At last year’s festival in Sweden, protests against Israel’s participation reached a fever pitch, with police scuffling with protesters as fans lined up to enter the stadium.
While the lyrics of this year’s song, “New Day Will Rise,” don’t make reference to any events in particular, Galia Press-Barnathan, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says the message is nevertheless clear.
“You can’t ban a personal story from a competition,” she told NBC News in a Zoom interview earlier this month. “So you really get two for one,” she said, with a talented singer performing what sounds like “an old French chanson” paired with a story that makes clear the song is actually about “both a personal trauma and a national trauma, and how you sort of come out of this.”
Yeah, you told us not to make it political, but we figured we’d flagrantly worm our way around the intent of it anyways. Gross.
You can’t ban a personal story from a competition,” she told NBC News in a Zoom interview earlier this month.
Yes you can. Nobody talks about whether Russia would send a song that is “personal”. The country is in gross violation of international law and that is the reason for the ban. It is completely irrelevant what the song is about. The country is the problem and the song is presented as an entry for the country.
It shouldn’t matter what the lyrics are about to begin with as Israel should not be allowed to participate while committing some of the most heinous crimes against humanity.
Yeah, you told us not to make it political, but we figured we’d flagrantly worm our way around the intent of it anyways. Gross.
Yes you can. Nobody talks about whether Russia would send a song that is “personal”. The country is in gross violation of international law and that is the reason for the ban. It is completely irrelevant what the song is about. The country is the problem and the song is presented as an entry for the country.
It shouldn’t matter what the lyrics are about to begin with as Israel should not be allowed to participate while committing some of the most heinous crimes against humanity.