Eurovision has been accused of encouraging “manipulation” through its voting system after Israel came close to winning this year’s song contest.
The annual event was once again shrouded in controversy due to Israel’s participation, with contestant Yuval Raphael – a survivor of the 7 October attacks by Hamas – scoring a total of 357 points from combined votes of the professional jury and the public.
Raphael’s performance of “New Day Will Rise” was met by protests, including during the grand final on Saturday (17 May), when a Eurovision crew member was hit by paint as two audience members attempted to disrupt the show.
This year’s contest, which was held in Basel, Switzerland, was ultimately won by Austria’s trained opera singer JJ while Israel came second, meaning the competition will be hosted by Austria next year.
National broadcasters for Spain and Belgium have now complained to the competition’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, after Israel won the public vote by a large margin.
RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, and VRT, the Flemish broadcasting company, are demanding that organisers investigate the televoting system, which allows voters at home to vote up to 20 times for a small cost charged to each vote by text or phone call.
The juries for both countries overlooked Israel in their shortlist of performers to whom they awarded points, while in contrast, their televoters gave Raphael’s song the most votes, resulting in the maximum 12 points in the scoring system.
Katia Segers, a Flemish MP, said: “A system in which everyone can cast up to 20 votes is a system that encourages manipulation.
“Whether this manipulation occurred in our country and all other participating and non-participating countries must be investigated.”
She added: “The VRT must take the lead in requesting this investigation. And in holding the debate on the televoting system within the EBU and on Israel’s participation.”
The EBU confirmed that RTVE and VRT had been in contact and said it took the complaints “seriously”.
Martin Green, the director of Eurovision, said: “It is important to emphasise that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country’s result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns.”
He continued: “An independent compliance monitor reviews both jury and public vote data to ensure we have a valid result. We remain in constant contact with all participating broadcasters of the Eurovision Song Contest and take their concerns seriously.”
Calls for an investigation come as Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez demanded that Israel is banned from future Eurovision Song Contests over its ongoing military action in Gaza.
Speaking at a news conference in Madrid, Sánchez noted that Russia has been banned from the contest since 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine.
“Nobody was up in arms when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and [Russia] had to leave international competitions and could not take part, as we have just seen, in Eurovision,” he said.
”Therefore Israel shouldn’t either, because what we cannot allow is double standards in culture.”
His remarks were mocked by Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, who said the Spanish public’s 12 points for Israel had been a “slap in the face” for him that was “heard here in Jerusalem”.
Sánchez, whose government officially acknowledged a Palestinian state last year, expressed solidarity with “the people of Palestine who are experiencing the injustice of war and bombardment”.
“Spain’s commitment to international law and human rights must be constant and must be coherent,” he said. “Europe’s must be too.”
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