When is a small win a large win? When the effect in the material world is small, but the groundswell in the heart is large.
Activists tried to have Israel barred from the Eurovision Song Contest, thousands protested in Sweden (baying outside the contestant’s hotel), a drag artist moaned on BBC Newsnight that he would cancel his Eurovision party due to Israel’s inclusion in the event and fellow Eurovision contestants whinged and bullied the 20-year-old Israeli singer, Eden Golan.
Yet what was the final result? Despite a poor show from the Eurovision juries, Israel won the public’s ‘douze points’ tele-vote in the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the ‘rest of the world’ category. Israel received the second highest public vote and came fifth overall.
Why were so many motivated to vote for Israel’s Eden Golan? It’s impossible to be certain, but it will surely be a combination of factors. The song itself and her voice were excellent and the performance was solid. That should be all you need to do well in a supposedly non-political song contest. Evidently there was more to it than that.
This vote could be taken as a show of support for a young artist who was mercilessly bullied. Most normal, sympathetic people do not like bullies and will support the underdog. Regardless of where you stand on Israel, Hamas, Gaza and the war, it was horrible to see a young woman ostracised by her peers, threatened with professional exclusion and hounded by an actual mob. I am sure that many new and returning viewers tuned in specifically to support this brave woman.
It could also be seen a show of support for Israel herself. Highly visible elites and artists may downplay October 7th (or the “Hamas thing” as Gary Lineker recently referred to it) and feel emboldened to display their Israelophobia and antisemitism, but the popular vote indicates that the majority have had enough of virtue-signalling terrorist-sympathisers.
If you wanted to support Israel in the face of bullying then, naturally, you supported Israel. But if you were ‘anti-Israel’ which country would you vote for? Perhaps Ireland’s Bambie Thug who did her (sorry ‘their’) best to tyrannise Eden Golan and whip us as much anti-Israel feeling as possible.
For those of us who have been disgusted by the bulling inflicted upon Eden as much as we have the regular chants of ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Globalise the Intifada’ it was incredibly heartening to be part of a small pushback. If you watch the BBC (which still doesn’t correctly and consistently call Hamas a terrorist organisation), or any of the news channels or spend time on social media, those critical and cruel voices sound like the majority simply because they are the loudest in the public sphere.
One of the chapters in my book Free Your Mind: The new world of manipulation and how to resist it, co-authored with Patrick Fagan, focuses on how to speak up against the cascading conformity of the crowd to cure yourself of “herd-poisoning”, as Aldous Huxley termed it. Ideas and sentiment are contagious – think of individual fish moving as a shoal. It feels lonely to swim counter to the shoal. The Eurovision public vote must mean everything to Israel and Eden Golan, but it also means a lot to those of who feel drowned out by the bullies – we can take comfort in the invisible but indisputable size of our crowd. We are the majority, not the minority.
Sometimes there are sides to pick – this is how a contest works after all – and it couldn’t be easier on this occasion to choose your side. Would you vote for, say, a narcissistic, self-described non-binary goblin, pretending to cast spells in a performance which resembled a Black Mass, or a woman singing her heart out with dignity despite the loud booing of the audience? Even Ireland’s public, home to Bambie Thug, gave Israel 10 points.
It may only have been the Eurovision Song Contest, but it felt like a vote for the face of our civilisational future.
Eden Golan was a heroine. She faced hatred with composure and dignity. Indeed, when she landed in Israel, people called out to her that she was a queen. As Israel wages a war against terrorists for nothing less than existential survival, the ordinary folk of Europe gave Queen Eden the win she deserved and the win we all needed. Encore!
This article was first published on Laura’s Substack page the Free Mind. Subscribe here.
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Who the hell is Claire Reeve, and why does she think she can talk for everyone. Her views appear to be narrow minded, ignorant, Marxist anti-Semitic claptrap. Do feck off darling…
And what the hell is the Euro vision populated by a mentally ill tranny and a satan worshipper? Is this really where society is? How low can the idiocy and evil go? Never watched this crap, no idea what it is about but when I see the images of some of the singers I know that Western Civ is about 2 drunken paces from being face down in the cow manure.
Well said Laura.
Clare Reeve doesn’t seem to understand maths if she thinks she’s in the majority.
Simple arithmetic for the simple minded, not maths. Maths requires a modicum of intelligence.
Fair point. Apparently even that beyond the understanding of the person who downvoted me though!
It was a good example of the disconnect between the pre-selected right-on woke juries vs the general public.
Does a cure for “herd poisoning” also include speaking-up on Israel, Zionism and Judaism if those are the subjects of concern or should they always be amongst the exceptions?
What might Orthodox Jews make of the returning heroine? Perhaps nothing positive.
“We will direct your attention to Tractate Shabbat, which does a good job of summing up halakha’s [Jewish religious law] attitude toward women: “a sack full of excrement” with a bleeding hole.”
https://www.haaretz.com/2011-12-30/ty-article/orthodox-judaism-treats-women-like-filthy-little-things/0000017f-f0c8-dc28-a17f-fcfff69b0000
Are you not taking an extreme case – the ultra orthodox – and projecting their views to the entire population? Isn’t that a bit like saying the USA should be judged as if it was 100% Amish?
The example was limited to the relevant sub-group so it’s not equating the entire country, or all followers of Judaism, to that belief because that would be incorrect.
As with Islam, Judaism has extreme teachings and extremists that follow them. One we regularly hear about, the other not so much.
Spent a lot of time in Israel the DHJ, or in the presence of Israeli’s.? You seem to know a lot about it…
Not as much time as NeilParkin, I am open to being corrected.
Could it be that the public just don’t like an individual being punished for something that they’re not responsible for?
Can we be done with trying to get everyone dragged into the Israel’ and Palestine’s problem?
100% agree. If I had voted at all I might have for this person on the basis that I don’t think people should be excluded from events because of the country they happen to be a citizen of, and certainly not as a “vote for Israel” – whatever that means. Doubtless the DS team and their friends have all long since equipped themselves with all the information they feel they need to make a decision on the “Israel” question – if so, bully for them. I have not. It seems there are two sides to this, and it’s not as simple as the extreme of either side likes to make out. I write this as someone who is probably by instinct pro-Israel on the basis that if I had to choose now at gunpoint whether to live in Israel or any neighbouring country I would not hesitate to choose Israel.
Not Cyprus?
Sorry, yes, good point. I keep forgetting about Cyprus. Yes I would choose Cyprus.
Bingo. Thanks, Stuart. My thoughts exactly.
Is this where we are at in society? —–Voting for contestants in a silly song contest based on sectarianism? Are we all just “Like a Puppet on a String”?
Until we meet our Waterloo…
Great article from Laura and I fully agree.
As an aside, if you ever see footage of the hate marches and there are orthodox Jews present ( which pleases the terrorist-supporters because they get to go: ”Look, see?! Jews are even protesting against Israel and siding with the Palestinians!” ) it’s likely to be these splinter group cultists who are besties with the various terrorists: Neturai Karta. This article explains more;
”Photos of pro-Palestine rallies in the U.S. since the outbreak of the war often feature a group of Orthodox Jewish men, wearing the long black coats and fur hats of the Haredim, with large signs across their body. Haredi Jews are a rare sight at protests of any kind, but the group has shown up at protests in Boston, in Jersey City, in Montreal, in Washington, D.C., in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
They’re not counterprotesters; instead their signs castigate Israel in the harshest terms, blaming all of the violence of the war on Israel and promoting the complete eradication of the Jewish state, stances generally associated with only the farthest left groups — and almost never with Orthodox groups, who align with Israel.
The group is not alone in its anti-Zionism; some Haredi sects, most famously the Satmar, also oppose the secular state of Israel. Both groups believe that Jews were exiled from Israel by God as punishment for sins, and God will reestablish the nation only during the Messianic era; for humans to do so before then is an affront to God. Leaders from both have even taken the extreme stance that the Holocaust was a form of divine retribution.
But Neturei Karta’s anti-Zionism is even more extreme, so much so that most Orthodox groups, including the Satmar, have disavowed them. While most Haredi denominations accept the secular state of Israel, even as they don’t endorse it, Neturei Karta actively works to undermine it and advocate for its dismantling, and have allied themselves with enemies of Israel, including those that have voiced open antisemitism, such as Iran and Hezbollah.
Given Neturei Karta’s extreme tactics in the past, many Jews, even passionately anti-Zionist ones, are wary of allying with the group because of their stances on the Holocaust, and their connections with Iran, Hezbollah and PIJ.
Jewish groups have often accused the Neturei Karta of “selling out their fellow Jews” by allying with antisemitic groups, as well as using their appearance as “currency” to present themselves as the spokespeople for Jews. Numerous academic articles reference their tactics of showing up to major events attended by journalists, relying on their Orthodox dress to gain attention to their cause.”
https://forward.com/culture/570974/neturei-karta-orthodox-jewish-israel-palestine-protests/
If you prefer your explainer in video format I thought this 9min vid very good;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5NrPOUp2qk&ab_channel=Unpacked
How do they know that this is not the Messianic era. Perhaps God has decided already. Serious question.
Steady on— the photos above of both women are equally creepy: one Demon and one “Goddess” with a halo sun around her cranium???
Then calling her “Queen Eden”??? Will it be “Goddess Eden” next???
And is she wearing a pendant with her own name on it? Why?
Is she so heroically brave when surrounded by 100 security men, as she was, not walking down the street almost alone like Tommy Robinson and his family, or Geert Wilders, whose life has been under constant threat for years?
Let’s try to keep a bit of perspective, and not get dragged yet again into foreign problems and foreign wars. Britain is not the World’s Nanny.
Let’s not forget that a
determined attacker could still get to her. You can bet that she and her security haven’t. So yes, brave.I just don’t see how she is braver or in any more danger than any other Jewish person now, anywhere in the world. And none of them have 100 security guards surrounding them as she did. Yes, even when Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was surrounded by thousands of his supporters, Evil Lula’s hitman still got to him, so no security team can completely protect anyone. But this near-deification of a singer is well over the top.
I also don’t understand why a tiny but heavily-armed and militarily-prepared country like Israel somehow allowed Hamas to attack 20 Israeli towns before responding 26 hours later.
“The slow response of Israeli forces on Saturday, a national holiday, gave Hamas terrorists many hours to infiltrate more than 20 towns outside of Gaza, where they killed at least 1,200 people and took an estimated 150 hostages.”
British people complain about slow police respond times, but it is unthinkable that our own UK Armed Forces and police would ever have let that happen here. They would’ve been down on the invaders like a ton of bricks.
“Beware the Wrath of a Patient Man”.
She might be physically safe but has been under a lot of pressure, so that could test her psychologically.
““The slow response of Israeli forces on Saturday”
People don’t think the unthinkable; that your own government might sacrifice their own people to make economic or military gain. History has many examples. Only us conspiracy types are willing to entertain the idea.
Well, you are completely right to point that out, as we remember from the Benghazi disaster, when Obama gave Hilary free rein to deal with it, and she gave the order to “Stand Down” to US troops stationed only 3 miles away, thus causing the horrific deaths of the American Ambassador Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.
We have Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks to thank for that information.
WikiLeaks: Obama and Hillary ISSUED STAND DOWN ORDER in Benghazi (theblacksphere.net)
Maybe the audience at home just prefer singers to look saint-like rather than demonic.
Didn’t watch, don’t care, just making an observation. There is a whole lot more to winning this event than just a good tune, always has been. The winning country hosts the following year’s contest. In 2022, Ukraine won, but, because of the ongoing military action there, the UK hosted it in 2023. If Israel had won this year, given its own ongoing military action, which country would have hosted in 2025? Within Europe, the UK is probably Israel’s staunched ally, followed perhaps by Germany, and therein lies the problem. They are very expensive gigs to host so I suspect the UK would have been unlikely to want the expense or indeed the controversy of doing so again. Was the Swiss song better? Who cares – it was a safe bet: a rich, neutral country with good infrastructure that can cough up the readies to host this musical anachronism.