A quote, commonly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, though there is no evidence that he ever said it. Which doesn't alter its accuracy.
Despite its tackiness, corporatism and overly superficial songs, I must admit that like millions of other people around the world, I love Eurovision. I don't love it enough to follow the various stages, but for ten out of the last eleven years, I have made an event of watching it, more often than not with lots of fizzy pop and crunchy snacks that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole at any other time of year. There's just something about Eurovision, you know? I have always done my best to avoid getting involved in the politics of it - I always vote based on my opinions of the acts and nothing else. But this year, there have been two things that have caused me to acknowledge the political impact of Eurovision, and as one of them is really quite serious I will devote most of the blog to that.
I will start out though by talking about the stage invasion during the UK's entry. For anyone who didn't watch it, a man ran onstage during the UK's performance, snatched the singer's microphone and shouted: 'Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom, war is not peace', before being restrained by security. The stage invader is known as Dr AC, and he is a rapper and political activist who has a history of storming stage performances. I was going to write a full blog on this, but recent events have meant that issues with Palestine and Israel have had to take precedence here, with this incident relegated to the opening paragraphs. As a left-wing activist and social commentator, I quite frequently have people making certain assumptions about me (only yesterday, I had someone I didn't even know ask me if I 'look for attention like the standard pansexual, feminist, non binary and all that other bullshit sort of people do'). Anyone who identifies as any of those things should of course be happy and proud to do so, but there are some (supposedly) left-wing activists who really do lower the tone of how we are perceived. This Dr AC is one of them. Anyone who interrupts an artistic performance, no matter how corporatist the event is that it is being performed at, really needs to take a good hard look at themselves. There are two reasons for this: the first is that it's very unfair on the artist, and the second is that it gives the right-wing media the excuse to diss you. Just as an example, the rapper Dr AC has been labelled in the press as a 'Corbyn supporter', which will no doubt stand in people's minds as another reason to doubt Jeremy Corbyn, even if though he had nothing to do with it. The thing that annoys me particularly about this is that I think it's completely reasonable to cast doubt on the state of the UK media (I frequently do myself) and the way that Dr AC approached this protest delegitimises any attempt to have that conversation.
Despite its tackiness, corporatism and overly superficial songs, I must admit that like millions of other people around the world, I love Eurovision. I don't love it enough to follow the various stages, but for ten out of the last eleven years, I have made an event of watching it, more often than not with lots of fizzy pop and crunchy snacks that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole at any other time of year. There's just something about Eurovision, you know? I have always done my best to avoid getting involved in the politics of it - I always vote based on my opinions of the acts and nothing else. But this year, there have been two things that have caused me to acknowledge the political impact of Eurovision, and as one of them is really quite serious I will devote most of the blog to that.
I will start out though by talking about the stage invasion during the UK's entry. For anyone who didn't watch it, a man ran onstage during the UK's performance, snatched the singer's microphone and shouted: 'Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom, war is not peace', before being restrained by security. The stage invader is known as Dr AC, and he is a rapper and political activist who has a history of storming stage performances. I was going to write a full blog on this, but recent events have meant that issues with Palestine and Israel have had to take precedence here, with this incident relegated to the opening paragraphs. As a left-wing activist and social commentator, I quite frequently have people making certain assumptions about me (only yesterday, I had someone I didn't even know ask me if I 'look for attention like the standard pansexual, feminist, non binary and all that other bullshit sort of people do'). Anyone who identifies as any of those things should of course be happy and proud to do so, but there are some (supposedly) left-wing activists who really do lower the tone of how we are perceived. This Dr AC is one of them. Anyone who interrupts an artistic performance, no matter how corporatist the event is that it is being performed at, really needs to take a good hard look at themselves. There are two reasons for this: the first is that it's very unfair on the artist, and the second is that it gives the right-wing media the excuse to diss you. Just as an example, the rapper Dr AC has been labelled in the press as a 'Corbyn supporter', which will no doubt stand in people's minds as another reason to doubt Jeremy Corbyn, even if though he had nothing to do with it. The thing that annoys me particularly about this is that I think it's completely reasonable to cast doubt on the state of the UK media (I frequently do myself) and the way that Dr AC approached this protest delegitimises any attempt to have that conversation.
And now I come on to what I must devote the majority of this blog to, which is the political significance of Israel winning the Eurovision Song Contest and what that means within the region. The case of Israel's position within the world is something that is complex, and something that I differ sometimes even with my fellow Palestine campaigners on. There are some who say that Israel doesn't even have the right to be there, and I disagree on that because I'm a supporter of diversity wherever possible, people from all backgrounds and all walks of life living alongside one another, and I believe that in the region as well. What I don't agree with is that Jewish people have a God-given right to inhabit that region at the expense of all other groups of people. I am an anti-zionist. There are many who will conflate that with anti-Semitism, which means prejudice against Jews. They are by no means the same thing. Anti-zionism is a political opinion, one that many Jews share, and for myself at least, is something that I would extend to all circumstances and all groups of people. On planet Earth, I don't believe that any specific group of people have a monopoly over any specific piece of land, in the same way that I don't believe that humans have any more of a claim to this planet than any other life form.
I don't think many people (or at least, people in power) actually believe that anti-zionism and anti-Semitism are interchangeable. It's really more of an attempt to justify the unjustifiable by painting those who oppose it with the racist brush, which generally is quite a lazy way of arguing a point. It's the same mentality as those who complain that if you're against war, it means you must be against the armed forces, and if you're against the armed forces you're showing an unacceptable lack of respect for those who lay down their lives - quite obviously, this is not true, but by saying it like that you prevent anyone from questioning the agenda that you're setting forward, agendas which many powerful people from around the world have a vested interest in. Anti-Semitism aside, no one would reasonably accept the actions of Israel being committed by any other country. To put this in perspective, since the United Nations Human Rights Council was founded in 2006, it has resolved almost more resolutions comdemning Israel than the whole of the rest of the world combined. Think about that for a moment.
The occupation of Palestine started with the creation of Israel in the late 1940s, increased significantly in the wake of the six-day war of 1967, and has been increasing ever since. I'm sure most of my readers will have seen this map at some point in the past, but in case you haven't here it is:
It is worth bearing in mind that this particular incarnation of the map only goes up to 2005, because in the last thirteen years the divide has increased significantly. Palestine is being wiped out, and across the last week and a half, tensions in the region seem to have increased once more.
Last week, Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka opened the new US embassy in Jerusalem, in what seems like a deliberate attempt to escalate tensions in the region. In recent years, US presidents have generally been less than exemplary when it comes to Israel, but this just takes the biscuit. Jerusalem is not recognised as the capital of Israel by any country other than the US, Russia and of course Israel itself. The western half has been occupied by Israel since 1948, the eastern half since 1967, and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 (passed in 1980) declares Israel's Jerusalem Law to be null and void. Palestinians living in Jerusalem are in legal limbo, not being considered citizens of Israel, Palestine or nearby Jordan. They are constantly at risk of having their residency revoked. In short, they are treated as foreign immigrants in a city that many of them were born in and have lived in all their lives.
Israel, on the other hand, does not even avoid apartheid when it comes to the Jewish people, much as it claims to be the Jewish state. Jews in Israel are not equal. They are divided into three groups - Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Mazrahi, and the Ashkenazi Jews (meaning those who arrived from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century), whilst not necessarily having any specific advantages within law, are generally more accepted within Israeli culture and have greater access to things like education. The Al-Jazeera article I have linked above focusses in particular upon the distinctions between Ashkenazi and Mazrahi Jews, but I remember hearing a podcast called Bombs, Badgers and Bigotry back in September (the Israel bit starts at about 34.40) where Nancy Mendoza talked with Emily Apple, John Ranson and Tamara Micner about her own experiences of anti-Semitism, her opinions of Israel and her status as a Sephardic Jew, which would mean that she would be unable to claim all the benefits of living in Israel that are supposedly open to all Jews. I bring this up because it is important to note that Israel as an apartheid state does not even limit that apartheid to the people it claims it is limiting it to (as bad as that is in itself); even groups that Israel supposedly considers to be its own people are not treated equally within its borders. It is worth bearing this in mind, because I think it emphasises even more plainly that this whole discussion is not really about Jewish identity, as much as it is the fact that the powers that be in Israel make decisions that are harming (and ending) people's lives for political gain.
Aside from accusations of anti-Semitism, the other thing I hear constantly from Israel apologists is attempts to blame Hamas (which controls the Palestine Government) for Israel's actions, saying that they have provoked them and aren't being diplomatic enough at resolving things. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that, and in honesty I don't really care. I find Hamas a pretty irrelevant distraction actually, for a few reasons:
1) Hamas was formed in 1987, whereas this conflict has been going on in some shape or form since the Second World War, and has been ramped up on Israel's part since the mid-60s;
2) Given how outspoken I am about the Conservative Party, the idea that the people deserve what is coming to them because of the actions of their representatives is something that I cannot give any sympathy to;
3) The bottom line is that it is not Hamas actually holding the weapons that are killing Palestinians.
It is truthfully quite astonishing to see how far people will go to absolve Israeli forces. Over the last few weeks, I have seen the condemnation of Palestinians go beyond Hamas to the Palestinians themselves. When children are being arrested and even killed by Israeli soldiers, I have actually come across people in all seriousness suggesting that it is the fault of the child's parents for living near the Gaza strip. Obviously no one would volunteer to live in a place where they and their kids' lives were under threat, but surely the more important question is, where have we come to in the world where we hold a child's parents more responsible for threats to that child's life than whoever is actually causing the threat? When children were put in the gas chambers in the concentration camps in the 1940s, was it the fault of the Nazis, or of the kids' parents for not hiding effectively enough?
Clearly, the whole thing is a double standard. In the minds of a lot of people, it matters less exactly what is being done, and more who is doing it, and that extends beyond just Israel and Palestine, it is a phenomenon that occurs with virtually every issue in the world. I could probably talk about the root causes of this for hours, but in the interests of not extending this blog even longer, I shall move on. Donald Trump's decision to open the US embassy in Jerusalem was clearly not an attempt to achieve peace, as achieving peace generally tends to be done by working alongside the international community, and as stated above, there are only three countries in the world that officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and that includes Israel itself. One does not achieve peace by opening up old wounds or by resorting to inflammatory comments on Twitter. One achieves it by making a concerted effort to work out a solution that results in freedom for everyone. That is not what Israel is trying to do, and it is not what those sucking up to Israel are doing either.
I want to finish off by returning to the title of this blog, which is the impact the Eurovision Song Contest has on political allegiances with its position on the world stage. Israel won the Eurovision Song Contest (incidentally, with a performance that irrespective of my political views on Israel, I thought was appalling) and will therefore be hosting next year's contest. I will stay true to my views that fans of the contest should vote purely on which act is the best, irrespective of their political values. And if a country with a history of very serious human rights abuses happens to win, by convention they still have the right to host the following year's contest. (It's questionable whether they should have been allowed to take part at all of course, but that ship has sailed.) What I do find is that Israel's current position within the contest gives anti-zionist activists a really good opportunity to further the campaign. There are already numerous companies I refuse to buy from because of their involvement with Israel, (the Boycot, Divestment and Sanctions movement has an awful lot of information and I encourage anyone who hasn't already to look into it). Most importantly, this campaign is having an effect. In America, there has been talk about making it illegal to boycott Israel, which when one thinks about it is ridiculous and impossible to enforce - everyone has a right to choose which brands they buy. But this sort of reaction from those in power would not be happening were it not having an effect. And with next year's Eurovision, there is an opportunity for the BDS movement to increase its boycotting even further.
There is a year to make this happen. On a political level, a celebration of Israel is not what needs to happen next year, and boycotting Eurovision would send a very powerful message that if you want to take part in what should be a fabulous celebration of art and music, you will only be accepted if you stop committing war crimes. I highly doubt halting next year's contest is feasible, or even desirable. But what we can do is make it clear how controversial this is, take advantage to show the world exactly what the nation hosting their favourite music contest is guilty of (if we could get even one country to refuse to participate, that would really be the icing on the cake) and that would undoubtedly improve things. Israel only gets away with what it does because the rest of the world lets it, and as I have demonstrated will go to any length to excuse its actions.
And I will just concluse by reiterating what I said at the start - quite apart from my opinions on Israel, the reason I feel so strongly about this is that despite its flaws I love Eurovision, I watch it every year and I think it would be amazing if it stood up in the international community and said, 'This is wrong'. So often, the songs (though they avoid specific political references) have themes based around love and peace - time to give that some meaning, yes? So I shall leave you with the song Love Shine A Light by Katrina and the Waves, the last UK winners, which I think embodies everything.
Peace!
I don't think many people (or at least, people in power) actually believe that anti-zionism and anti-Semitism are interchangeable. It's really more of an attempt to justify the unjustifiable by painting those who oppose it with the racist brush, which generally is quite a lazy way of arguing a point. It's the same mentality as those who complain that if you're against war, it means you must be against the armed forces, and if you're against the armed forces you're showing an unacceptable lack of respect for those who lay down their lives - quite obviously, this is not true, but by saying it like that you prevent anyone from questioning the agenda that you're setting forward, agendas which many powerful people from around the world have a vested interest in. Anti-Semitism aside, no one would reasonably accept the actions of Israel being committed by any other country. To put this in perspective, since the United Nations Human Rights Council was founded in 2006, it has resolved almost more resolutions comdemning Israel than the whole of the rest of the world combined. Think about that for a moment.
The occupation of Palestine started with the creation of Israel in the late 1940s, increased significantly in the wake of the six-day war of 1967, and has been increasing ever since. I'm sure most of my readers will have seen this map at some point in the past, but in case you haven't here it is:
It is worth bearing in mind that this particular incarnation of the map only goes up to 2005, because in the last thirteen years the divide has increased significantly. Palestine is being wiped out, and across the last week and a half, tensions in the region seem to have increased once more.
Last week, Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka opened the new US embassy in Jerusalem, in what seems like a deliberate attempt to escalate tensions in the region. In recent years, US presidents have generally been less than exemplary when it comes to Israel, but this just takes the biscuit. Jerusalem is not recognised as the capital of Israel by any country other than the US, Russia and of course Israel itself. The western half has been occupied by Israel since 1948, the eastern half since 1967, and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 (passed in 1980) declares Israel's Jerusalem Law to be null and void. Palestinians living in Jerusalem are in legal limbo, not being considered citizens of Israel, Palestine or nearby Jordan. They are constantly at risk of having their residency revoked. In short, they are treated as foreign immigrants in a city that many of them were born in and have lived in all their lives.
Israel, on the other hand, does not even avoid apartheid when it comes to the Jewish people, much as it claims to be the Jewish state. Jews in Israel are not equal. They are divided into three groups - Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Mazrahi, and the Ashkenazi Jews (meaning those who arrived from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century), whilst not necessarily having any specific advantages within law, are generally more accepted within Israeli culture and have greater access to things like education. The Al-Jazeera article I have linked above focusses in particular upon the distinctions between Ashkenazi and Mazrahi Jews, but I remember hearing a podcast called Bombs, Badgers and Bigotry back in September (the Israel bit starts at about 34.40) where Nancy Mendoza talked with Emily Apple, John Ranson and Tamara Micner about her own experiences of anti-Semitism, her opinions of Israel and her status as a Sephardic Jew, which would mean that she would be unable to claim all the benefits of living in Israel that are supposedly open to all Jews. I bring this up because it is important to note that Israel as an apartheid state does not even limit that apartheid to the people it claims it is limiting it to (as bad as that is in itself); even groups that Israel supposedly considers to be its own people are not treated equally within its borders. It is worth bearing this in mind, because I think it emphasises even more plainly that this whole discussion is not really about Jewish identity, as much as it is the fact that the powers that be in Israel make decisions that are harming (and ending) people's lives for political gain.
Aside from accusations of anti-Semitism, the other thing I hear constantly from Israel apologists is attempts to blame Hamas (which controls the Palestine Government) for Israel's actions, saying that they have provoked them and aren't being diplomatic enough at resolving things. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that, and in honesty I don't really care. I find Hamas a pretty irrelevant distraction actually, for a few reasons:
1) Hamas was formed in 1987, whereas this conflict has been going on in some shape or form since the Second World War, and has been ramped up on Israel's part since the mid-60s;
2) Given how outspoken I am about the Conservative Party, the idea that the people deserve what is coming to them because of the actions of their representatives is something that I cannot give any sympathy to;
3) The bottom line is that it is not Hamas actually holding the weapons that are killing Palestinians.
It is truthfully quite astonishing to see how far people will go to absolve Israeli forces. Over the last few weeks, I have seen the condemnation of Palestinians go beyond Hamas to the Palestinians themselves. When children are being arrested and even killed by Israeli soldiers, I have actually come across people in all seriousness suggesting that it is the fault of the child's parents for living near the Gaza strip. Obviously no one would volunteer to live in a place where they and their kids' lives were under threat, but surely the more important question is, where have we come to in the world where we hold a child's parents more responsible for threats to that child's life than whoever is actually causing the threat? When children were put in the gas chambers in the concentration camps in the 1940s, was it the fault of the Nazis, or of the kids' parents for not hiding effectively enough?
Clearly, the whole thing is a double standard. In the minds of a lot of people, it matters less exactly what is being done, and more who is doing it, and that extends beyond just Israel and Palestine, it is a phenomenon that occurs with virtually every issue in the world. I could probably talk about the root causes of this for hours, but in the interests of not extending this blog even longer, I shall move on. Donald Trump's decision to open the US embassy in Jerusalem was clearly not an attempt to achieve peace, as achieving peace generally tends to be done by working alongside the international community, and as stated above, there are only three countries in the world that officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and that includes Israel itself. One does not achieve peace by opening up old wounds or by resorting to inflammatory comments on Twitter. One achieves it by making a concerted effort to work out a solution that results in freedom for everyone. That is not what Israel is trying to do, and it is not what those sucking up to Israel are doing either.
I want to finish off by returning to the title of this blog, which is the impact the Eurovision Song Contest has on political allegiances with its position on the world stage. Israel won the Eurovision Song Contest (incidentally, with a performance that irrespective of my political views on Israel, I thought was appalling) and will therefore be hosting next year's contest. I will stay true to my views that fans of the contest should vote purely on which act is the best, irrespective of their political values. And if a country with a history of very serious human rights abuses happens to win, by convention they still have the right to host the following year's contest. (It's questionable whether they should have been allowed to take part at all of course, but that ship has sailed.) What I do find is that Israel's current position within the contest gives anti-zionist activists a really good opportunity to further the campaign. There are already numerous companies I refuse to buy from because of their involvement with Israel, (the Boycot, Divestment and Sanctions movement has an awful lot of information and I encourage anyone who hasn't already to look into it). Most importantly, this campaign is having an effect. In America, there has been talk about making it illegal to boycott Israel, which when one thinks about it is ridiculous and impossible to enforce - everyone has a right to choose which brands they buy. But this sort of reaction from those in power would not be happening were it not having an effect. And with next year's Eurovision, there is an opportunity for the BDS movement to increase its boycotting even further.
There is a year to make this happen. On a political level, a celebration of Israel is not what needs to happen next year, and boycotting Eurovision would send a very powerful message that if you want to take part in what should be a fabulous celebration of art and music, you will only be accepted if you stop committing war crimes. I highly doubt halting next year's contest is feasible, or even desirable. But what we can do is make it clear how controversial this is, take advantage to show the world exactly what the nation hosting their favourite music contest is guilty of (if we could get even one country to refuse to participate, that would really be the icing on the cake) and that would undoubtedly improve things. Israel only gets away with what it does because the rest of the world lets it, and as I have demonstrated will go to any length to excuse its actions.
And I will just concluse by reiterating what I said at the start - quite apart from my opinions on Israel, the reason I feel so strongly about this is that despite its flaws I love Eurovision, I watch it every year and I think it would be amazing if it stood up in the international community and said, 'This is wrong'. So often, the songs (though they avoid specific political references) have themes based around love and peace - time to give that some meaning, yes? So I shall leave you with the song Love Shine A Light by Katrina and the Waves, the last UK winners, which I think embodies everything.
Peace!
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