Some 200 million television viewers around the world watched Israel put its best foot forward on May 18 as reflected in numerous media reports on the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest and the clips accompanying the competitors’ performances. Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s best efforts to put a spoke in the wheels of Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC), the company managed to defeat the anti-Israel BDS movement. The world saw that Israel was not just a country full of masked settlers beating up elderly Palestinians and Israeli children seeking shelter from Hamas rockets. Just hours after Israel was presented with a priceless boost to its beleaguered image, however, the government took the opportunity to present the state’s ugly face at its weekly Cabinet meeting the following morning.
After offering brief congratulations to the singer Kobi Marimi, Israel’s Eurovision contender and 19th-place finisher, but not a single word of praise for the IPBC, Netanyahu went on to discuss efforts to assemble his fifth government. He expressed his hope that his potential coalition partners would soon “come to their senses,” meaning they would agree to settle for fewer senior ministerial positions than they were demanding in return for entering the coalition.