Tom Dunne: Israel should not perform at this year's Eurovision
Eden Alene, Israel's representative in the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, flies the flag for her nation. (Photo by Sander Koning / ANP / AFP)
Israel performing at the Eurovision Song Contest? I just can’t see it.
I am as slow to judge as anyone I know. The fact that nothing is black and white is something I live by. I get complexity and nuance, I do, but I can’t see this. An Israeli pop performance in Malmo, is unimaginable.
I love Eurovision, as you may know, I have theories on how it might be reclaimed by us. I think it is one of humanity's silliest but nonetheless greatest triumphs. It is stupid and frivolous and madcap.
It’s like a Christmas hooley gone wrong, Life’s rich pageant in all its multicolour, multi-ethnic, pansexual glory.
I also love Israel and its people. The horrors of the Second World War are etched into my soul as man’s darkest hour and its journey since, everything a young, idealistic me hoped the second half of the 20th century could become.
A proud nation, a strong nation, vowing heroically, “never again.” But these are dark, dark days.
A pop performance now would be akin to Peter Brook’s appearance on in 1992. He was then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
A 1990 speech of his, declaring that Britain had no “selfish strategic or economic interest” in Northern Ireland was seen as hugely influential in getting Sinn Féin to the negotiating table.
Britain, he said, would accept unification if the people wished it. It was extraordinary stuff.
But then in January 1992, coaxed by the show’s then-host Gay Byrne, who had a gift for such things, he agreed to sing a party piece, ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine’.
It was light and fun, which would have been fine were it not that earlier in the day, seven Protestant construction workers had been killed by an IRA bomb.
Unionists were outraged. It was impossible not to contrast the secretary of state’s bonhomie and cheerfulness with the unspeakable horror the grieving families were enduring. He appeared delusional and out of touch, either uncaring or simply unmoved by their suffering.
Now imagine such a performance against the backdrop of, as we speak, 25,000 Palestinian dead.
For now, I will leave the wider debate to others, but a pop performance — by their selected singer, 20-year-old Eden Golan — would look absolutely, mind-numbingly appalling.
Her performance would attract nothing but hostility and make her an obvious target for all the anti-Israeli protest in the world. What should be a life-defining moment for her would become an absolute ordeal.
It’s hard to see how any performance could be presented in a way that isn’t either sloppily maudlin or just wildly insensitive to the horrific sufferings of families on both sides of the divide.
Israel, sit this one out. Like Peter Brooks in 1992, now is just not the right time.
Eurovision of course has skirted around politics its whole life. When it first came to prominence in the late 1950s it was everything the then hugely powerful Soviet Union wasn’t.
It was Western Europe, free and glamourous and fun. People in evening dress, drinking champagne, and living the life.
This sat so uncomfortably in the Soviet craw that they organised their own version. The Intervision Song Contest ran from 1961 to 1980.
It sometimes featured men in uniform singing songs about their “glorious leader.” It was as if you’d asked the KGB, or Monty Python to organise it.
If you wanted to see why communism would fail and the Berlin Wall inevitably fall with it, you just had to watch both shows back-to-back. The triumph of the spirit, of freedom, of individuality, was as obvious as it was irresistible. USSR: Nul points.
Eurovision has since blossomed to include countries that were formerly behind that wall and of course, Israel, as an EBU member.
Israel has won four times, most memorably with Dana International. It is always a colourful, often divisive, but welcome presence. Until now.
Protests are already afoot. In Sweden, this year’s host country, more than 1,000 artists, including First Aid Kit and Robyn, have signed an open petition calling for Eurovision to ban Israel, saying its inclusion “trivializes violations of international law and makes the suffering of the victims invisible.”
There will be more to come. I watch annually. As a family we print out voting forms and take it very seriously.
But not this year, not as it stands. It wouldn’t be an escape. It would be another, awful reminder. I literally couldn’t stomach it.
