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Notes -
Israel has done very well with audience votes in the past few years for basically one reason, in Eurovision, you can't vote against a country.
If I'm a pro-Israel partisan, I can vote for Israel 20 times. If I'm an anti-Israel partisan, who should I vote for? Palestine isn't in the contest (lol) and there are 25 other entries to pick from. If I know who the favourite is I can vote for that country, but that can be hard to guess. Sweden was the favourite this year and didn't do particularly well from either the juries or the audience.
I wish Israel had won, for the ensuing political drama. But hey, I'm sure they're very happy with second place, even if their contestant had to perform with a booing crowd (kindly edited out by the producers).
I was also surprised at the dearth of Palestinian flags in the arena. They were allowed (I think I saw one) but people mostly waved the flags of their own countries. I didn't see any keffiyes either. Maybe people are just getting bored about Israel as a topic?
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