242

Bulgaria wins Eurovision after contest overshadowed by boycott over Israel’s participation (www.cnn.com)

submitted 5 days ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] qevlarr@lemmy.world 68 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Lifelong fan started my boycott two years ago. What Israel is doing, is beyond appalling. It has opened the eyes of so many people that Israel has always been doing this, that it will not stop doing this by their own initiative, so that it is our responsibility as international community to make them stop. Israel is a pariah state for me. All their enablers in Europe, including Germany and Austria, will find themselves on the wrong side of history. They have a historic responsibility to support the Jews, but that should not expand to Israel as a state. A state built on stolen land, with unequal rights, a fundamentalist theocracy, highly militaristic, unbelievable amounts of nasty propaganda, the whole country is beyond saving right now

[-] D1re_W0lf@piefed.social 50 points 5 days ago

~~Euro~~Zionvision

[-] Paper_Phrog@lemmy.world 26 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

EuroviZion

[-] Visstix@lemmy.world 69 points 5 days ago

I didn't even know it was on

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Same. Saw some results yesterday and was like 'huh? Eurovision happened??'

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 4 days ago

Israel isn't part of the EuroAsian continent. Regardless of whether they're committing a genocide (they are), they shouldn't be included. Also, fuck 'em.

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 11 points 4 days ago

Neither is Australia. They both got included way back when because of "large European diaspora."

Objectively, the Israeli songs always suck IMO, and a couple Aussie ones have been cheesy bangers.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 days ago

I'm happy to hear that Aussies are musically gifted. They shouldn't be in Eurovision either.

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 7 points 4 days ago

Their entries are occasionally so laughably tongue in cheek, no one is ever upset by them. A million other things about Eurovision get people spun up.

Like, do you watch Eurovision? If not, why hold such strong opinions about this thing that doesn't affect you at all?

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 days ago

Nope, never.

Why do I care? Because Israel commits war crimes.

I've never watched Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or America's Got Talent, or So You Think You Can Dance (I'm in USA). I don't like that sort of content.

But I'd care a lot if we let someone from a genocidal nation, that literally indoctrinates their children to think of an entire people as less than human, to compete on our shows. Fuck Israel (not Jews, just that country).

[-] Tja@programming.dev 8 points 4 days ago

I say we kick out Israel and bring Canada or New Zealand or South Korea.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 43 points 5 days ago

Israel always gets a billion votes at the contest and almost wins, but this huge success doesn't replicate on the streaming platforms where are far away in any charts

I'm guessing it's one of those:

All music streaming platforms in the world are colluding to report less listening to those songs, because of some anti-israel agenda
Eurovision public votes are allowing votes from millions of bots, because of some pro-israel agenda

[-] meejle@piefed.world 50 points 5 days ago

Not necessarily bots, but astroturfing, yes.

The Israeli government spends a lot of time and money on targeted ads and campaigning to get people to vote for their song. Not just in Israel, either, these are Israeli embassy accounts:

[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago

Also if you saw all the Moroccanoil sponsorship all over Eurovision this year - let's just say that company is not Moroccan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccanoil

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 6 points 4 days ago

They don't care because you pay to vote. Israel is (directly or indirectly) throwing millons of Euros at the EBU and only coming in at second place. Everyone knows about the ballot stuffing.

[-] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

Or 3 the boycott is significant so the far right are a significant part of the audience.

[-] Airheadgreg@lemmy.wtf 4 points 5 days ago

If there's opposition to Israel in the voting, the votes are split across 24 other entries, whereas the support for Israel is for a single entry. It's not really nefarious, just detracts from the quality of the performances.

[-] Goodeye8@piefed.social 29 points 5 days ago

You're missing the point. It's not about opposing Israel through voting, it's the questionable correlation between voting and the actual popularity of the song. The televotes are supposed to be based on popularity of the song because voters vote for the songs they like the most. There should be a strong correlation between the amount of votes a song gets and the amount of listens it gets on a streaming service because why would you vote for a song you don't want to listen to. Last year Israel got the most votes from the public, their song has listened only 17 million times on Spotify. Meanwhile the runnerups Estonia and Sweden both had 120 million listens. In fact if you look at previous years pretty much all televote winners have had a lot of listens (the lowest I saw in the last 5 years was around 80 million). It's only Israel who wins the televote but can't even reach 20 million listens. The correlation that should be there simply isn't there.

[-] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 62 points 5 days ago

Does anyone care?

Eurovision is cooked.

[-] Eldritch@piefed.world 16 points 5 days ago

Not outside Sam. He generally seems to be pretty chill, awesome guy.

[-] xSikes@feddit.online 4 points 5 days ago

UK should have been in the top 5. They performance was great and fun.

[-] djdarren@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago

Trouble is, we have a long and complicated relationship with the rest of Europe. To some extent it doesn't really matter what we send, because most people in mainland Europe don't think all that highly of us. And much of that is justified in my opinion.

Our people get drunk and lairy in their holiday resorts, we very publically opted to sever ties with the EU, and historically we've always been quite cunty.

I'm 45, and have only ever really known our national press to mostly shit on Eurovision. They treat it like a joke, so regardless of what we send, it's mostly seen as a joke by Europeans.

I felt terrible for our last few entrants, particularly Sam, and Olly a couple of years back. Last year's entry was dog shit, but they still didn't deserve no points at all. This year Sam made a genuine attempt at a song that showed a love for other European nations, and one which was a banger too, but ultimately he's fighting against 30 years of the UK's role in the EU sliding further and further into insignificance. And it's a shame.

[-] Eldritch@piefed.world 4 points 5 days ago

Sam is always entertaining to watch. I catch his YouTube channels fairly regularly. I listen to fairly niche stuff and Sam's Music isn't really my jam per se. He's definitely no virtuoso or genius musically but he's absolutely solid and a really good performer. I don't think most people watching realize how hard what he does is. Tuning, maintaining, and playing analog synth live.

I live in oceanway on the other side of the planet on a continent I think has no participation in the competition whatsoever? So I generally don't pay attention to it. But I was well chuffed to see that Sam was representing the UK. He's got enthusiasm and heart for days.

[-] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Wow. That. Hmm.

I'm glad he seems to be having fun. Really, that's what matters.

[-] itstoowet@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Been watching Sam for years since he was living in unused commercial buildings and constructing diy mad scientist synths. He's a real and genuine guy, he deserved more.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago

The only thing I watched of the contest

[-] Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 5 days ago

I don't watch eurovison, honestly I only ever hear about winners like this, and frankly this song is a banger (a bangaranga even) and the choreography is sick.

I watched it on Youtube since well, people were talking about it, and honestly I'm not gonna get this song out of my head for days.

[-] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 31 points 5 days ago

Congratulations Bulgaria, take that L Israel, also FUCK Israel.

[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 17 points 5 days ago

Bulgaria's tourism minister must be shitting it right now though lol. "We have to host WHAT next year?"

[-] bramkaandorp@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Israel won by being allowed to compete.

[-] luipaard0011@lemmy.zip 9 points 5 days ago

and FUCK Trump! I mean, FUCK Netanyahu and FUCK America!

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo@lemmy.world 24 points 5 days ago

This is the first Eurovision I didn't watch since 2003. Well done EBU.

[-] random_character_a@lemmy.world 27 points 5 days ago

Well Finlands religious nutters and MAGA-style right wing Elon Musk fan boys were certainly provoked to vote for Israel... again.

Song was not that special and we ended up giving Israel 12 points... again.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

We tend not to vote in the first place, especially when votes are the most expensive in the entire EU - cheapest was 0,13€ in Denmark, while it was 1,5€/vote here. Someone calculated that based on some previous years with 10 max votes, you could easily get the first place with just something like 1000 people voting the max amount. (And possibly even a lot fewer, as it was max 10 votes per payment method, so one person could use multiple to stack on votes)

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

A few hundred people can buy enough votes for an entire country. NYT released an article about it a few days ago.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 29 points 5 days ago

[-] hopesdead@startrek.website 16 points 5 days ago

Didn’t ABBA come to fame from a Eurovision win?

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 14 points 5 days ago

I don't see how that impacts the meme.

[-] hopesdead@startrek.website 7 points 5 days ago

I was just asking.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Ioughttamow@fedia.io 13 points 5 days ago

PLAY JA JA DING DONG!

[-] merdaverse@lemmy.zip 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Every year there's maybe one decent song and a bunch of generic pop crap. It's famous because it's a manifestation of modern chauvinism in musical form.

[-] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago

Sure, and Israel came in second.

[-] Malyca@lemmy.zip 13 points 5 days ago

As usual we're in the news for all the wrong reasons.

[-] radiofreebc@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

It's all just pop garbage anyways.
Is Israel even in europe?

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 18 points 5 days ago

Eurovision has entries from the members of the European Broadcasting Union, which started out Europe-centric but now has members from other places too - notably Israel, Morocco, and Australia.

[-] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

To be honest I would rather see only European countries. Adding these countries and especially the controversial Israel doesn't help Europe to unite.
I also don't really like the over the top way the festival is presented, it looks very fake and glamorous to me. I don't associate myself with the fake and glamorous

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

TerrorVision

load more comments

this post was submitted on 16 May 2026

242 points (100.0% liked)

World News

56218 readers

1926 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.