Fact-Check Dispatch: Israeli government pays for Eurovision ads, Gaza aid depots under construction, and Trump's $400m jet
Issue 20 of the Fact-Check Dispatch
The Eurovision Song Contest for 2025 came and went over the last week, with Israel’s participation once again at the centre of controversy as the country wages a war in Gaza.
The close second place won by the Israeli artist led to widespread backlash about the voting system and fresh calls for the country to be expelled from the song contest. An investigation showed how the Israeli government leveraged a state-funded online advertising campaign for the country’s entry.
The issue did not fully bubble over until after the Grand Final was over. However, even earlier in the week, a simple incorrect message reply to voters in one of the semi-finals raised the heckles of fans, forcing the contest’s organisers to clarify that all votes were indeed counted correctly.
Meanwhile in the Middle East, construction sites appeared in Gaza that appeared to be part of an Israeli plan to deliver a controversial new aid plan. The Israeli government fully blockaded the Gaza Strip since March, leading to a mass hunger and health crisis in the enclave as attacks continued.
As activists, humanitarian organisations, and world leaders called for aid to be allowed into Gaza, some fake news circulated about aid drops over the strip, which didn’t actually take place.
Here’s our fact-check dispatch.
Israel in focus at Eurovision Song Contest
The 69th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest kicked off last week in Basel, Switzerland, ending with a Grand Final on Saturday night, May 17.
With Israel taking part for a second year since the launch of its devastating war on Gaza, the country’s act Yuval Raphael and the Israeli delegation were again under the spotlight.
The contest was ultimately won by Austria’s JJ, but the huge public vote for Israel’s Yuval Raphael put her into second place. Theories about the vote began circulating, with fans wondering how the act gained such huge public support from countries where the song seemed neither domestically popular nor support for Israel particularly high.
The story evolved in the days after the Grand Final, with several member broadcasters calling for a discussion with the EBU about both Israel’s participation in the contest and the televoting system. It even reached the highest political level when Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made a public statement saying Israel should be removed from the Eurovision in line with Russia’s expulsion amid the war in Ukraine.
The organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest confirmed that there were no irregularities with the voting. There is also no rule against paid advertising or promotion for the artists, a tactic some countries and delegations lean into more than others.
An investigation by Eurovision News Spotlight uncovered evidence that an agency of the Israeli government deployed cross-platform advertising and used state social media accounts to directly target and encourage the public in participating countries to vote for the Israeli entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Israeli Government Advertising Agency, which serves various government offices, corporations, government-owned companies, and publicly-owned enterprises, placed advertisements across Google products. They also provided instructions on how to vote up to 20 times for the country’s representative in the 2025 contest held in Basel, Switzerland.
The advertisements placed by the Israeli agency garnered millions of views across the internet leading up to Saturday’s final in Basel.
The inclusion of advertising and promoting the country’s Eurovision Song Contest entrant comes as a departure from the agency’s regular activities of communicating the Israeli government's perspective on the Gaza conflict, its defence policies, and its relationships with international bodies.
Analysis of the Google Ad Transparency Center by the Spotlight team found that the Israeli Government Advertising Agency has run more than 5,000 advertisements, some of which target the credibility of organisations that criticise Israel, counter accusations of wrongdoing, and canvass support for Israel's position on issues such as its military operations in Gaza.
A statement from Martin Green, Director of the ESC, said: “The Eurovision Song Contest's rules are designed to ensure a fair and neutral competition. These rules do not prohibit participating broadcasters or third parties such as record labels or others from promoting their entries online and elsewhere, as long as such promotion does not instrumentalize the Contest or breach its editorial guidelines. Many delegations employ paid promotion campaigns to support the song, profile, and future careers of their artists.”
The investigation was also covered by the team at Spain’s VerificaRTVE, Daan Nicolay of Belgium’s VRT NWS, and Switzerland’s SRF.
Voting message error sparks theories
Fans in Norway reported getting a strange message when they tried to vote for Croatia in the first semi-final. Translated into English, the message said: “Thank you for voting for Israel! You can vote 20 times, so if you like the entry, you can vote again. Best regards Eurovision 2025.”
Eurovision News Spotlight sought a statement from the organisers on what exactly happened here. Martin Green, Director of the Eurovision Song Contest, said: “Our voting partner Once has confirmed that a valid vote was recorded in all countries participating in this year’s First Semi Final. Some voters in Norway received an incorrect message when voting but votes for all countries were correctly attributed and this did not impact the result.”
Based on this, the automated message error was likely a technical mix-up between act 14 on Tuesday and act 14 on Thursday.
The incident was a reminder that while this glitch could have affected any of the participating countries, the fact that it involved Israel heightened suspicion, since it came amid many fans’ broader distrust in the organisers over their handling of participants whose countries are engaged in a conflict. It’s unlikely the error would have caused such a stir had it involved two more neutral participants.
As always, when analysing claims, it is important to look at the context and viewpoints of those proliferating them, as they may give us vital clues that point to confirmation bias.
Aid distribution centre construction sites appear in Gaza
Israel is preparing a number of sites in Gaza that could be used as distribution centres for aid under an Israeli-U.S. aid plan that was rejected by the United Nations, according to a report by BBC Verify, which analysed satellite imagery.
Benedict Garman, Matt Murphy and Merlyn Thomas wrote how the U.S. had earlier confirmed that it was preparing a new system of providing aid from a series of hubs inside Gaza, “which would be run by private companies and protected by security contractors and Israeli forces”.
UN agencies said they would no co-operate with the plan, saying it went against fundamental humanitarian principles. “A spokesperson for the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) accused Israel of seeking to use ‘food and fuel as leverage, as part of a military strategy’.
“All aid would be channelled through a handful of militarised hubs,” Olga Cherevko told BBC Verify. “That kind of arrangement would cut off vast areas of Gaza – particularly the most vulnerable, who can't move easily, or are otherwise marginalised – from any help at all.”
But do we know whether the plan will really be going ahead? Well, the team at BBC Verify analysed a series of recent satellite images from Planet Labs, where they were able to see new clearings and the beginnings of construction sites being established.
“BBC Verify used satellite imagery to identify four potential sites based on the limited available information about their locations. The sites are similar in size, shape and design to existing open-air distribution sites inside Gaza, such as at Erez, Erez West and Kisufim. The largest site we've looked at is bigger - more comparable to the area inside Gaza at Kerem Shalom crossing,” they wrote.
Analysis of a high-resolution image captured on May 8 showed bulldozers and excavators working on a section of land near the Egyptian border. Other images from May 11 and 12 show this and three other sites continuing to expand. “One site is about half a kilometre from a collection of eight UN warehouses, and 280m from another large warehouse.”
Three of the four sites identified by BBC Verify are south of the IDF's newly created Morag Corridor.
China didn’t drop aid into the Gaza Strip
The fact-checkers at Germany’s WDR looked into a story for their social media explainer channel, tickr news, about alleged aid air drops into Gaza amid the total blockade on the enclave.
The story began when they noticed videos circulating claiming to show Chinese aid drops over Gaza. The clips showed aid being dropped from aircraft by parachute, similarly to how many countries have delivered aid to the Palestinians since the beginning of the war.
Many of the comments were complimentary about China’s efforts to deliver aid. But, as the presenter Tom Schachtsieik explains, these videos are misrepresented.
“Here’s the kicker. We really do see a Chinese plane, which was also used to deliver aid like this. But in Afghanistan, for example, not Gaza.”
Another of the clips showed Chinese planes flying over the pyramids of Egypt, saying they were on their way to Gaza. “The truth is that the footage is from a military exercise conducted by China and Egypt at the beginning of May. No Chinese aeroplanes flew over Gaza,” the WDR team said in its analysis.
False aid delivery stories have the potential to hamper the world’s understanding of the real situation inside the Gaza Strip, where the UN says the entire population is now at “critical risk” of famine, further highlighting the importance of this fact-checking work.
Can Trump accept $400m gift?
In the US, much of the news cycle over the last week centred on Donald Trump and a gift from Qatar worth $400 million. The present? An ultra-luxury Boeing jumbo jet to be used as Air Force One.
Opposition politicians slammed the administration’s intent to accept the plane as “wildly illegal”, while even some of Trump’s own supporters were not in favour of the president accepting such a lavish gift.
For BBC Verify, Jake Horton, Tom Edgington and Joshua Cheetham looked into the actual laws around gifts that can be accepted by the president.
Experts in American history and constitutional law told BBC Verify that laws around gifts were brought in to prevent bribery or influence the government, and this latest proposed gift is “certainly stretching the Constitution”.
Horton, Edgington and Cheetham write: “There have been a number of other laws passed by Congress relating to the acceptance of foreign gifts, such as the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act of 1966, which means that congressional consent is required for the acceptance of foreign gifts above a certain value.”
Generally, U.S. officials are only allowed to accept gifts valued under $480.
There was also a question around what might happen to the plane after Trump leaves office. “Although Trump has referred to the plane ultimately going to his ‘library’, experts have suggested he really means his museum foundation. Ex-presidents typically have a library housing their archive of documents, and a museum - typically funded by private donations - full of memorabilia and open to the public.”
“Experts who BBC Verify spoke to said the fact that the plane could be given to the administration - and not to the president directly - before being transferred to his museum, may not get around the potential violation of the constitution.”
It’s not to say that Trump may not still go ahead and accept this extravagant gift; the U.S. President has been known to push the limits of his powers. However, as we’ve seen in past dispatches, expert insights around complex and obscure issues are invaluable for both journalists trying to cover the story and the public at large.
And in such a divisive information environment, the Trump plane story generated dozens of counterclaims among the right-wing online community, which were debunked by fact-checking outlets. They saw users posting about a $17m helicopter Bill Clinton was allegedly gifted by Saudi Arabia, and a supposed gift by Kuwait of a $90m luxury jet to Al Gore.