Israel / Palestine News Thread

[Nivsch]

[Hatfort]

Portugal will also recognize the Palestinian state, and it's a right-wing government now, which surprises me that they take this step. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yek72jqk4o

Five countries have declared that they won't participate in the Eurovision Song Contest if Israel does, Iceland, Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Spain. Some countries have declared that they will, because the Contest is considered an apolitical one, but that argument falls apart as Russia has been banned from participating since its Ukrainian invasion. 

Some voices ask for bans in sports as well, which has not happened yet. 

But the roars in the streets are only increasing, the last cycling competition of Spain had to cancel its last race in Madrid, as thousands of people were protesting for what they called the whitewashing of Israel through sports, as one of the teams participating was from Israel. The Palestinian flags were a constant throughout all the competition in all regions, including the Catalonians, the Basque lands, and the pure Spanish ones. 

 

[Hatfort]

The Global Sumud Flotilla movement continues its road to Gaza by sea, over 40 boats trying to get food and aid to the people in need, pressure the Israeli government, and raise awareness worldwide as much as they can. Greta Thunberg is one of the known figures on board, and I'm not sure, but I think Susan Sarandon joined too, and the Irish actor Liam Cunningham.

They'll likely be stopped at some point, but forty boats are more challenging than only one like the last time a few months ago.

[Nivsch]

Macron's full interview to the Israeli channel about his stance regarding a Palestinian state.

https://www.mako.co.il/mako-vod-channel2-news/main-newscast-2025/shorts/Video-91d0514ea0e5991027.htm

Edited Sunday at 10:43 AM by Nivsch

[Nivsch]

https://x.com/RonGerlitz1/status/1961111758212399582

[Hatfort]

A new video about the Eurovision controversies. 

Apart from the astroturfing and Israeli government's direct funding for ads and voting campaigns, there's something more about the voting system. Israel wants to show that Europe and the world support them by saying they win the popular votes. But how do they get there?

Some people support Israel in what they are doing, and they want to express this by voting. The system allows voting 20 times for a person, and they do. But that's like a voting system that only allows a one-directional vote. Palestine doesn't participate, which would be a way to check if the support for the other side of the conflict is above Israel's. There's no way to vote generically against Israel either, as votes dilute along all the rest of the participating countries. So it's a kind of rigged way of claiming support from other countries, when people are only able to show it one way. 

Edited Sunday at 08:14 PM by Hatfort

[Nivsch]

@Hatfort Watched it now. I think freedom of speech means that societies and people have the right to show others and truthful sides of theirs, regardless of their governments actions.

To not fall into double standard I thought again that maybe Russia should participate too. However I think, at least to this moment, that Russia is a special case in which a boycott is one of the only ways to weaken irreplaceable dictatorial regims, let alone the relatively simple distinction between the aggressor and the oppressed in Ukraine-Russia war, in comparison to the complexity and long history of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Regarding the voting, I see the crowd voting result as authentic and valid for the reasons I mentioned in another thread:

Also:

1. The EBU has approved the validity of the voting.

2. Before Netta (Israel) has won in 2018, her song made Israel to be the favorite to win ESC in YouTube and the official site of the polling. This is an organic dynamic.

3. Israel ranked 3rd in the betting odds for Eurovision 2025 right after its song was released - very close to its final 2nd place result.

Edited Sunday at 08:44 PM by Nivsch

[Hatfort]

40 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

@Hatfort Watched it now. I think freedom of speech means that societies and people have the right to show others and truthful sides of theirs, regardless of their governments actions.

To not fall into double standard I thought again that maybe Russia should participate too. However I think, at least to this moment, that Russia is a special case in which a boycott is one of the only ways to weaken irreplaceable dictatorial regims, let alone the relatively simple distinction between the aggressor and the oppressed in Ukraine-Russia war, in comparison to the complexity and long history of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Regarding the voting, I see the crowd voting result as authentic and valid for the reasons I mentioned in another thread:

Also:

1. The EBU has approved the validity of the voting.

2. Before Netta (Israel) has won in 2018, her song made Israel to be the favorite to win ESC in YouTube and the official site of the polling. This is an organic dynamic.

3. Israel ranked 3rd in the betting odds for Eurovision 2025 right after its song was released - very close to its final 2nd place result.

The voting is valid, it's just that the voting system is very convenient for Israel, as it's only possible to vote in their favor, and susceptible to astroturfing campaigns with that possibility of voting twenty times each person, and maybe even more, according to the video, people did it. But you could say, people can vote twenty times for the other side too. The problem is there is no Palestine to vote for, or if you wanted to show just opposition to Israel, you would have to choose between tens of other countries, so it's diluted.

Before 2024, I think Israel had kind of an organic voting and participation like the others. I remember Netta, she won with a silly-catchy song like it happens a lot in Eurovision, that was organic. 

For the betting odds, of course people bet for what they think is likely to happen. People are not stupid, they saw how the voting system worked in the previous year, and that's why they bet for Israel again. The songs themselves were not popular in views on YouTube, but then they got this huge amount of popular votes. People see there's a campaign behind it, Israel needs the PR, invests money in it, and the voting system channels the result too. Then they claim people in Europe support them.

[Nivsch]

@Hatfort And because people are not stupid they will anyway vote for what they actually love. They knew to put Israel very low in the ranking when the song wasn't good in 2021 and 2022 and to put Israel very high when it was good in 2023 before the war, what shows this is an authentic European voting all along the way. The 20votes are true and available to all the countries equally and all the four Israeli songs in 18', 23', 24' and 25' were very popular in views even before the voting. 

Edited yesterday at 05:38 AM by Nivsch

[PurpleTree]

Gosh this Mileikowsky is such a queef, no?

[Raze]

[Nivsch]

hamas has succeeded in making the support of a Palestinian state an unpopular stance leaders who supported it in the past now afraid to talk about.

Edited 23 hours ago by Nivsch

[Raze]

1 hour ago, Nivsch said:

hamas has succeeded in making the support of a Palestinian state an unpopular stance leaders who supported it in the past now afraid to talk about.

Israel was building settlements to make a state impossible years before Hamas was even founded 

[PurpleTree]

Good speech by Macron

"The Time has come for Peace"

☮️ ✌️ 🕊️ 🫡 

[Twentyfirst]

18 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

Good speech by Macron

"The Time has come for Peace"

☮️ ✌️ 🕊️ 🫡 

Still bullshit. Why doesn't he give the Jews half of France?

[PurpleTree]

3 minutes ago, Twentyfirst said:

Still bullshit. Why doesn't he give the Jews half of France?

Why should he?

[Twentyfirst]

Just now, PurpleTree said:

Why should he?

Why should Palestinians give 78 percent of their land? And be demilitarized? 

France is better for the Jews 

[PurpleTree]

3 minutes ago, Twentyfirst said:

Why should Palestinians give 78 percent of their land? And be demilitarized? 

France is better for the Jews 

Good luck with that. We don’t care. 

[Twentyfirst]

1 minute ago, PurpleTree said:

Good luck with that. We don’t care. 

Little foresight in you. You don't know that a two state solution eventually leads to the dissolution of Israel

Does that mean you are French? 

[PurpleTree]

Just now, Twentyfirst said:

Little foresight in you. You don't know that a two state solution eventually leads to the dissolution of Israel

 

So you agree with Bibi then that there can’t be a Palestinian state or Jews will lose everything. Look at you bro you are a zio hehe