Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.05.2019, Síða 17

17 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07— 2019
promote hate. Now more than ever we
need to promote more love and kind-
ness.”
Less measured responses from pro-
Israeli voices have been prominent
in the ongoing public discussion. The
band have received threats and hate
mail. In fact, Klemens says, “Eurovi-
sion’s organisers had police look into
whether there was a higher level of
risk regarding our participation than
others.”
“One thing they did do was ask
us to collect all the threats that have
been issued to us,” adds Matthías. “So
we went through some disturbing
comments under pieces about us in the
Israeli media. The Jerusalem Post—
that's where it gets disturbing. I love
Haaretz, though. I bought a subscrip-
tion from them last month.”
The most notable Jewish response
came from the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre and UK Lawyers for Israel, who
issued a statement saying Hatari ought
to be banned outright from participat-
ing, on the grounds that Rule 2.6 of
the Eurovision Song Contest expressly
forbids politicising the event. The
statement was curious, giving how
often Eurovision acts have expressed
overtly political themes in their songs
without objection; Pollapönk, Iceland’s
Eurovision representatives in 2014,
performed an expressly anti-racist
song, to little objection from anyone.
“We can easily dismiss that criti-
cism, because it's their views that we
want to be criticising and strongly
oppose, because they would seek to
justify the occupation,” Matthías says.
THE PALESTIN-
IAN RESPONSE
If the Jewish response to Hatari’s partic-
ipation has been mixed, albeit with a
much stronger response coming from
those calling for them to be banned
than from those voicing support,
matters were further complicated by
responses from Palestinians. Late last
month, the Palestinian Campaign for
the Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel, one of the founding members of
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) Movement, issued a statement
urging Hatari to voluntarily withdraw.
“Artists who insist on crossing the
Palestinian boycott picket line, playing
Tel Aviv in defiance of our calls, cannot
offset the harm they do to our human
rights struggle by ‘balancing’ their
complicit act with some project with
Palestinians,” their statement read, in
part. “Palestinian civil society over-
whelmingly rejects this fig-leafing,
having learnt from the fight against
apartheid in South Africa. While we
appreciate gestures of solidarity, we
cannot accept them when they come
with an act that clearly undermines our
nonviolent human rights movement.
The most meaningful expression of
solidarity is to cancel performances in
apartheid Israel.”
Here at home, Salmann Tamimi,
a founding member of the Iceland-
Palestine Association, echoed similar
sentiments, telling the Grapevine, “Of
course no country should give Israel a
reward for occupying Palestine. When
you take part in their party, you help
them to keep oppressing the Palestin-
ians.”
The Eurovision boycott campaign
has been gaining ground, with Pales-
tinians and Israeli voices urging artists
to withdraw, in addition to hundreds
of queer rights groups, former Eurovi-
sion artists and thousands of ordinary
people. This response, Matthías says, is
“worth meditating on and listening to.”
“This criticism, of course, comes
from people who are right—they are
fighting for a noble cause, speaking
on behalf of an oppressed people,”
he adds. “So of course this criticism
touches us. There's an obvious differ-
ence of approach. Even though the BDS
movement would prefer that we don't
attend at all, we still support them and
their cause and tactics. They're a non-
violent organisation fighting on behalf
of an oppressed nation. For us, if we
were going to step aside, we wouldn't
have signed up in the first place.”
Like the Jewish response, reaction
from Palestinians has been mixed,
with many expressing support and
gratitude for what Hatari wants to do
at Eurovision. “We have been talking
to Palestinian artists about collabora-
tions,” Matthías says. “But we're not
saying their names in this interview,
and we're not going to publish anything
that they don't want to publish, because
of the call from the BDS movement.
It's definitely a complicated situation
and we understand the tension people
might feel in talking to us and working
with us.”
“And there are plenty of Palestinian
people who just don't give a fuck about
Eurovision,” Klemens adds.
“Maybe it’s a Eurocentric notion that
the song contest is a huge deal,” Matthías
admits. “Because to them it's not.”
A THIN LINE
TO WALK
Part of Hatari’s motivation for being as
emphatic and as clear as possible about
their specific criticism of Israel is that
there’s a thin line between being criti-
cal of the Israeli government and being
anti-Semitic. This is especially rele-
vant today, as there has been a recent
spate of deadly attacks on synagogues
in the United States. In addition, a
recent feature piece in OZY detailed
that many of Iceland’s Jews have been
reluctant to openly identify as Jewish,
due to anti-Semitism in this country.
For proof of this, a quick scroll through
the comments on Icelandic articles on
this topic will remove any doubt.
It’s something Hatari is keenly
aware of, and they have taken steps to
avoid being lumped in with Iceland’s
bigots. “It's a very thin line to tread, and
you can't reiterate it often enough that
we are opposed to all forms of bigotry,
whether Islamophobia, anti-Semitism
or anti-Arab racism,” Matthías says.
“We support everyone's human rights.
I don't find it frustrating to have to
emphasise this. There are fucking
racists out there. On this point, it's
easy to be clear and explain your art:
‘Don't use it to empower your racist
views.’ So I'm happy to reiterate that.
The question of not just anti-Semitism
but racism in general in Iceland is a
difficult one. As a society, we are in
many ways naive to the complexities of
racial politics.”
“Icelandic racism is subtle,” says
Klemens. “It's under the surface.
The racism that is surfacing here in
Iceland is something that I'm not very
connected to, because it's not around
me in my kind of echo chamber—but
you can see it with the refugee crisis
that's happening now, and how that is
being dealt with. It's absurd and brutal
how the police reacted to refugee
protesters here.”
THE VENUE IS
ITSELF POLITICAL
The overarching question in this entire
affair, apart from the varied responses
from Jewish and Palestinian voices
alike, can be condensed simply: why did
Hatari choose Eurovision—a cheesy
song contest best known for over-the-
top glitz and glamour—as a platform
for voicing support for Palestine?
To Klemens’ mind, this year’s Euro-
vision is already a political event by
virtue of the venue itself.
“The competition becomes political
by the location where it's held,” he says,
“and all artists and performers that
come to compete are making a political
statement whether they're aware of it
or not.”
Furthermore, they believe that
being able to reach so many people
around the world—an audience who
are perhaps usually apolitical—also
makes Eurovision a useful platform.
“Bringing the media attention that
would otherwise be focused on fluff
to pressing concerns would also be a
measure of success,” says Matthías.
“If anyone reads this interview and
then Googles ‘the right to return’
and ‘ending the occupation’ and the
demand for equal citizenship in their
own country—which are the three
pillars of the Palestinian struggle—
that's a measure of success. Because
these are such obvious demands, and
we want to discuss them.”
“We’re getting an important message
to the 200- or 300-million viewers
that decide to sit down on a Satur-
day night to watch an entertainment
show,” Klemens adds. “If we manage to
get them to think about our message,
that would be a huge achievement.”
WHAT WOULD
SUCCESS MEAN?
No one operates under the delusion
that Hatari could single-handedly
“solve” the Israel-Palestine conflict
with their Eurovision performance,
and many have speculated whether it
would make any material difference
one way or the other. For Hatari, there
are other parameters for what would
constitute a success. Victory at Eurovi-
sion, they agree, would be an obvious
indication of success, but there are
other factors to consider as well.
“It's hard to say what would count
as ‘success’ in our Eurovision perfor-
mance, because we're stepping into
the abyss,” Klemens tells the Grape-
vine. “We have no clue what is going to
happen.”
“Will we be banned from perform-
ing? Will we get through the final?
How will we be received by Israelis and
other contestants? How will our poli-
tics play out in the media?” Matthías
wonders. “There are so many unknown
unknowns. But what we said about
getting uncomfortable, difficult ques-
tions into the heads of people who
wouldn’t otherwise be inclined to tackle
them—that's a measure of success.”
“A change of mindset is what we
need to end conflicts in the Middle
East, Europe and the world—to survive
as a species,” Klemens adds.
“If we manage to overthrow capi-
talism, that would also be a measure
of success. Preferably selling some
branded merchandise along the way,”
says Matthías. “So that's a few things:
victory at Eurovision, politicising
the masses, discussing the demands
of the Palestinian people. To use the
scale of popularity of the Eurovision
Song Contest to draw attention to the
oppression of the Palestinian people,
and also to shed light on the abundance
of contemporary Palestinian art and
music.”
The Eurovision final will be broad-
cast live on May 19th, and some of these
unknown unknowns may have been
answered by the time you read this.
Whatever happened before, during
or after the song contest, Hatari have
undoubtedly added to the many voices
drawing attention to the Palestinian
cause. They have forced us to consider
not only the role of Eurovision, but also
to question what it means when artists
willingly perform in Israel in the midst
of this brutal conflict. How they will
fare at Eurovision remains to be seen,
but in these senses, Hatari have already
won.
“‘Hatrið Mun Sigra’ is a re-
flection of power and pow-
erlessness; hope and hope-
lessness. That if people don’t
unite, or don’t love, then hate
will prevail.”