If there’s anything uglier and stupider than most of the songs performed at the annual Eurovision Song Contest, it’s the boneheaded politics that have, from time to time, intruded upon this gaudy, glitzy international event. This year’s big show won’t be held until early May — in Malmö, Sweden, a city less associated these days with music than with violent, incendiary, and soul-destroying Muslim unrest — but the competitions at which each country’s Eurovision entry is selected are taking place around now, and so a not-inconsiderable number of the continent’s musicians and activists are kicking up a fuss about the participation of a certain nation. Which nation? Israel, of course.
I should hasten to mention that not all of the political agitation concerning this or that nation’s role in Eurovision have been entirely boneheaded. In 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Eurovision authorities at first decided against barring Russia, but under pressure they soon changed their minds, imposing a ban that still remains in effect. At that year’s contest, Ukraine won big with an unprecedentedly high number of international televotes, a result that obviously owed more to political sympathies than to musical tastes. Ordinarily that victory would’ve meant that Ukraine would host the following year’s contest, but under the circumstances it was decided to hold the event in Liverpool, although it could have been argued that certain members of the British public made that metropolis at least as dangerous for visiting Eurovision fans as Kiev. Sweden won that one, hence the decision to force all the participants this time around to brave the perilous streets of Malmö.
But just as the United Nations Human Rights Council is more obsessed with Israel’s purported transgressions than with those of pretty much every other country on the planet put together, political activists who take Eurovision seriously have, over the years, been more preoccupied with alleged Israeli transgressions than with those of any other nation. For example, when Eurovision was held in Tel Aviv in 2019 — the third time the event was hosted by Israel since it first took part in the shindig in 1973 — anti-Israeli activists, led by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, called for a boycott. That boycott never materialized, but at that year’s contest, the Icelandic entrants, a punk-rock group called Hatari, waved a Palestinian flag.
This year, however, the antagonism toward Israel seems to be more intense than ever before. According to a Jan. 29 report, more than half of the citizens of the Netherlands think Israel should be excluded from this year’s Eurovision. But the strongest and most organized opposition, unsurprisingly, is in the Nordic region. On Jan. 28, just prior to the live broadcast of the third semifinal of Norway’s national Eurovision contest — known as Melodi Grand Prix — nine members of something called the Palestine Action Group walked around the headquarters of broadcaster NRK blindfolded and clad only in their underpants, an apparent reference to the fact that some Hamas captives have been forced by the Israel Defense Forces to strip to their shorts and kneel on the ground. (Which, by the way, is kinder treatment than I received at Oslo Airport a couple of years ago when I was wrongly suspected of possessing illegal drugs.)
Then there are the petitions. (People in the Nordic countries love petitions.) In Norway — which alone in Europe refuses to call Hamas a terrorist group and which is now reportedly the world’s biggest funder of UNRWA — singer-songwriter Marthe Valle (who in an op-ed last May sympathetically referred to Hamas as a “resistance movement”) and Marte Wulff (who describes herself on her website as an “environmentally involved artist” who takes “an artistic and creative approach to the challenges and opportunities of climate and environmental issues”) put together a petition demanding that Israel be left out of this year’s Eurovision contest. At last word, 293 Norwegian musical acts, including individual performers as well as groups, have signed on. Most of the names mean nothing to me, as is par for the course in such cases. Some of them, moreover, don’t surprise me at all. NRK’s news story on the petition singled out one of the more familiar names on the list, that of singer-songwriter Åge Aleksandersen (74), who provided a comment about the situation in Gaza: “It means so much to me. I have made songs that address this issue. And I think what is happening is so ugly, and it hurts me and many others.”
I remembered that Aleksandersen had been guilty, years back, of some totally idiotic cultural offense, but I couldn’t recall the specifics. Digging out a copy of the 2007 paperback edition of my book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, I found him on page 217, where I quoted from an NRK profile of Aleksandersen, who at the time was promoting his latest album. As an example of his desire “to build bridges between Islam and Christianity,” as NRK reporter Arne Kristian Gansmo put it, we were offered an excerpt from his song “I Want to Be Your Friend,” which was addressed to Muslim men:
You stone your mothers
Whip your sisters
Mutilate your daughters
Behind the veil
But I want to be your friend.
No, he wasn’t being sarcastic. He meant it. I’m not kidding. He told NRK that the song’s topic was “unbounded love.” It is curious that now, as then, he feels unbounded love for savage Muslim men but none whatsoever, apparently, for victimized Muslim women, and, needless to say, not the slightest hint of it for innocent Israelis.
Other names on the list disappointed me, but on second thought their presence didn’t surprise me either. I’m actually very fond of some of the songs written and performed by Sondre Lerche (41) and Jonas Alaska (35), but when you think about it, both of these singers’ whole schtick is being beta males along the lines of Moby, and somehow it makes sense that sucking up to the likes of Hamas would be part and parcel of that whole beta-male thing. I’ve also gotten a kick out of a couple of tunes by Maria Mena (37), but when you take another look at one or two of her videos, it makes perfect sense that this standard-issue (albeit musically talented) flibbertigibbet would add her voice to Valle and Wulff’s chorus.
What’s perhaps more interesting than the names on the petition is the names that aren’t on it. Among them are all four Norwegians who have ever won Eurovision: Hanne Krogh (68) and Elisabeth Andreassen (65) of Bobbysocks (the 1985 winner), Rolf Løvland (68) of Secret Garden (1995), and Alexander Rybak (37), whose song “Fairytale” rode to victory in 2009 with the largest vote margin in Eurovision history up to that date. Of course, it may be that by the time this article appears, Valle and Wulff will have roped these poor souls into their little troupe. I hope not.
I couldn’t help noticing that another missing name was that of Tooji (36), a fine singer who was Norway’s 2012 Eurovision entrant. It truly would’ve been a major disappointment to see his name on the petition, because he’s the son of Lily Bandehy — a heroic and courageous woman who, imprisoned under Khomeini, fled Iran with Tooji when he was an infant and went on to become one of Norway’s most eloquent critics of Islam. In 2018, after visiting Israel, Bandehy wrote an article effusively praising the country and its people; in February of last year, she made headlines by burning a hijab in a major square in Oslo; currently, she’s deputy head of a gutsy group called Ex-Muslims of Norway. Like his mother (to whom he’s devoted), and unlike most of Norway’s airheaded excuses for professional musical artists, Tooji — who, not incidentally, is gay — is in a position to understand what the recent developments in Israel and Gaza are really about.
If Valle and Wulff’s 293 signatures seem a big accomplishment, a similar petition in Sweden was signed by no fewer than 1,005 performing artists. I didn’t recognize a single one, although when you read through a list of 1,005 names, you might easily miss somebody. And Finland beat out Sweden, with 1,500 “musicians and other music industry professionals” calling in a petition for Finland to boycott Eurovision should Israel be permitted to take part. Who ever imagined there were anywhere near that many “music industry professionals” in Finland to begin with? One of the people behind the petition, by the way, is one Lukas Korpelainen, who on his website describes himself as “a cultural professional, Green social security expert, all-round nerd and soon-to-be published writer from Helsinki.” From his picture, he looks like yet another Moby clone.
Even little Iceland has gotten into the act. It was reported on Jan. 26 that Stefán Eiríksson, the director of Icelandic television (RÚV), had received not one, not two, but three “petitions from musicians and composers, signed by members of the public,” calling for RÚV to request Israel’s exclusion from Eurovision and for Iceland to boycott the event if Israel isn’t excluded. One of these petitions drew no fewer than 9,000 signatures — this in a country of 370,000 people. By contrast, a Spanish-language petition posted at change.org on Nov. 15 has so far been signed by only 1,208 people — out of 47 million Spaniards and 486 million people around the world who speak Spanish as a mother tongue. Indeed, a search of news media in several non-Nordic European countries turned up very little sign of a widespread interest in banning Israel’s participation in Eurovision. But, boy, is this a popular cause among musical types in the frozen north. This wasn’t the first time in my quarter century of living in these latitudes that I found myself wondering: Why is it always the Nordic countries that are so wonderfully virtuous?
READ MORE from Bruce Bawer:
Norwegian Authors’ Declaration of Dependence (On Government)