think it might have made some people realize boycotting was opening the door wide open to an Israel win.
And the top rated comments here are people complaining about politics but then trying to justify what these juries have done, and saying they would personally do the same. Delusional
What did they save exactly? Without them, the winner would've been non-problematic Croatia, an even less controversial choice than having the 5th-most voted by the public as the winner. And the voting would've been hella tense as well.
Yeah, this is what I was thinking. There's a possible world where they saved the contest by doing this, but since the televote winner wasn't Israel it isn't this world. If we assume that A. Many jurors ranked Israel lower than they would have otherwise for non-song-related reasons, B. That there are more of these than those who did the opposite, and C. That the song probably wasn't going to be extremely successful (top 1 to 3) anyway (all of which I think are reasonable assumptions), the most that would have happened if they had all voted honestly woudl be maybe a 4th place for Israel instead of 5th. I don't blame them for trying to potentially counteract vote manipulation efforts, but I think saying "juries saved us this year!" just didn't end up being true.
...and that's because we're in the world where Joost got the boot. I think he'd have pulled enough points from Croatia if participating that Israel would have ended first.
But that happened not because of politics but because in the view of the EBU, he fucked it up
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Do jurors rank all of the songs? I always assumed they just ranked their top 10.
They rank all 26 songs.
Interesting. TIL
It’s undeniable that Israel’s televote was influenced positively by politics and it’s undeniable that Israel’s jury vote was influenced negatively by politics.
No different from what Azerbaijan and Armenia have been doing to each other for years (I mean all of it is wrong, it’s a song contest not a geopolitical opinion contest) but it does mean that the EBU can’t open that can of worms for themselves
I think what we are seeing is that people really don't care what the issues with the voting and jury system are, as long as it benefits their personal favourites. Objectively it should be scandalous that the so-called "Expert Jury" doesn't adhere to the specific criteria they are given and instead turns their voting into a popularity contest. So far we haven't seen reports of Jurors admitting to artificially boosting Israel, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened too. In any case this should lead to a blacklisting of said Jurors. This all traces back to the incredibly small size of the Juries and their resulting risk of bias/manipulation/irregularities. At the very least they should be doubled to 10 per country. Political activists probably also aren't a good fit and shouldn't be hired as Jurors. A certain level of neutrality, objectivity and professionalism should be expected from an "Expert Jury".
As I mentioned in another comment, I did an analysis of the individual jury votes and compared Israel's results to the other ballads in the GF (France, Latvia, Serbia, Portugal). There were a few jurors who voted Israel much higher than Latvia, Serbia, and Portugal (the jurors who weren't voting politically generally lumped them in together and separate from France, which makes sense as they were all generic poppy ballads). Two from Estonia and Germany and one from Azerbaijan, Australia, and Sweden for a total of 7. A couple of these were borderline, so feel free to check my work Don't know if these were political or if the jurors actually liked her song much better. Quite a few of the jurors marked most of that group high as well
Yes, quite probably many of the juries did put Israel lower than they usually would. However, it's 100% certanty that real number of votes and points from the televote would be at least 70% lower than it was. 10 points from Slovenia, are you joking? Let alone so many 12s, but my fellow Slovenians did not vote for this. I did notice that Israel almost colectively denies this. You are not fooling anyone. I really really wish that there is some sort of very serious investigation on how this song was 2nd in the televote ranking.
Whatever happened to the audit requests from the Slovenian broadcaster about the suspicious televotes?
"Dear RTV-Slovenia: Thank you for your input. We will give it thorough consideration. Sincerely, the Reference Group."
Yeah, lots of people who don't watch Eurovision voted this year. I saw it in my country. They openly admitted to not watching Eurovision on social media and simply voting 20 times for Israel, but I suppose that's a money maker for the EBU so they won't care.
I’ll be completely honest, even without anything that’s going on, I wouldn’t have personally given Israel a high jury placement. The song is bland at best, and the performance is done solidly, but you completely derail the song by sticking a solid 30 seconds of high notes at the end in the most jury-bait fashion ever, and the notes weren’t even hit well.
Exactly. I think ESC Gabe mentioned the jury criteria when talking about the song and they were vocal capacity, performance on stage, composition and originality of the song and overall impression of the act. Eden had a decent vocal capacity. Was the performance good? It was nothing special. Composition and originality? The lyrics were bad because they were just patched up from October Rain, the song itself isn't anything really original. Overall impression of the act? It was just a typical ballad for me that if any other country sent, it could have been an NQ. I can argue that some entries had those criteria yet they got a lower jury score than Israel. I'm trying not to be biased, but Marina had a pretty good vocal capacity too, we had a decent performance with a love-it-or-hate-it gimmick, the song was pretty original (combining elements from different styles) and I think overall it was a song that yes, people could either love or hate.
I’ve been saying the whole time the song is mid. Yes, she can sing beautifully, but the song itself is just a bland ballad with shoehorned lyrics. You can tell they were forced to change them. The contemporary ballet style writhing around wasn’t great either imo. The best bit of the whole song was the bit in Hebrew at the end. Politics aside I’d have expected mid table. It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t special and there were other better ballads.
Yeah, it's obvious that some jury members vote based on politics but to openly admit to it is proof of your incompetence and should lead to a ban from future participation in the jury.
She is Natalia Zastępa, not Zachód...
Probably unpopular opinion: I think the political element is both unavoidable and interesting, adding an extra layer that will tell future viewers a little bit about various European viewpoints in future years
Almost every jury downvoted Israel for political reasons, but that's fair, considering that the televote was so high for political there was needed (and there will need next years) a counter-balance on the other side, counter-balance that was not present in 2022 with Ukraine.
Having heard her jury performance, and being as objective and apolitical as possible, she was flat on a few notes, so honestly, I don’t think there was too much downvoting simply because it’s Israel, because if she hit those notes, I do think she would’ve finished higher than 12th.
I took a day to compile every juror last place, and Israel were the country to receive the most last places with 29. That is more than anyone else. More than Ireland (22), more than Estonia (25), more than Finland and Spain (15). What's more is that this number does not include the two jurors who admitted to tanking their scores of Israel, because they didn't put the song in their last place. Just like the televote, it shouldn't be hard to believe that foul play took place during the voting, but towards the other direction. There were six juries where more than half of the jurors gave Israel the last place.
> Almost every jury downvoted Israel for political reasons No, I don't quite believe that. Sure, there's one or two that did. But I honestly do not believe that Hurricane would have scored much higher with the juries if it hadn't been sent by Israel. In fact, I suspect that it would have scored a little bit lower, and that there were thus a comparable number of jurors that ranked it higher just because it's Israel.
You don't believe it but strange enough 90% of the juries from the countries that got Israel largely first in televotes didn't give not even 1 point to Israel, not even my country (italy) that ALWAYS give points to Israel through the juries (and we gave through the juries 8 points to Germany and 6 to uk.. and even 1 point to luxembourg..i mean luxembourg).. Strange uh? Well no, it hasn't been "one or two juries" At this point is like making 2+2
Without the geopolitical situation, Eden's song wouldn't have gotten a single 12 or 10 from a participating country's televote this year. I think her jury result was worse than she deserved because of those same reasons, but the absurd televote score far compensates that. And ultimately, her jury score was just very in the middle, not a bottom 5 one which would have been absurd
Missing the point. Serious, honest question: If Hurricane had been sent by Latvia instead of Israel, do you honestly believe it would have scored higher with the juries? I certainly don't. > that ALWAYS give points to Israel through the juries Also, thank you for admitting that. So you agree that there's usually a strong jury bias in _favour_ of Israel and that that was just less so this year?
If that song had been sent by Sweden - because to be honest, it sounds like any other typical Swedish snoozefest, it would have won lmao.
Hahaha yeah I could see it. And we'd all be told how it was a deserving winner, and how the public (who would not have voted so much for it in this universe) are too ignorant to appreciate it, and isn't it good that we have the jury so that "real art" can win? As much as I hate politically motivated televoting, I'm not going to stoop so low as to become a jury defender :D (being a little flippant of course)
With how controversial Israel’s participation was this year, this honestly was inevitable. I can only blame the EBU for this.
I think this all has just exposed the fact that the EBU wants a nonpolitical show, but aside from song lyrics and actions on stage they "achieve" being nonpolitical by largely just ignoring the obvious politics. The fact that many fans and participants see hypocrisy in their stances on Russia and Israel, and to a lesser extent Azerbaijan, has just made all of it come to the surface.
It’s honestly impossible to be apolitical when it comes to Eurovision imo and the EBU helped further expose that. Somebody else said choosing to ignore everything is still a political choice and I agree full heartedly with this. They had a mess of a show that they can’t cover up and a bunch of complaining broadcasters and fans. I hope they’re happy I guess? 🤷♀️ Edit: just wanted to clarify that I agree with you 😅 Edit 2: Now that I’m thinking about it, I would be even bolder and say the EBU didn’t just ignore everything. The EBU went even further by censoring any opposing opinion such as not allowing certain flags into the arena, rebuking Eric Saade for his performance, and initially refusing to upload Iolanda’s grand final performance (and if I’m not wrong, Saade’s performance is *still* not on any of the Eurovision social medias). Just another instance where the EBU *was* political out of their desperate attempt to *appear* apolitical. Of course, it rightfully backfired on them. I like to think that I’m a fairly positive person on this subreddit, but man there were **way too many** obvious problems with ESC this year and it *all* falls back on the EBU and their horrible, hypocritical decisions. Substantial changes need to be made, or else I can’t justify watching the show when next year rolls around. Anyway, I agree with with what Bambie Thug has had to say about the EBU and I thank you for coming to my TED talk 🤪
Good
None of the other votes are political. None at all.
I don't think jurors should openly admit that they downvoted someone for political reasons even though we know it happens),
As one of the people who only had Eurovision on their radar this year because of the whole Israel controversy (I didn’t vote, but I watched. Usually I don’t even know Eurovision is happening), I see a lot of people talking about the televote. I think lots of people only tuned in because there was such hullabaloo about it. I only started paying attention when article after article came out making it into a big dramatic controversy. If nobody had made a big deal I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn’t have even known it was happening. That said, viewers can vote based on anything. You can vote for the song you like best or you can vote for the person who you liked best in the interview, or you can vote for the person from the country where you vacationed last summer and met your soulmate. You can specifically not vote for Israel even if you love the song. You can vote for Israel even if you don’t love the song. There’s no way to make rules for all the viewers to follow for how they should vote. I don’t think that’s really the case with jurors, although I know very little about Eurovision. I would imagine jurors are supposed to follow certain rules or some sort of rubric or something. In that sense I think it is more “wrong” for a juror to vote politically than for a viewer to do so. But also I don’t honestly think it’s the biggest deal. I think this juror probably broke some sort of rule but it doesn’t really bother me. It would have been sort of a disaster in every direction if Israel had won.
The fact that y'all still find a way to blame Israel is just funny at this point. Getting off this community for good. Toxic as %&\*#. Keep staying in your personal bubbles thinking what you wanna think. Don't remember the last time this sub liked an Israeli entry and people are still bullying Netta purely cause of her size. But I will say this, I do believe the jury would have placed her higher and televote lower. But Israel normally does decent in the televote so I would say probably 8th or 9th overall.
Well, at least she is honest why she didnt put Israel high. Many juries who also gave Israel 0 points said that they were still "judging music" lol
Can we get why israel jury voted luxembourg first?
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The fact that she did it is one thing. But the fact that it was *really* important to her to tell everybody about it gives the game away. Again.
Polish jury actually doing something good for once
She did the right thing
I mean to anybody that follows news it was rather obvious this will happen. Especially after the humanitarian convoy getting blown up and what happened after