At Fincken, it’s a rather different Eurovision week than usual.
Where there should have been excited charging for the big final party on Saturday, an alternative party will be held: namely the boycott festival.
For the drag group Haus of Friele, it was quite obvious what they had to do.
– It is more important than ever to stand up, use your voice, and insist that we do not support genocide, says “Maple Thorpe” to BA.
– Eurovision is one of the biggest events for us this year, with the exception of Pride, but this year it became completely clear to us that we do not want to participate in anything Eurovision-related, he continues.
On Thursday evening, the drag artist led the Eurovision karaoke at Fincken, but this too was different. None of the songs of the year or any of Israel’s songs of all time.
– It was important for us to be with Fri and Bergen Pride in building up this alternative festival, to form the community we usually get during Eurovision, says Owl.
– Against pinkwashing
On the Facebook event for the Boycott Festival, Fincken writes:
– We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian population and want to send a clear message to NRK and EBU that they must take a clear stand for human rights and against pinkwashing a genocide.
To TV 2, leader of FRI Vestland, Torgeir Toppe, tells that the queer organizations in Bergen have joined forces to boycott this year’s Eurovision.
– The Israeli state pinkwashes the war by, among other things, hoisting rainbow garments on occupied land in Gaza, and celebrating this, he says.
One in five Norwegians answer that they will not watch Eurovision this year because of Israel’s participation, shows a new survey by Respons Analyze commissioned by VG.
Two out of three Norwegian Eurovision viewers also answer that they think Israel should not be allowed to participate in the popular song contest, according to the VG survey.
– Israel gets my vote
For Dagen’s editor-in-chief, Vebjørn Selbekk, the calls for a boycott have had the opposite effect.
– Israel will get my vote tonight, and hopefully Saturday, he says to BA.
Before the semi-final, he published a post on social media where he said that for the first time in his life he will vote for a participant in Eurovision.
– I want to be a counterweight to all these boycott calls, and against the hatred against Israel. This is my answer, he explains.
Selbekk says that there has been a great deal of engagement around the post, and points out that the fact that people boycott the show can give Israel a helping hand to actually get far.
– I see many people writing that they also want to vote for Israel, and that those like me have never voted before.
The drag artists say that video from the rehearsals for Eurovision has shown that there is a lot of opposition to Israel’s contribution.
– It will be very exciting to see what the outcome will be, and how people choose to vote, they say.
See interview with Haus of Friele:
– Simply do not understand
Selbekk has no understanding of the demands for a boycott.
– Israel is a country that defends itself against terrorism. This is a defensive war, after Hamas crossed a border on October 7, killing 1,100 and taking Israelis hostage. Nobody can live with having such a terrorist threat on the border.
He also believes that Hamas must be held responsible for the enormous human suffering in Gaza.
– Everyone has to internalize the human sufferings, they affect me too. It is a disaster when so many civilians are affected. But it is Hamas that has to take responsibility for all this. They use their own population as human shields.
Facts about the victims of the war between Israel and Hamas
After 212 days of war, well over 110,000 people have been killed, missing and wounded in the Gaza Strip, in the occupied West Bank and in Israel. The figures were updated on 6 May.
* 1,140 people were killed when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, among them 332 Israeli soldiers and 57 police officers. The others were civilians, among them 36 children.
* 34,735 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, an average of about 160 each day.
* According to the Palestinian authorities, among those killed are at least 13,000 children and 9,000 women. This corresponds to an average of over 70 children and 50 women daily.
* Several thousand Palestinians are also missing, and it is feared that many of them lie in the ruins of bombed buildings.
* 78,108 Palestinians have been injured in the attacks, an average of over 400 every day since the war began.
* At least 489 health workers have been killed.
* 180 UN employees and 140 journalists and media workers have been killed in the war.
* 26 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been completely put out of business, the others are only partially functional.
* Israel claims to have killed over 12,000 militant Palestinians.
* At least 264 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground invasion, some by fellow soldiers. Over 3,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded, and thousands of others are being treated for war trauma.
* The Israeli attacks have driven 1.7 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants from their homes.
* Israel’s blockade has made the situation for internally displaced persons critical.
* According to the UN, just over 1.1 million people are on the brink of famine, and a further 850,000 are starving. Dozens of children have all died of starvation.
* All schools are closed, and 80 percent of them have been completely or partially destroyed in the attack.
* Over 70,000 homes have been completely destroyed in attacks, while at least 290,000 others have suffered some extensive damage. There is no electricity supply.
* At least 459 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, among them at least 110 children.
* 17 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed and 80 injured in conflict-related incidents in the West Bank and in Israel.
* Hamas and Islamic Jihad abducted around 250 Israelis and foreigners during the October 7 attack.
* 110 have since been released in a prisoner exchange, three have been rescued by Israeli forces, while over 130 others have not been accounted for. Israeli intelligence has concluded that more than 30 of them are no longer alive. Three were killed by an error by Israeli soldiers in December, according to Hamas, many others were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
* 9,000 Palestinians are in Israeli captivity, over 3,500 in so-called administrative detention. The figure does not include an unknown number of prisoners from Gaza.
* Approximately 250,000 Israelis have been evacuated from cities and kibbutzim near the border with Gaza, as well as from villages near the border with Lebanon.
Sources: OCHA, UNRWA, IDF, WHO, IPS, PJS, AFP, NYT, PA, Haaretz, Al Jazeera, Reuters.
Selbekk does not understand that queer organizations boycott Israel.
– Israel is the only country in the Middle East that treats homosexuals properly. It is perfectly legitimate to be critical of the warfare, but I simply do not understand why they do not take the opportunity to comment on the differences in the treatment of homosexuals.
– Uses other people’s rights to oppress people
The drag artist Owl believes that being queer in Israel is not as easy as they might make it out to be.
– We see that even though they say that in Israel you can be free, we see that there are many who cannot stand firm or dare to be themselves even there, she believes.
– And to use something like Eurovision, which is very LGBT+-centric, and has been for all these years, as a counterweight to what they are doing in Gaza… That’s all, that’s what pinkwashing is all about, using other people’s rights to oppress another’s people. You can’t get behind that, points out Maple Thorpe.
Mona Frank, chairman of Bergen Pride, tells TV 2 that she is worried.
– We are concerned that Israel is misusing its participation in Eurovision to normalize human rights violations and tries to hide cruel acts of war, she says.
On Thursday evening, both Norway and Israel progressed to Saturday’s final.
