Izhar Cohen won the Eurovision song contest for Israel in 1978 with his iconic song, A-ba-ni-bi. Cohen again represented Israel in 1985 with Ole Ole, coming in 5th place, and tried to represent Israel in a couple of others years but failed to qualify.

Basically, Izhar Cohen has a lot of experience with the Eurovision.

And Izhar Cohen is disturbed that people planning to come, or trying to come, from Europe for the Eurovision contest to be held in Israel this coming May will have to deal with price gouging at the level that will make it prohibitively expensive for many people. The tickets for the contest itself are going to be expensive, but beyond that hotel prices have skyrocketed for that period.

Cohen says besides for people staying away, many will still come and then talk badly about being ripped off in Israel. To that end, Cohen has come up with an initiative in which participating people will offer space in their homes for free to visitors coming for the Eurovision. Cohen says this will give Israel a lot of good press and people will come and then go home happy and talk about their great experiences.


Cohen says he knows he can rake in a lot of money renting out his home or even just some beds in his home, but the good press Israel would get from this initiative is worth so much more.

And according to the Channel 13 news clip (in the Srugim article), people are signing on and opening their homes!

I wonder if they would let fellow Israelis stay in their homes like that as well...

But really, it is a nice initiative. I see nothing wrong with taking advantage of a service like AirBnB or Booking.com in order to rent out an apartment or a room in an apartment and make a little money off it. Nobody expects to travel to another country and to not have to pay for food and lodging. A fair price would be fine, while the price gouging happening is unfair. I know, a fair price is whatever someone is willing to pay and if a homeowner or hotel manager could charge an exorbitant fee it is driven by market forces and capitalism and is automatically a fair price, but still, price gouging and taking advantage of an unfair situation makes it difficult for a lot of people.

So, while it would be fair to charge something and nobody would complain, it is very magnanimous of him and other participants to do it for free in exchange for nothing but possible goodwill.

It is clear that Izhar Cohen really loves his country.