Sometimes what seems like a victory is actually a Pyrrhic victory, and what seems like a loss can be a win.
Take Eurovision, for example. Israel wanted to be Sally Field in that iconic Oscar speech from the eighties; to stand before the world and offer a heartfelt thank-you: "You like me, you really like me".
Israel is tired of being the most hated country of 2025-the one that starves the elderly, dries up the milk of nursing mothers, and cuts power to incubators. Suddenly, the perfect opportunity arrived on a glittery platter: the Eurovision Song Contest, the event Israelis love most, a chance to leave "all this politics" behind and win back the public's love.
But Israel didn’t stop at sending a young singer-Yuval Rafael-who just happens to be a survivor of the "Death Shelter," just to remind everyone who started this and who the real victim is in this story. Israel also didn’t settle for a song written and composed by Keren Peles, or a dress designed by Victor Bellaish, or direction by Yoav Tzafir. Just to be safe, and only to help the world prove its love for us, Israel reportedly launched a small influence operation to "assist" the public vote.
And it worked. Or rather, not the influence operation, but the song-it was so good, and we are so loved, that it just all fell into place. We took second place, and we were overjoyed. We aren't a hated nation. We are simply a loved nation going through a bit of a rough patch in the relationship.
But then everything flipped. It turns out Europeans aren't suckers; they're just polite. So instead of boycotting us, they simply changed the rules-reducing the weight of the public vote and increasing the weight of the professional jury to neutralize future influence operations. "Neutralize"-now that’s a word we understand.
Last month, things reached a point where a vote was held on whether to allow Israel’s participation in the contest. Once again, Israel put in significant effort, and the decision was-to keep it in the competition.
But even this victory turned into a sort of Pyrrhic victory, when a series of countries announced one after another that they would withdraw from the contest if Israel participated, and former winners of the contest joined them.
So, just so we don't whine over another milestone in the collapse of Brand Israel (see our 100th issue project), could something have been done to soften the blow? After all, the contest is not going to be a walk in the park for Israel.
We think so, but it requires a strategic shift in managing the crisis of Brand Israel, and moving away from the prevailing local mindset that "what doesn't work with force, will work with even more force," or the "we showed them" attitude.
For example, we could have accepted the non-participation, allowed the global outrage to subside a bit, and said something like: "After two years of war, Israeli society is going through a difficult time, and we have decided not to participate in this year's song contest-an event we have been part of since the seventies of the last century-in order to focus on recovery and healing our wounds. We hope to be back with you next year."
That way, we would have gone from being the most hated country in the world to the one everyone misses the most. Sometimes, in order to win, you first have to know how to lose.
