Despite the massive anti-Israel demonstrations outside the venue, she earned a place at the Grand Final on Saturday.
Normally the voting percentages are not revealed, but an Italian broadcaster showed the results, where Israel received what seems to be an astonishing 39% of the vote, far ahead of second place Netherlands with 7%.
What explains this lopsided vote count? Her performance was strong but not that much better than the competition.
Antisemites are saying that this is evidence of corruption, or Israeli hacking of the system. But the real reason is the well-known phenomenon of vote splitting.
In any election with a lot of candidates, the candidates who seem similar tend to split the vote between them and the ones who stand out do best.
Everyone in Europe sees the large anti-Israel demonstrations against Eden Golan. It is a big story.
The demonstrators have made Golan into the most famous and different contestant from the others. Many Europeans who disagree with those trying to subvert a popular song competition will be more likely to vote for the person the protesters hate.
Eden could have recited the phone book and she still would have gotten 20% of the vote because the protesters made her stand out from the competition. Voting for Golan was the only choice for Europeans who were sickened by the haters.
Without the protests, her vote percentage would certainly have been in line with all the other singers, less than 10% of the vote. The antisemites were the ones who made it certain that she would advance, and they very possibly will be the reason she might win the entire competition.
They tried to politicize Eurovision, and they succeeded - causing it to backfire on them.
