13 countries, yes 13, gave 12 points to Israel in their televote. Spain and Belgium among them when in the Spanish broadcasting the commentators mentioned the crimes of Israel in Gaza and the Belgium broadcaster cut the transmission during the Israeli performance to demonstrate against their participation in the contest. It’s obvious that for the last two years Israel has been rigging the televote (it’s pretty easy to do so buying SIM cards or VPN and paying to vote 20 times). Eurovision has always been political, but the EBU should really consider if it’s worth it to destroy their reputation just because their main sponsor is an Israeli company (Morrocanoil). It’s not just because they are pink-washing a country condemned by the ICC for war crimes while vetoing Russia, but rigging the televote also shadows the real televotes of the Eurofans and screws the whole voting process.
People never give their points neutrally in the televote, normally countries tend to give their vote to the same countries every year, and it’s not possible to distance Ukraine or Israel from their current geopolitical circumstances. So a mass televote to Israel, if it really was done by the eurofans of these countries, wouldn’t be made because they really liked the performance. Also, Israel has more than enough propagandistic reasons to want to win the contest: making as if Europe supports Israel even when it has been accused by the International Court for genocide, disenchant Palestinians and Palestine-supporters making them think they are alone supporting their cause, having the next contest held in Israel for further pink-washing… Furthermore, the televote was never fraud-proof, you can pay many times if you have different credit cards or payment methods, there isn’t any kind of biometrics involved, so you have to rely that people and institutions will have good will and won’t do any kind of rigging. https://fr.euronews.com/2025/05/16/eurovision-quelles-sont-alliances-les-plus-fortes-entre-pays