Oops? Israeli news site reports ISIS ‘threat’ to win Eurovision

The song, ‘Death to the West,’ ‘sounds quite thematically heavy, but I’m sure audiences the world over will love the uplifting chorus,’ the all-too-serious report quotes an all-too-made-up Islamic State spokesperson saying.

By Oren Persico

The graphic, reprinted by Israeli website NRG, was created by UK satirical website ‘The Poke.’ (Photo from The Poke)
The graphic, reprinted un-ironically by Israeli website NRG, was created by UK satirical website ‘The Poke.’ (Photo from The Poke.co.uk)

Ahead of the Eurovision singing contest slated to take place in Sweden later this month, “NRG”, a major news outlets in Israel, published an article on “all of the fears” the popular televised event is raising in Israel, Europe and beyond.

Among a number of very real threats listed in the article was one allegedly posed by ISIS. Not a threat to attack the singing contest with violence — a threat by the Islamic State to win the Eurovision.

“We checked to see how Israeli and Swedish security officials are preparing for the event and we found that ISIS is already prepared with a song of their own,” read the sub-headline of the article, authored by the website’s culture correspondent Edo Dagan.

The article, which discussed widespread anger over changes in the singing contest’s format this year, went on to say: “Even the Islamic State organization ISIS is fuming over the planned changes to the voting system in this year’s Eurovision.”

According to the report, a “propaganda official” in the Islamic State organization made an announcement about “the song that will represent it in the Eurovision.”

The song, Dagan reported, is called “Death to the West,” and is “a power ballad in the vein of Leona Lewis’s global hit Bleeding Love – although instead of lyrics about finding love again after a painful heartbreak, they deal with the establishment of a single, global state under a specific interpretation of Islamic rule.”

The article goes on to quote an ISIS spokesperson who notes that “the song itself sounds quite thematically heavy, but I’m sure audiences the world over will love the uplifting chorus. Either way, it still stands a much greater chance of winning than the British entry.”

Of course, as journalist Uriah Canaff quickly realized, the NRG report about the ISIS song is based on an article from the British satirical website “The Poke,” whose slogan is “time ell wasted.”

At the time of publication, NRG had not yet made a correction on its unwittingly spoofed article, which had been online for a full week.

This article was first published in Hebrew on The 7th Eye.