ISRAEL – On January 25th we saw the show in which the three nominated songs for Eden Alene voted (for days) by the Israeli public, ending with SET ME FREE winning their votes.
It was not a secret that the song LA LA LOVE was the favourite at least in the social media. But according to the official results KAN released, SET ME FREE won the voting by a landslide majority, getting more than 70% of the votes.
The song that Eden Alene will represent Israel within Rotterdam was selected through a national final called HaShir Shelanu L’Eurovizion.
The Israeli fans arguing that the results were fixed, the voting was manipulated and the jury was formed in a way to evaluate the other submitted songs. The Israeli fans say in the social media that KAN will be responsible if Eden will not qualify in the 2021 Grand Final.
On 16 September 2020, KAN opened the public song submission following the announcement of Alene as the selected artist with the deadline on 15 October 2020.
220 submissions were received, which were subsequently evaluated by a professional committee consisting of Ofri Gopher (Director of KAN Music Stations), Roi Dalmadigo (Editor of KAN Gimel), Tal Argaman (DJ and music editor at KAN 88), Alona Kedem (Editor of KAN 88 and KAN Gimel), Tali Katz (Head of Delegation for Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest) and Michael Weisberg (CEO of Aroma Music) that selected nine songs for the competition.
Eden Alene is the first Israeli of Ethiopian origin to represent Israel on the Eurovision stage. She had been chosen for last year’s contest, which was cancelled because of COVID-19.
