The Eurovision Blog

I guess this is the Eurovision blog.

An ongoing madness of them versus us.

Israel vs the world

The Jews vs the Left

There is a thin line between love and hate, sang Chrissie Hynde.

Trigger warning.

Palestinian flag.

Does your blood pressure rise at the sight of dark green?

Mine does.

Running the Sheffield Half Marathon last month,

Each time

I was forced to pass through a crowd waving red, green and black flags my heart rate quickened.

I can’t imagine what Eden Golan’s heart was doing last night.

A rate of knots.

As they say.

What lay behind the public vote?

Were there many people like my family and I who clicked 20 times on their phone to vote? (20x15p) Not much to express an opinion, cheaper I suspect that the standard democratic process.

Israel came second in the public vote.

What does that mean?

I see it as representing from the 160 million supposed viewers a massive number phoning-in for Israel or for Eden. Were they dialling for the music or a song that interprets the horror of October 7^th as a Euro-pop dance macabre?

I suspect the latter.

People are fed-up with the protests.

The entitled students at Columbia Campus with their designer tents. Their gluten, nut, and vegan alternative food demands.

People are fed-up running marathons and having to contend with aggitated flag wavers.

Yes.

We. I, support the Palestinian cause.

Yes. Two states.

Yes, the bombing, the death of the children is a sin.

As I have written before, I can hold more than one thought simultaneously in my head.

The massacre, the rapes, the blood libels are also terrible. Also, unacceptable.

Who is to blame? Israel, world Jewry or Hamas?

This weekend I watched Cheryl Sandberg’s documentary, Screams before Silence.

There had been a discussion in my family.

My brother suggested we, that is me and my other siblings bear witness, watch the film as a testament to the horror.

My other brother, the non-Israeli said he lasted 30 minutes, my sister 20 before turning-off.

I didn’t start.

Often, when confronted with complexity, I to take a superficial overview; it is a psychological defence. I can be so over-sensitive that hearing or knowing too much can render me unexpectedly dulled or distressed.

And with the documentary, upon learning the subject matter I thought, do I want to watch? Will it be more than I already know, more than I have seen?

Once seen, never forgotten.

I have avoided the Hamas videos. Just as I didn’t watch the ISIS beheadings. The public narrative is enough. The descriptions, the survivor accounts. I didn’t want to see more mutilated bodies.

Listening to Cheryl Sandberg in an interview with Dan Senor here, I understood the necessity to watch.

The horror is in the description.

Graphic images are not shown.

Which is, likely, worse.

Words suffice.

The scene described by Agam Goldstein-Almog as she recalled her dad’s murder – his dying moments, then her sister’s murder, the mutilation of her face before she and her mum were taken as hostages to Gaza.

The geeky American Zaka man describing what he saw, was enough.

I thought we had had enough of enough with Pesach. This was more and this is enough.

And the teenagers screaming about Israel’s lack of validity. The nonsense calls of genocide and apartheid. Note my lack of capitalisation; I don’t want to do them the service.

The South African shame.

Eden Golan, 20 years old, facing a, yes, hurricane, tsunami, torrent of abuse. Call it what you like; I don’t know how she managed.

The narrative so clear. So obvious. I don’t get the haters.

They are shouting at me, and they are the victims. They hang-out in North Face tents and they are the victims. The Irish. The Dutch. The victims.

Look.

I know it isn’t the Irish who are the problem; merely a loud minority of angries. People happy to shout without shame. They scream Free Palestine, as with the song, Palestine is free. Dir balak.

The vote last night was people of the world expressing themselves.

You see, for every hundred people who see the horror of 10/7, the risk of a global Intifada or fundamentalism, there is one who will shout against.

I was impressed to hear that the organisers of the event used anti-booing technology. (Israeli tech? Perhaps.) Who would have thought?

The hundred remain silent because they either can’t face the hassle of the one screamer or the backlash from Tik Toc. The doxers, the trolls, online vandals.

Better to wait for the crazies to move on to their next cause than risk rocking the boat.

We don’t need more spray painting. We don’t need more screaming.

Silence is a form of collusion.

I am mostly silent.

That is my modus operandi.

Quiet guy who writes a lot.

Not a confronter, not one who is happy to scream at the screamers.

I don’t know where it all comes from.

The angry voices, like the cawing of crows, they ramp-up the volume until everyone’s ears are buzzing.

Protester’s tinnitus.

A new condition.

I don’t know if it exists. Happy to wait and see.

Eden Golan. I saw her on screen and perceived her vulnerability. Waif, dressed in the rags of a Nova victim.

The haters, the haters.

I wish they would go away, like the rain.

Don’t you know, the more you protest, the more Israelis and Jews are victimised the more they will move from a common cause that will support the Palestinian People.

Ever wondered why Israel, the Middle East’s sole representative of racial and gender tolerance has moved as a society from Left to Right?

The more you attack, the more you threaten, the more people revert to kind, the more they turn away from the suffering of others to focus on their own plight.

Stop attacking me and I will work with the victims.

If you are goading, I am too consumed by my own smoke to look outwards.

That isn’t want they want.

The the Irish and the Icelanders, the Spanish, and the Finns.

They want to bellow about river to the sea. They want to call for annihilation. It justifies their existence.

Greta. Couldn’t you have stuck to saving the planet?

They ignore the reality of Hamas hating the Palestinian People only a little less than they hate the Jews.

Kill the Jews.

The Jews are killing the Palestinians.

Kill the Jews.

Is the child who pokes a stick into the hornet’s nest responsible for their subsequent injury?

What about an adult?

What about an adult who ensures that they are dressed in protective gear and hides whilst those in proximity are stung? (Yes, this is a metaphor for Hamas hanging out in their tunnels whilst the women and children are up top, dead.)

Let’s blame the wasps for creating their nest.

Let’s cut off their access to pollen.

That will show the stick poker. That will stop their antagonism.

No.

It will provide a narrative for their future gameplay.

Let’s take our provocation elsewhere. This game is fun. Low-cost entertainment.

We can attack and attack and attack and each time the victim is blamed for their response.

What a strategy.

Perhaps the over-stuffed children of the university campuses were reared using a similar methodology.

Spoiled.

Gone bad.

Over-fed, over-watered, growing-up with excess, they have learned that if shouting once doesn’t work, shout again, shout louder, thump your fists, smash the windows, call ‘victim’ and eventually, if you have enough energy, someone will relent, someone will give you what you demand. Remember we don’t negotiate with terrorists – funny, isn’t it, that has become the model for international cooperation.

We will fire missiles at your boats, and you will reward us with a billion dollars.

All good.

We promise to behave.

We promise to maintain the asymmetry by subjecting our women and children to endless abuse; we will revel in stone-age inequality and that is just fine.

Go on.

Sing.

Sing for your supper.

That is the economics of the new age.

That is the economics of despair.

If you are interested in a fascinating insight into some of the current events in relation to historical antisemitism, listen here.

Several hours passed since writing this blog; I began at 8am; it is now nine at night.

During a run, as I listened to the above blog, I passed a local house. We’ll refer to it as the pro-Israeli encampment of South Yorkshire (see below).

The sight of the flag filled me with hope, almost bringing tears to my eyes. I pushed on, up the hill, homeward.

The South Yorkshire Flag. Photo by Rod Kersh