Eurovision Arrives in Tel Aviv, in Range of Rockets and the Focus of Protests

@Joshua Schwartz Of course it's a cultural event! Don't confuse 'culture' with 'high culture'. Just because you don't approve of it doesn't strip it of its cultural meaning.

Strictly speaking nobody is indigenous to anywhere except East Africa.

@stv Wars have consequences. Perhaps the Arabs should have considered the prospect of ‘losing’ before rejecting statehood in favor of waging 70+ years of war and terrorism in an effort to destroy a sovereign nation.

@stv Yes it's painful to continually fight neighbors who would rather be victims than "get a life", people who would rather wallow in their own misery and inflict it on others than come up with a productive society, as did Israel, Jewish, Druze and Arab. A number of years ago, the majority of Israelis were in favor of a 2-state solution. But as time went on and the Palestinians kept moaning and groaning about their lot, the Israelis got tired of the shtick. The Gaza coast could be as exciting as the Tel Aviv beachfront if the Gazans were interested in that rather than launching fire balloons and rockets in the other direction. As for BDS, are you boycotting Chinese goods over their treatment of Tibetans and Uighurs?

@stv No one is being evicted in the name of "their right to exist".

@CK 575,000 Iraqi children died from sanctions.

@Joe. "The Palestinians and Arabs"? "AND"?? Twenty percent of Israelis are Muslim. Hardly invisible. How many Saudis are Jewish? How many Jordanians, Lebanese? Syrians? Iranian Jews still living in Iran where they had lived for centuries? Moroccans still living in Morocco? If a country known as Palestine were ever to be, would it not have been built on the blood and terrorism perpetuated by those individuals who have previously refused all peace proposals of the past 70 years?

@Joe It's possible to make the exact opposite argument. Israel is hosting an event and we have protestors and reporters uncovering every injustice, transgression and misstep (past and present) is scrutinized. The way it handles the occupied territories. The way it defends itself. The way its LGBT community has thrived (somehow this is twisted into a negative). Where it's promotional videos are filmed. The way it accepts lampooning of itself including negative stereotypes. The list goes on. What other country undergoes this type of scrutiny? Please take a look at the countries/cities that have hosted Eurovision in the past. Are we to believe than none of them have anything in their past or present that should raise similar concerns? Unrelated but worth noting that Eurovision has been in Israel before... not only that but in Jerusalem.

@Joe They are not treated as if they are invisible. Many of them have the same rights the Jews do. Also, Israel gives a lot more rights to minorities than many of the other countries in the region do combined. It was even found that a non-Jew living in Israel has a lot more equality than a non-Muslim living in the rest of the region. As a matter of fact, there were even a number of other minor groups in the Mid East who fled to Israel, because they didn't want to face anymore persecution from what the Muslim countries gave them while in Israel, they hardly ever faced that and were even treated like equals there.

@JWMathews - Jordan is a lovely country, but it has suffered greatly in the aftermath of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the IS- and civil-war in Syria. Jordan taken in literally millions of refugees between the conflicts, and its economic health has suffered as a result. Its social stability has also suffered, and that may be the greater loss for Jordanians over time. With the exceptions of Black September in 1970, the Al Qaeda attacks in 2005 and the Arab Spring protests of 2011, Jordan as been one of the most stable countries in the region. A large population of displaced persons may have an effects on that; only time will tell.

@JWMathews Jordan only exists because Israel protects it.

@Rishi Palestinians leaders have become very wealthy. Arafat had a net worth of $1 billion, Abbas $100 million, Abu Marzouk $2-3 billion, Khaled Mashaal, $2.6 billion. It literally pays not to make peace.

@Rishi - Why on earth would one who is ostensibly seeking peace through a multi-state solution deny a place to Gaza?

this has already happened. and you see how well the rest of the superstition based world is faring. when the Rapture comes (or not) we'll see how it all works out. meanwhile, I'm not buying any tickets to heaven.

@Expat However, the full story begins many years before this time. In the late 1700s and thru the 1800s various Jewish groups migrated to Palestine. At that time it was a Arab country with agriculture as its primary industry. The Ottoman Turks were in control. The Arabs accepted these groups but most were unsuccessful due to many reasons . One was the fact they were mainly uneducated European Jews with no farming skills, a different language and no organization. In the early 1900s there were perhaps 100,000 jews and 500,000 Arabs. The Arabs had ownership of most of the farm lands. The Jews were not able to compete for jobs or run successful farms. The Kibbutz system was established to try and compete for land. Also, it offered places to bring new immigrants. Remember, this was officially not Jewish land but Turkish-Arab land, The Jews were guests. They were treated well until they began to compete for jobs, buy land and isolate many Arabs from making a living. At this time , 1920-40 , it became obvious the jews intended to flood Palestine with Jews and try to reclaim what they thought of as their home. They had the idea of establishing the old biblical borders. Arab Nationalism began when they thought that these "guests" were trying to take their land. This immigration was increased during the WWII as jews were fleeing oppression.

@ RichardHead: actually, the story begins well before that, with thousands of years of continuous Jewish habitation in what is now the land of Israel, as evidenced by an indisputable wealth of archeological evidence. While there are competing narratives, and claims to the land, it is also beyond dispute that Israel has sought, and continued to seek, to live at peace with its neighbors. It is also beyond dispute that the Arab response has and continues to be characterized by rejection, maximalist demands and attacks that in word and deed are intended to “push the Jews to the Sea”.

@RichardHead One thing, Palestine was never a country. Neither Arab nor anything else. It had been ruled over as an area by many invaders, including Arabs, for thousands of years. The only time it was actually a country was when it was Judea and Israel and was not called Palestine, a name that the Romans coined.

Yep! Thank you for pointing this out

@Steven Roth Not to mention that those hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees (who fled to Israel from Arab countries) were dispossessed of their considerable wealth and property by said Arab authorities. No justice nor reparations for them, apparently.

So true. They like to play with or omit the facts.

@PT, Israel was not created by the UN but by over 3000 years of Jewish history as the homeland of the Jewish people.

So why didn't it 're-exist' prior to 1948?

@JerryV The state of Israel is a juridical entity which was created by the United Nations in 1948. Enough with the alternative facts.

@Bernard that's "intersectionality" for you. It has already started the process of destroying the Democratic Party from within. LGBTQ groups find a reason to boycott the one country in the entire region where LGBTQ people are respected rather than tortured and killed.

@local - As a lifelong Democrat, I fear for what it is becoming. Or at least which are the loudest voices and which get the most press coverage. I'm a centrist. I believe most Dems are. But you wouldn't know it from the shiny objects the press would rather report on. Recall those Democrats who were elected in 2018 - most are centrist.

@Elliot The government that's brutal is the Israeli government which steals the land and the represses any show of protest. And you wonder why there is violence? Hardly 'welcoming' to the Palestinians.

@Elliot Completely wrong. In fact, the Palestinians are the ones who must defend their nation's right to exist. And it is Israel that is most bitterly opposed to this. Because Israel bases itself on the land it stole from the Palestinians.

@Joe Most of Palestine was not owned by Palestinians. About half the land was owned by the government (Ottomans & then the British.) Large areas were owned by wealthy people in surrounding countries. Jews owned some land. 80% of Palestinians owned no land at all.

@Henry Blumner Celebrating life is shared by all religions.

@Neocynic Yes, Gaza, run by Hamas -- that refuses to recognize Israel -- and is funded by the Iranians, who daily call for the destruction of Israel. Hamas, the group that also just launched an unprovoked attack of hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilian centers, and uses their own people as human shields. When will the Palestine supporters wake up to the reality that Hamas is a grotesque group that uses their fellow countrymen as chum. Millions of dollars wasted by them on a futile war instead of building infrastructure and better lives for their people. It's remarkably easy to have friendly relations if you stop trying to murder your next-door neighbors on the daily. Imagine if Canada or Mexico was hurting rockets into the USA every other day. Or sending in people on suicide missions. Congrats to the Palestinian leadership on fooling a gullible and often antisemitic world of their innocence and (self-imposed) victimhood status.

Sue, Like it or not, Israel was once called Palestine. The country occupies contested land. The story is written the way that it is because the idea of rockets and anti-missile batteries going off within view of oblivious beach goers is, quite frankly, a moral spectacle of sorts.

@unreceivedogma, Palestine was a Roman colony in the first century. It had been seized from the Jews, who had been living there under their own State for more than 1000 years before the Romans arrived. Among all of the different peoples living in Roman- occupied Palestine, there is no archeological or written evidence that there were Arabs in Palestine at that time. They were all in Arabia.

So we should give North America back to all native Americans? The Bible is not justification for taking land and treating people badly.

@mons Exactly. I've tried to understand for years how Israel is part of of a "European" contest.

Please share the history of the indigenous population? How far does it go back? When archaeologists dig, what do they find of the indigenous population?

@Jordan Payne Is there something wrong with validating Israels existence? Are you saying it shouldn't exist at all?

@Jordan Payne - You are aware that the surrounding nations have banned Israel from virtually every regional competition and forum? Israel does not avoid their neighbors by their own choice. This is not just in political and economic forums; in things as seemingly innocuous as sport, this holds true. They were even expelled by the surrounding nations from the FIFA Asia Football Conference. They compete in the European Zone, and not within their own region. Interestingly, their expulsion was in 1970, right after winning the Conference and qualifying for the World Cup (?sore losers among the Arabs?). Your argument is basically like blaming the excluded and teased child for not playing with the unaccepting kids in class.

@Jordan Payne The only crackdowns in Gaza that occur are defensive in nature, in response to attacks by Gaza, either by trying to infiltrate Israel with weapons with intention to attack Israeli citizens, or by sending missiles into kindergartens and homes in southern Israel. Israel has shown remarkable tolerance for these attacks. If San Francisco was at the receiving end of random missiles hitting Ghirardelli Square on a fairly regular basis, with an occasional tourist maimed or killed by shrapnel, I would hope you, along with all other Americans, would demand your government should do something to stop it. It is certainly true that Israel *is* much more like most western European countries as compared to other Middle East countries. While many critics hate Netanyahu, no one has ever accused him of stealing an election or of refusing to cede power when required by law. Compare that to the Palestinians, where Mahmoud Abbas is in his 14th year of a 4 year term. Or your buddy Assad, a dictator and son of a dictator, whose elections invariably involve 99.99% support (if you vote against him, you will be shot). Or even King Abdullah (no elections going on in Jordan), or Lebanon, where a terrorist organization (Hamas) controls the legislature, or Iran, where gay life is a crime. I invite you to go to Israel and see or yourself. It really is a spectacular place, full of people who just want to live in peace with neighbors who don't want to kill them.

@JB Mooallem Which ground? The beaches where people complacently hang out listening to kitschy music that no one in the U.S. need be subjected to, or over the line where people lack basic necessities of life?

Are the locals all excited? Who are the locals anyway?

@RAC Actually, in the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority the standard of living is high compared to non-oil-based Arab economies. In Gaza, a ruling party intent on diverting all resources to weaponry...well, who is responsible for the absence of the necessities of life? Who would you suggest owes them free stuff?

@bartleby Yeah, how great would it be if every powerful country could appropriate land freely and imprison its neighbors?

@RAC. You mean winning wars that your neighbors start?

You mean trying to get back land stolen from them?