OGAE Israel celebrated the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest in a party in Tel Aviv last night. During the event, about a hundred members voted for the 2009 entries. In addition, the event marked the 1979 and 1999 Eurovision Song Contests, which were held in Jerusalem, and also hosted this year's Israeli entrants Noa & Mira.
The event, which took place at the exclusive Culture Club in Tel Aviv, was the occasion where OGAE Israel proudly welcomed Noa and Mira Awad with their team to Moscow.
The duo told the crowd about the preparations to the contest in Moscow and about their feelings. "Of course we want to do well in the contest and to bring the best result, but everyone must try to understand that this song tells the story of a journey. Thats why our message is the primary thing", said Noa. The duo alsospoke about what we can expect from the stage performance: Noa and Mira will both carry ethnic drums with them, walking back and forth on the stage. Along with them, on stage, will be Gil Dor, one the song "There Must Be Another Way" composers, and also two percussionists. "To be honest, we looked terrible in the national final. That's only because we had no time to prepare", Noa addmited, but promised the stage act in Moscow is well planned. Nevertheless, Gil Dor declared that the musical arrangement, which is used in the preview clip (the less up beat one), will be the one used in the contest, rather than the national final version.
As being Bulgarian, from her mother's side, Mira mentiond she is "Working hard on getting the Bulgarian votes, by being interviewed by the Bulgarian media", as she put it. When asked about the rest of the songs in the contest, and wether they have listened to them, the singers mentioned Turkey as their strongest rival in the semifinal. They also mentioned the Danish entrant Brinck, as the most attractive singer in the contest…
As for the voting, the crowd first voted for both semifinals, allwoing the following 20 countries to qualify to the final: Portugal, Greece, Lithuania, Azerbijan, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Estonia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Sweden, Slovenia, Israel, Moldova, Denmark and Armenia. These countries joined the automatic qualifiers, and after another round of voting (in 10 juries), these were the results of the OGAE Israel club:
- 12 France (65 votes)
- 10 Norway (58 votes)
- — Israel (57 votes)
- 8 Sweden (52 votes)
- 7 Bosnia Herzegovina (44 votes)
- 6 Estonia (40 votes)
- 5 Switzerland (38 votes)
- 4 Iceland (32 votes)
- 3 UK (30 votes)
- 2 Lithuania (27 votes)
- 1 Portugal (27 votes)
Just missing out:
- Russia (22 votes)
- Greece (14 votes)
- Azerbaijan (12 votes)
After the Israeli vote, the scoreboard doesn't go through major changes. We just can mention that, since several voting rounds ago, France and Sweden are continuously swapping second and third place, with France now holding the silver medal just 3 points ahead of Sweden.
The scoreboard after 23 votings:
| 1 | Norway | 231 | ↔ |
| 2 | France | 144 | ↑ |
| 3 | Sweden | 141 | ↓ |
| 4 | Bosnia & Herzegovina | 112 | ↔ |
| 5 | Spain | 88 | ↔ |
| 6 | Azerbaijan | 87 | ↔ |
| 7 | Greece | 69 | ↔ |
| 8 | Iceland | 68 | ↔ |
| 9 | Estonia | 66 | ↔ |
| 10 | United Kingdom | 55 | ↑ |
| 11 | Turkey | 54 | ↓ |
| 12 | Finland | 30 | ↔ |
| 13 | Denmark | 28 | ↔ |
| 14 | Lithuania | 26 | ↔ |
| 15 | Portugal | 24 | ↔ |
| 16 | Malta | 19 | ↔ |
| 17 | Switzerland | 17 | ↑ |
| 18 | Israel | 15 | ↓ |
| 19 | Albania | 10 | ↔ |
| 20 | Slovenia | 7 | ↔ |
| 21 | Russia | 6 | ↔ |
| 22 | Romania | 5 | ↔ |
| -. | Montenegro | 5 | ↔ |
| -. | Germany | 5 | ↔ |
| -. | Moldova | 5 | ↔ |
| -. | Armenia | 5 | ↔ |
| 27 | Ukraine | 4 | ↔ |
| 28 | Ireland | 2 | ↔ |
| -. | Cyprus | 2 | ↔ |
| -. | Bulgaria | 2 | ↔ |
| 31 | Croatia | 1 | ↔ |
| -. | Slovakia | 1 | ↔ |
Watch Noa & Mira singing live in last night's OGAE party:
- For more information or to join your local club, please email [email protected]
- Join the esctoday.com FACEBOOK page here
- Join the esctoday.com FACEBOOK group here
