Just minutes before Yuval Raphael went onstage to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest final last weekend, the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, posted an appeal to his 1.5 million Instagram followers.
“Vote #04 — New Day Will Rise” the prime minister’s post urged followers. “Vote 20 Times!” it added, a nod to the maximum number that viewers are allowed to cast under the contest’s rules.
On a day when Israel’s military began mobilizing to advance farther into Gaza, and Israeli and Hamas negotiators were engaged in cease-fire talks, it was perhaps surprising that Netanyahu was weighing in on a spectacular, high-camp pop contest.
Yet at a time when Israeli singers and artists are often shunned on the world’s stages over their country’s actions in Gaza, Eurovision appears to have grown in importance for Israel’s government.
Eurovision fans vote for a variety of reasons, but Netanyahu’s direct plea was part of a wider effort by the government and pro-Israel groups to generate support for the Israeli contestant, via social media posts, email campaigns and YouTube ads.
Israel secured the largest public vote at the final in Basel, Switzerland, and this led to a nail-biting end to the show. Israel seemed poised to win right until the last minute of the vote count, when Austria, which had performed better in points from expert juries, leaped ahead.
It was a stunning turnaround for Israel. Pro-Palestinian activists and even some Eurovision contestants have been calling for Israel to be banned from the competition since 2023 over the war in Gaza. A furor over its involvement threatened to overshadow the show last year.
Dean Vuletic, the author of a book on Eurovision and politics, said Israel’s media campaign undoubtedly helped this year. But he added that many music fans would also have voted for Israel simply because they enjoyed Raphael’s song, “New Day Will Rise,” a ballad performed on a glittering staircase, accompanied by pyrotechnics.
Other voters would have responded to Raphael’s story, Vuletic added: She is a survivor of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on the Nova music festival, which she endured by playing dead and lying under a pile of bodies.
Middle East analysts said that Israel’s Eurovision campaign aligned with its broader cultural diplomacy objectives.
Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project think tank, said that Israel’s government was “desperately trying to find soft power venues” and that Eurovision was one of the few opportunities it had left.
Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum in New York, said that Eurovision had also taken on increased importance psychologically for Israelis. If an Israeli singer does well in a contest decided by a public vote, Koplow said, “it gives hope that maybe Israel isn’t as politically isolated as it seems.”
The prime minister of Israel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
During the Eurovision final, viewers can vote by telephone, text or via Eurovision’s app and website. To encourage greater involvement, the organizers have allowed multiple votes since 2004, but capped these at 20 per viewer. The public vote makes up half of each act’s final score, and the rest comes from juries of music industry professionals.
Israel’s official Instagram account posted 10 times last Saturday urging its 1.5 million followers to vote up to 20 times for Raphael.
None of the 25 other nations in the final used equivalent Instagram accounts to drum up votes, though the foreign ministries of Lithuania and Ukraine each posted a single appeal on the app and neither asked for multiple votes. The leaders of Poland, Latvia and Estonia did the same on X, where some other leaders or official government accounts simply wished their contestants good luck.
Israel’s government also posted 10 appeals to vote on its official X account and three on TikTok; the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, which operates under the prime minister’s office, bought YouTube ads encouraging voting, according to Google data.
Vuletic said that although many countries use Eurovision for cultural diplomacy, he had never seen a media campaign as “broad and thorough” as Israel’s.
Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that set off the war in Gaza, Israel’s Instagram account appears to have hardly mentioned Eurovision. There are no posts relating to the 2021 and 2022 contests in its archive, and just one call to vote in the 2023 final.
The ramp-up this year has alarmed other Eurovision competitors. A spokeswoman for AVROTROS, the Dutch public broadcaster, said in an email that “visible government interference” in Eurovision was undermining the contest’s credibility. In a news release, NRK, Norway’s public broadcaster, said it was “concerned that trust in the Eurovision Song Contest voting process is being challenged” and called for a “thorough review of the voting system.”
Broadcasters in Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium issued statements this week urging Eurovision’s organizer to review the rules.
In a statement on Friday, the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the competition, said it would examine the voting system to make sure that “promotion is not disproportionately affecting the natural mobilization of communities and diasporas.”
Conrad Myrland, the managing director of With Israel for Peace, a pro-Israel advocacy organization based in Norway, said that he hadn’t paid much attention to Eurovision until last year when pro-Palestinian activists called for a ban on Israel.
This year, Myrland said, his organization had used emails, text messages and social media posts to urge its 15,000 members to each cast the maximum 20 votes for Israel. He estimated that his organization had helped secure “hundreds of thousands of votes.” He wanted “to show that Israel indeed has a place,” he said.
Sacha Stawski, the founder of two pro-Israeli organizations in Germany called Honestly Concerned and I Like Israel, said he had used Facebook to urge followers to do the same. Some of those posts urged followers to use multiple voting methods and cast 20 votes via each. “I wanted to send a message against hate,” Stawski said.
Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, said in a statement that Eurovision’s rules do not ban “participating broadcasters or third parties” from encouraging fans to vote. “Many delegations employ paid promotion campaigns to support the song, profile and future careers of their artists,” he added.
Israel’s campaign brought the country close to victory, but Levy, the Middle East analyst, said it could easily have backfired. If Israel had won, it would have secured the right to host next year’s contest, he said. “I don’t think Eurovision could be successfully held in Tel Aviv,” Levy said: “The public pressure on artists and broadcasters to boycott would be immense.”
Vuletic, the author, had a similar assessment. Eurovision’s organizers would have “breathed a sigh of relief,” he said, when Israel didn’t actually win.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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