There aren't any juries in the semis any more, like last year. Which, this time around, I'm quite glad for.
Our qualification odds would probably plummet if they were still there! At least with televoters, there's a chance we might make it.
And if the juries dislike us in the final.. oh well, at least we got there.
I think Israel will be a pretty safe qualifier.
You can't really vote against a song as a televoter, unless you vote for every other song in the semi.
So the pro-Israel crowd will have a much easier time showing their support than the anti-Israel crowd. Also there are plenty of average televoters in many countries who don't really care about the issue one way or another and vote for what they like. The song itself I think has enough appeal to older crowds & ballad lovers to qualify. I can definitely see Estonian televoters giving Israel some points, it's the kind of power ballad they usually appreciate.
Netherlands I'm not quite convinced will do as well as the odds predict.
Still probably a safe qualifier tho'. I wouldn't say it's that similar to our song, more similar to Finland perhaps. But we'll all get lumped into the same novelty song category anyway.
But hey, no reason two novelty songs can't qualify from the same semi.
At least Croatia and Finland ended up in the other one!