The annual Eurovision song contest, a sort of musical Olympics where each country chooses one performer (or musical group) to represent it with a single song, is a major cultural event for Europeans—and for Israelis, Australians, and Armenians. As with any international forum, Israel’s presence attracts much anger, and the country’s enemies seemed particularly incensed because the Israeli contestant, Yuval Raphael, survived the attack on the Nova music festival. She was naturally greeted by boos and the waving of Palestinian flags.

Winners are determined by a combination of votes from viewers (the rules prohibit voting for your own country’s contestant) and a score granted by a jury of show-business professionals. And something surprising happened: for all that we’ve heard about rising anti-Semitism and Israel becoming a pariah nation, Raphael won the popular vote. Stephen Daisley explains:

In the end, Austria’s JJ leapt from fourth place among viewers to overall first thanks to a very favorable jury vote for “Wasted Love.” Raphael came second overall. This made some Eurovision-fixated progressives very happy, an odd way to respond to a singing contest but hardly the first time Europeans have sided with an Austrian over the Jews.

Others were not so satisfied. How could Israel, the global pariah reviled by all right-thinking people, have won the popular vote across enlightened, progressive Europe? . . . It might just be that the viewers liked the song. Israel-haters struggle with this. If that were true, it would mean viewers saw Eurovision as a mere music competition rather than another platform for doing their mandatory daily devotion to the Palestinian cause. The masses might be frightfully unideological but their consciousness couldn’t possibly be in need of that much raising. Or maybe viewers felt bad for what Raphael had been through and gave her a sympathy vote.

This year’s final was held in Basel, Switzerland, the city where in 1897 Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress and proposed that the Jews, tormented and vilified across Europe, return to their ancient homeland and establish a Jewish state in Palestine. It was a provocative idea then and remains so now, albeit the identity of those provoked and the nature of their objections have switched a few times since. Israel didn’t come back to Basel to justify itself; it came to sing its song. It will go on singing its songs for as long as there are Jewish songs to be sung.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.