Even though one newspaper tipped Mei Finegold as a favourite for last week's Eurovision, her song for Israel didn't even make the final.
But even if politics have reduced the country's prospects in recent years, it still has a creditable record in the competition, having won it three times.
Fans of the event enjoyed a light-hearted look back at Israel’s glory years at a JW3 night in London ahead of
this year's contest.
But in a JW3 audience vote for Israel’s best entry, none of the actual Eurovision winners came out on top: Izhar Cohen’s A-Ba-Ni-Bi (1978), Milk and Honey’s Hallelujah (1979) or Dana International’s Diva (1998).
Their choice was the 1983 song, Chai, sung by Ofra Haza.