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Netta wins Eurovision Song Contest for Israel
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May 15, 2018
Original URL: https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Netta_wins_Eurovision_Song_Contest_for_Israel

On Saturday, Israel won its fourth victory, first since 1998, at the
Eurovision Song Contest, held at Lisbon's Altice Arena in Portugal.
Netta Barzilai's song ''Toy'' won 529 points from public and
professional judges. Cyprus and Austria finished second and third
respectively with 436 and 342 points.
[[File:Netta Barzilai - Eurovision 2018 - 1.jpg|thumb|left|Netta at a
Eurovision event on May 6.
([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en CC BY-SA 4.0])
Out of 43 countries participating this time, 26 countries including
hosts Portugal and the Big Five — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and
the United Kingdom — competed in the finals. The competition began on
May 8. Spain and United Kingdom finished in the bottom five while the
hosts and last year's winners, Portugal, ended up at the bottom of the
vote ranking; collecting respectively 61, 48, and 39 points.

Israel won the first semi-final round with 283 points. The 25-year-old
Netta won the Ha Kokhav Ha Ba competition earlier this year to represent
the country in this contest. Netta performed ''Toy'', written by Doron
Medalie and Stav Beger, with a Chicken Dance and chicken noises. With a
lot of scat singing involved, the song lyrics included, "I'm not your
toy; you stupid boy". Her performance included 112 Maneki-nekos,
Japanese beckoning cats used as lucky charms, which were placed in two
shelves.

Apart from the Japanese Maneki-neko dolls, Netta wore a kimono; a
Japanese dress, styled her hair in two buns as well as referenced
Pokémon, a Japanese anime and video game, in her song, which led to
some people including Portuguese writer Joana Ramiro to point out
cultural appropriations in her performance. "Can I, however, ask if
anyone here has already commented on the quite shocking Japanese
cultural bastardisation-appropriation going on in Netta's song?", Ramiro
tweeted.

Shortly after the contest began, last year's winner Salvador Sobral
called ''Toy'' "a horrible song". In an interview with Wiwibloggs,
Sobral said, "You Tube thought I would like the Israeli song. I opened
it and a horrible song came out of it." After winning the contest in
Ukraine last year, Sobral had said, "We live in a world of disposable
music; fast food music without any content. I think this could be a
victory for music with people who make music that actually means
something [...] Music is not fireworks; music is feeling. So let’s try
to change this and bring music back." ''Toy'''s performance used strobe
lighting and quirky noises.

After Netta was declared the winner, she said, "Thank you so much for
choosing ''different''. Thank you so much for accepting differences
between us. Thank you for celebrating diversity. Thank you. I love my
country. Next year in Jerusalem." Previously, Israel won the contest in
1978 and 1979, and 1998.

UK's artist Su Rie, who performed ''Storm'', was interrupted in her
performance when a stage invader snatched her microphone. UK was given
another chance to perform, but Su Rie declined after discussing with her
team. Su Rie said, "We had that conversation, but I was really proud of
that performance." "You don't get to do the 100m sprint at the
Olympics again
because your shoelace is untied or something. You had that one shot and
that was my moment, and we didn't need to repeat that [...] We had those
conversations backstage, I saw the reaction and faces of my team, who
were very proud of the recovery and the power of that, and we didn't
need to go again", the British singer added.

As the winner of this edition of the competition, Israel is to host next
year's competition. Last year, then 27-year-old Salvador Sobral won the
competition, receiving 758 points for the song ''Amar Pelos Dois'', a
ballad written by his sister.

For the preparations of next year's contest, Israeli Deputy Health
Minister Ya'akov Litzman wrote a letter to Culture and Sport Minister
Miri Regev asking ''shabbat'', the Jewish holy day to rest, no to be
violated. In the letter, he wrote, "In the name of hundreds of thousands
of Jewish citizens from all the populations and communities for whom
Shabbat observance is close to their hearts, I appeal to you, already at
this early stage, before production and all the other details of the
event has begun, to be strict [in ensuring] that this matter does not
harm the holiness of Shabbat and to work in every way to prevent the
desecration of Shabbat, God forbid, as the law and the status quo
requires". Last year, he submitted resignation after Jewish workers were
made to undertake railway work on ''shabbat''. That time, both Israeli
welfare minister Haim Katz and Israeli transportation minister Yisrael
Katz expressed potential threat to passengers if the railway work was
postponed.

== Related news ==

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== Sources ==

* https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Litzman-demands-Shabbat-not-be-violated-for-Eurovision-2019-556381
* http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44111436
* https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/eurovision-winner-netta-israel-latest-cultural-appropriation-japan-costume-a8349296.html
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-44096900
* https://twitter.com/SBS/status/995434719339663360
* https://twitter.com/Eurovision/status/995440696197697536
* https://eurovision.tv/story/israel-netta-wins-2018-eurovision-song-contest
* http://variety.com/2018/music/news/israel-eurovision-netta-toy-song-win-1202808622/
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84LBjXaeKk4
* http://wiwibloggs.com/2018/05/09/portugals-salvador-sobral-israels-eurovision-2018/222969/
* http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/fans-and-artists-turn-on-eurovision-winner-over-controversial-speech/news-story/76954a352f42a09efb4af2aa31e15601
== External links ==
* https://eurovision.tv/event/lisbon-2018/grand-final/participants