TY - JOUR
AU - Lutz,, Naama
AB - Abstract This article uses the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) that took place in Tel Aviv to explore how cultural mega-events serve both as political arenas and as tools for identity construction, negotiation and contestation. These processes of identity politics are all conducted across national–subnational–international–transnational levels. The hosting of mega-events fleshes out these multiple processes in a very strong manner. We first discuss the politics of hosting mega-events in general. We then examine the identity politics associated more specifically with the Eurovision Song Contest, before examining in depth the complex forms of identity politics emerging around the competition following the 2018 Israeli victory. We suggest that it is important to study together the multiple processes—domestic, international and transnational—of identity politics that take place around the competition, as they interact with each other. Consequently, we follow the various stakeholders involved at these different levels and their interactions. We examine the internal identity negotiation process in Israel surrounding the event, the critical actors debating how to use the stage to challenge the liberal, western, ‘normal’ identity Israel hoped to project in the contest and how other stakeholders (participating states, national broadcasting agencies, participating artists) reacted to them, and finally we examine the behaviour of the institution in charge, the European Broadcasting Union, and national governments. We contribute to the study of mega-events as fields of contestation, to the understanding of the complex, multilevel nature of national identity construction, negotiation and contestation in the current era, and more broadly to the role that popular culture plays in this context. The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is an annual event that has taken place since 1956 and has become a pan-European tradition. The 2018 contest ended with a victory for Israel, represented by Netta Barzilai and her song ‘Toy’. Her instinctive reaction upon winning was to shout happily: ‘Next year in Jerusalem!’1 The events following this victory and leading to the May 2019 competition in Israel (not in Jerusalem, but in Tel Aviv) offer fertile ground for investigating the complex role of mega-events as arenas for multiple actors playing identity politics, seeking thereby to strengthen or contest different identities. Mega-events are cultural events on an international scale which generate a very high level of media coverage and, owing to their size and/or significance, have impact on the economy, including tourism, of the host country. Most research on the subject has hitherto focused on the positive potential of hosting mega-events for nation-branding and for enhancing a state's soft power, largely ignoring the potential negative implications and the array of contentious processes surrounding such events.2 Furthermore, the concepts of ‘nation-branding’ and ‘soft power’ promotion associated with mega-events are very much externally oriented, focusing on a target audience external to the state. We suggest that there is a need also to examine the much more complex process of identity building and contestation, which spans the domestic, international and transnational spheres. Externally projected national identity builds on certain internal understandings of the identity of the state, which are often also contested internally. Consequently, issues of domestic identity negotiation become closely intertwined with their international manifestations. External actors play a role in this seemingly domestic process either through recognizing and affirming the projected state identity, or through challenging it. In this process, other actors involved in the politics of the event are in fact also negotiating their own identities. While the main empirical focus of this article is on the 2019 competition in Israel, its core arguments are relevant to the analysis of any mega-event, especially one that is hosted by a state facing either external or internal identity challenges. Such questions have been explored mainly in the context of sporting mega-events, as we elaborate below, with little attention given to other cultural mega-events. Furthermore, the existing literature tends to focus on the individual host state and its goals, downplaying interactions across national borders. It is exactly these multilevel processes of identity politics, occurring simultaneously around the event, that we wish to put in the spotlight here. This case also offers broader insights with regard to the role of popular culture in international politics. In the growing literature in International Relations (IR) that explores the role of pop culture, one of the current debates is between those scholars who separate pop culture from politics, and explore whether and how the former can influence the latter, and those who argue that pop culture is in itself politics.3 The process leading to the 2019 ESC not only illustrates how different actors tried to use this cultural event to promote their goals; it also shows how the event itself has inevitably become a political arena, even for those claiming its apolitical nature. Furthermore, this case points to the importance of treating national and international cultural politics not as binary terms, but as part of a continuum on which the national, subnational, international and transnational components all become intertwined. The article is structured as follows. We first discuss the politics of hosting mega-events in general, and the growing interest in their ideational roles. We then zoom in to examine the identity politics associated more specifically with the ESC. Building on this foundation, we move on to examine in depth the complex forms of identity politics emerging around the competition following the 2018 Israeli victory. We suggest that it is important to study together the multiple processes of identity politics, on domestic, international and transnational levels, that take place around the competition. We therefore follow the various stakeholders involved at these different levels and their interactions. We examine first the internal identity negotiation process in Israel surrounding the event; then we examine the critical actors debating how to use the stage to challenge the liberal, western, ‘normal’ identity Israel hoped to project in the contest, and how other stakeholders (participating states, national broadcasting agencies, participating artists) reacted to them; and finally we examine the behaviour of the institution in charge of the event, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The politics of mega-event hosting The literature on hosting mega-events has concentrated primarily on the potential gains for the host state. One approach focuses on the material benefits host states seek to achieve—nation-branding, attracting tourism and revenues from other sources, improving infrastructure, etc. A second approach popular in the field of IR, and often discussed in the world of public diplomacy, suggests that such mega-events serve to enhance the state's ‘soft power’ by increasing its attractiveness to others. High-profile, prestigious mega-events can be used to display the state's ‘soft power’ resources (cultural assets, attractive values and political model, etc.) to win hearts and minds among other peoples and states.4 This approach too focuses on the host state targeting its external environment. The use by states of opportunities to host mega-events to promote soft power and image has been explored in relation to several types of mega-events, including the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup as well as the ESC itself, as we discuss below. However, in recent years there has been a greater interest in analysing the hosting of mega-events from the perspective of identity politics and nation-building, focusing on the importance of mega-events in creating, negotiating and boosting identity. This literature is situated within broader constructivist and critical work on national identity constitution, involving an ongoing triadic interaction between the state, domestic groups and external actors, as three interacting political fields that monitor and influence one another.5 Along these lines, hosting a mega-event can be thought of as generating a space for practising and highlighting nationhood—internally and externally—and also for negotiating a complex national identity, which may encompass several components, not all of which are necessarily mutually compatible. A similar emphasis on the complex ‘intermestic’ processes of identity constitution appears in literature dealing with the impact of states’ perceptions of their own (mis)match with the norms and standards of international society, with respect to both their domestic and their international behaviour.6 Similarly, the expanding literature in IR on ontological security—that is, the importance states assign to developing and maintaining a coherent and stable self-narrative—also points to both its internal and external sources. Achieving a sense of ontological security involves managing not only domestic identity challenges, but also the state's relationship with its external environment.7 These different research projects use different theoretical concepts, but they all share the basic understanding that national identities are sustained and performed across different levels of analysis. Here we adopt the broad term of ‘identity politics’ to describe this range of processes. A common characteristic of states seeking to host mega-events is the desire to appear modern, capable of mastering such a project, and subscribing to the shared values of modern liberal societies. Hosting such events enables states both to project these characteristics and also to receive recognition for holding them.8 This literature points to the extent to which domestic nation-building and external nation-branding have become intertwined. Browning argues that the goal of nation-branding is not just to attract external actors to visit and invest in one's country, but is also to create a sense of national esteem; and in this respect its target audience is also the state's own citizens, since recognition and esteem from others in the international community are important aspects of those citizens' sense of their national identity.9 This interaction between domestic and international target audiences has been explored largely in the context of sporting mega-events, such as Russia's hosting of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics,10 and South Africa's hosting of the 2010 men's football World Cup.11 National identity constitution in the context of hosting mega-events thus becomes intertwined with the identity constitution of other states and other actors in the international arena in two ways—a constructive one and a contentious one. In the first instance, as noted above, actors seek to adopt certain identity elements that would fit the expectations of a modern liberal international society of states. Domestic actors also use these external standards to negotiate their positions vis-à-vis other domestic actors.12 Alternatively, the host state's self-proclaimed and projected identity may be subject to external contestation, which may take either of two forms. First, large events with wide media coverage serve as sites for various types of contestation. These may be domestic and local, playing out societal issues and divisions that are accentuated by the hosting of the event,13 or they can be international. The large-scale media exposure, putting the international spotlight on the state, also offers a platform for naming and shaming states, mostly about dubious human rights records and violations of international law. Brannagan and Giulianotti have termed this ‘soft disempowerment’, as opposed to ‘soft power’ promotion.14 Such naming and shaming efforts can take place in the period leading up to the event (a year in the case of the ESC), or during the event itself. The high-profile event can also serve as a grand stage for performing resistance and generating negative images of the host (as practised, for example, in Sochi by the Pussy Riot protest punk rock group, whose violent arrest was aired across the globe). While many transnational advocacy groups and networks usually practise low-level, local, everyday resistance in a variety of places, mega-events offer these dispersed networks a focal point on which their various activists can converge to perform what we may call ‘spectacular everyday resistance’—minor acts of resistance that reach a huge global audience. A second form of contestation is the threat of boycott. The state's very participation in (and hosting of) such an event, as noted above, is an affirmation of its identity as a modern state and an accepted member of the society of states. This association creates strong incentives on the part of those wishing to challenge the host state. Such challenges are most often related to allegations of human rights abuses. Mega-events are especially attractive targets for such sanctions because they receive considerable international attention and because, as noted above, they are used by hosts to promote a positive image.15 The goal of such sanctions is in part to harm the host materially; however, their main goal is symbolic and is directly linked to identity contestation. By advocating a boycott of the event, actors engage in several identity struggles. Their efforts seek to undermine the host state's attempts to promote a positive image and reaffirm its identity as a modern liberal state. By calling for a boycott, actors seek to signal to the audience of the target state that it is not seen as a legitimate partner, that it is not ‘normal’.16 At the same time, they also seek to challenge or call for reflection upon the identities of other actors participating in the international event. By appealing to states and individuals who wish to take part in the event, they seek to highlight how doing so may stand in contradiction to their own identity as supporters of liberal values. Such boycotts of mega-events have occurred several times in the case of the Olympic Games, and also with the blanket boycott of apartheid South Africa in international sporting events. Identity contestation around mega-events relates, then, both to the national identity of the host and to the identities of the participants. Organized interstate mega-events can also be seen as belonging to what English School scholars would term the institutions of the international society of states. This renders the organizations behind them—the International Olympic Committee in the case of the Olympics, or the EBU in the case discussed here—important actors with the power to help states to affirm and perform their identity as members of international society by virtue of participating in, and especially hosting, these events. The organizations behind institutionalized mega-events are thus inherently political actors, even when their stated agendas—whether on music or sport—are supposedly ‘apolitical’. Their political power makes them a target both for potential hosts seeking legitimacy and for potential contesters who seek to deny or undermine it. The Eurovision Song Contest and identity politics The dynamics described above with regard to mega-events as arenas of multilevel identity negotiation, projection, affirmation and contestation are very clearly evident in the case of the ESC. Commentators have discussed various aspects of the competition's politics,17 including—of particular relevance to our focus here—the use of the ESC as a state identity-building strategy. Jones and Subotić have noted the importance of public rituals for state identity-building, and have pointed to the ESC as a stage for the conduct of everyday politics among European nations and as a form of state identity-branding and status-signalling. They highlight the particular use by states on the European periphery, with uncertain or transitional identities, of performative symbols such as this to express their ‘fantasies’ about power and equality in the system.18 Such domestic processes, however, are clearly linked to an external reference point—the ‘European’. There are many examples of this, including Serbia in 2007, which hosted the competition as it was trying to come closer to the West. Jordan describes in detail how Estonia used the hosting of the ESC in Tallinn in 2002 to brand itself as a modern European state and advance its plan to join the EU.19 Ismayilov explores the complex impact of Azerbaijan's 2011 ESC victory on several processes of nation-building in Azerbaijan, both in terms of its relations with the West and in terms of its internal social and political relations.20 All this work indicates the extent to which national identity-building is enmeshed in broader international and transnational contexts. The ESC is also a site where what are considered ‘European’ values are performed. These include a strong adherence to human rights and the rule of law. Furthermore, the ESC has become over time, and especially since the 1998 victory of transgender singer Dana International, an event closely associated with the LGBT community. Literature on the competition as a site of global and transnational LGBT politics suggests that the appearance of a tolerant approach to and acceptance of the LGBT community is one of the symbols of liberal European values. Consequently, a state can demonstrate its liberal values in sending, for example, a representative from that community. Baker explains how the turning of the ESC into a site of LGBT politics has in fact been conditioned by the development of sexual citizenship as one component part of a liberal European identity.21 This development also generated a new avenue through which states could seek acceptance and recognition as ‘normal states’ by fellow western states, through taking upon themselves the role of what Cynthia Weber calls ‘the gay rights holder’.22 While serving as a site where individual states can perform their self-proclaimed national identity, the ESC has also been a site of contestation and criticism. Most attention in this strand of work has been given to the critique surrounding the attempts of hosts to portray themselves as ‘liberal’ through a positive portrayal of their approach to the LGBT community. Such attempts are directly linked to the desire to enhance ‘soft power’, as discussed above. Their critics accuse these states of pinkwashing—a term that refers to the cynical promotion of gay rights as human rights to represent the state as modern and democratic, used largely in the context of a critique of the United States and of Israel.23 Identity contestation processes, however, were more complex than the standard IR portrayal of host state versus other states suggests. Staging the competition in Azerbaijan in 2012, for example, enabled both domestic activists and international human rights NGOs to create a temporary ‘transnational public sphere’ around the event, which facilitated the publicizing of the host state authorities’ human rights violations.24 Beyond these transnational contestations, the ESC has also served as a site of more traditional geopolitical competition between different national identities. This was evident in the discourse following the victory of Austrian singer Conchita Wurst in 2014, in the aftermath of Russia's annexation of Crimea and the worsening of relations between Russia and the EU. On the one hand, Conchita was constructed as a symbolic opponent of Putin's (nationalist, homophobic) Russia. On the other hand, for Russian nationalists the victory was held to symbolize the weakness and decadence of western Europe as a whole, suggesting that ‘Conchita had “showed supporters of European integration their European future: a bearded girl”.’25 Finally, the ESC as an institution formed by west European states in the early postwar era to forge a new spirit of intra-European friendship and to build a new ‘European’ identity itself plays a role in strengthening and negotiating this identity for all its members, old and new. Over the years the competition itself has evolved as a site where participating states as a group can perform their supranational identity as ‘European’. Consequently, the organization managing and embodying the competition—the EBU—while officially insisting on the apolitical nature of the competition, in fact is inevitably embroiled in the identity politics surrounding it, as it has the power to enable, ban or attach conditions to the participation of certain states, therefore affirming or problematizing their identity as members of that organization.26 One additional dimension in which the ESC is perhaps different from the sporting events most often studied in this context is its aesthetics. Being a live singing competition, the aesthetic dimension of Eurovision is especially important, as the staging and the costumes offer additional layers of representation for certain identities. We do not explore this aesthetic dimension here, as it would require a longer discussion beyond the scope of this article. The 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel and multilevel identity politics The 2019 ESC in Tel Aviv brings together these complex processes. It reveals the domestic negotiations in Israel about national identity, how these were informed and influenced by external actors—states, the EBU and transnational activists—and how these actors’ own identities were also performed and challenged. To establish our argument about the importance of this mega-event as a site of both identity construction and identity contestation, involving domestic, national, international and transnational actors, we do two things. First, we offer a longitudinal account, tracing of the events and evolving discourses around the competition from the May 2018 victory of Netta Barzilai up to the May 2019 competition in Tel Aviv. We focus on debates and activities that took place around key moments: the immediate aftermath of the victory in 2018, with the internal deliberation in Israel regarding accepting the invitation to host the event in 2019 and the types of discourse it generated; the criticism and debates that emerged in different states in the context of their own decisions to participate and surrounding their national pre-Eurovision song contests; and the final event itself in 2019, along with its immediate aftermath. Second, we divide this longitudinal analysis into three sections. The first section examines the identity-related discourse and debates that emerged within the host state, Israel, in the context of preparations for the competition. The second section focuses on the discourse of voices critical of Israel—both the rhetoric and activities proposing a boycott of the competition, and the alternative voices calling for the use of the ESC stage itself to perform criticisms of Israel. Looking at these also reveals the extent to which this debate is also a political debate within participating states—a dimension usually ignored. The last section explores the reactions of participating states and broadcasting agencies to these pressures, highlighting their efforts to maintain the competition's ‘apolitical’ status—efforts that also, and inevitably, represent a strongly political choice. Our research builds on an analysis of data we collected systematically throughout the year between the 2018 and 2019 iterations of the contest. On the Israeli side, we followed politicians' responses to the victory and to ensuing events on their Facebook pages and in Knesset meetings. We also followed the discussions on the topic in the Israeli media. Our analysis of the critical voices is based on tracing the activities of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and domestic responses to it in different states, as reported both by BDS media (the electronic intifada website) and national media in participating states, as well as selected social media in different states (for example, the responses published on the official web pages of the national competitions). Finally, for the official response by state and national broadcasters, we followed statements made by the EBU and by various national broadcasting agencies in response to calls for a boycott. We traced the identity concerns that actors voiced, as well as their own perceptions of the importance of the ESC stage both in affirming them and in challenging them. Taken together, the interactions among the different actors—the state, domestic actors (political parties and societal actors), other governments, national broadcasting agencies, performers, the EBU, BDS transnational activist networks—in the temporal and physical spaces generated by the events surrounding the ESC in 2018–19, show how their different identities are in fact intertwined, and how the ESC stage offers a site for this interaction. Negotiating ‘the nation’: hosting the Eurovision Song Contest as a (divided) national project Israel has been participating in the ESC since 1973. Prior to 2018, it had won the contest three times, and hosted the event twice, in 1979 and 1999. The 2018 win and subsequent hosting of the event in 2019, however, came at a time when Israel was struggling with increasingly critical international public opinion. These critical voices have long targeted Israeli policies in the occupied territories, and in recent years have expanded their reach to voice more fundamental criticism of Israel's democracy, its human rights record, and (among some circles) the legitimacy of the state itself. Israeli officials have come to describe this as a ‘de-legitimation battle’.27 In Israeli eyes this challenge is epitomized in the transnational BDS movement.28 This movement is a loose network, involving multiple groups and sympathizers, some of which criticize specific policies of the Israeli government, and some of which express more extreme criticism of Israel as a state and its right to be a member of international society, and seek to delegitimize the state at large, not just the policies of the incumbent government. The Israeli official discourse stresses the BDS goal of delegitimizing Israel, and has come to portray this de-legitimation campaign as an existential threat to the state. The movement has come to be defined as a ‘national security threat’, both officially by Israeli authorities and also within certain parts of Israeli society.29 Against this background, Israel's aim in hosting the ESC was not only to attract tourists and income through a nation-branding campaign, but also to buttress its defences in what the state has declared as a ‘war’ over legitimacy. Thus, protecting and promoting its image as a liberal, cosmopolitan state through the Eurovision hosting became a national project in the immediate aftermath of the 2018 victory. This project, however, revealed an internal contestation over exactly what Israeli identity, or self-narrative, should in fact be promoted. External identity projection through hosting the ESC was closely linked to internal identity negotiations. In what follows we trace the different reactions to the victory, which reflect on the one hand the shared understanding of the potential symbolic importance of hosting the event, and on the other hand the competing views of what identity components should be stressed. This diversity in reaction reflects two basic competing identities within Israeli society that are expressed in narratives and discourses, and have clashed with increasing frequency and force since the 1967 war, namely the liberal–cosmopolitan and the ethno-nationalist narratives of what Israel is and what it means to be Israeli.30 These two narratives differ in their understanding of the core identity that is at the heart of the Israeli state, the latter stressing the particularistic Jewish dimension and adopting a Jewish ethnic-based nationalist focus, and the former stressing the democratic and liberal nature of the state as central to its self-narrative. Furthermore, the two narratives also imply different understandings of the relations between the state and international society. While the latter accepts a particularistic identity, the former emphasizes the cosmopolitan dimension of Israeli identity. This cosmopolitan focus, in turn, makes it more contingent upon and sensitive to the perceptions and actions of others in international society. These competing narratives were embedded in persistent cleavages within Israeli society, such as those between Jews of Arab descent and Jews with European roots, socio-economic divisions, and an increasingly salient left–right political divide.31 In the context of the 2019 ESC, these two approaches were easily distinguished in the early discussions about the location of the competition. The ‘Tel Aviv’ discourse called for the event to be staged in the liberal and internationally less controversial city, and took pride in its being dubbed a ‘queer capital’. In fact, Tel Aviv's cosmopolitan nature and its status as an infrastructural and economic centre have led some scholars to view it as the ‘Tel Aviv State’, holding a separate identity and demographic character from the broader state of Israel.32 Conversely, the ‘Jerusalem’ discourse called for the event to be hosted in the religious and nationally symbolic capital city—a location that was clearly controversial, given the lack of international consensus over its capital status, and its symbolic embodiment of the heart of the Israel–Palestinian conflict. Each of the two discourses encapsulated a different understanding of the value of hosting the competition. The cosmopolitan discourse stressed the liberal, secular, cosmopolitan components of Israeli identity. It viewed Israel as an integral part of a western liberal community, and saw the cultural sphere as a central arena in which this sense of shared community is practised and maintained. This identity component was most threatened by the calls for a boycott, because they challenged its underlying assumption that Israel is a liberal modern state and part of a broader liberal community. This self-narrative saw the hosting of the ESC as a golden opportunity to showcase Israel's liberal, modern nature, and to assert its acceptance by others like it. On the other hand, the nationalist discourse stressed the importance of national pride, the unique experience of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, its strong sense of victimhood and the importance of self-reliance. This self-narrative viewed the hosting of the ESC as an opportunity to assert Israel's national identity, glorify its achievements and deal a blow to its opponents. These two competing discourses are illustrated below. The initial reactions to the victory in the May 2018 contest clearly reflected its perception as a ‘national’ victory in the teeth of external criticism. ‘Israel—douze points, BDS—zero’ wrote Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis of the Likud party on his Facebook page the day after the victory.33 That day coincided with two other important events for the nationalistic discourse: the controversial (and, within the nationalist camp, highly celebrated) move of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; and the national annual ‘Jerusalem day’ celebrating the city and its unification under Israeli rule after the 1967 war.34 The culmination of the three events led to a celebratory mood, created high expectations of success and elicited official statements clearly linking the national aspects of the Eurovision victory with the city. In a speech at the opening ceremony of the new US Embassy, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that ‘those who did not want Jerusalem in the Eurovision will end up getting the Eurovision in Jerusalem. Next year in Jerusalem!’35 Netanyahu's statement clearly indicates why it is difficult to study Israeli motivations for hosting the competition without paying attention to the attempts of external actors to delegitimize Israel. They are a constant reference point. Culture Minister Miri Regev pushed strongly for the ESC to be hosted in Jerusalem, explaining in a parliamentary discussion: ‘I would like that exactly because the world is ignoring Jerusalem, the Eurovision will take place in Jerusalem, to tell the whole world: Jerusalem is a city that respects and accepts, a city of peace, a city where the three religions live together, this is how it should be.’36 The government's insistence on performing ‘capital-hood’ in Jerusalem also revealed a sense of insecurity in the nationalist narrative. Other states in the past, for example Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, have hosted the competition in various cities other than the state capital, with little public outcry. The liberal–cosmopolitan narrative, in turn, found expression in official reactions of figures on the left side of Israel's political map. While also congratulatory, they stressed other things. For example, an MP from the centre-left Hamachane Hatzioni (Zionist Camp) party wrote immediately after the victory: ‘This morning I want to say to you, the amazing Netta Barzilai, thank you. Not just thank you for a wonderful song and amazing victory and for bringing the Eurovision to Jerusalem next year, but for being who you are’, alluding to Barzilai's unique, unconventional and individualistic personality.37 Others used the opportunity to expose and criticize the gap between the government's endorsement of Barzilai and the competition, and its domestic policies that contradicted the Eurovision values of liberalism and LGBT acceptance.38 This echoed the criticism, discussed above, of states’ attempts to falsely portray themselves as protectors of gay rights. The apparent victory for the cosmopolitan camp, with the eventual decision to host the competition in Tel Aviv, was clearly influenced by the external pressure of the EBU, which was unhappy about the increasing politicization of the forthcoming event by the right-wing Israeli government. It demanded that the competition be held in a ‘non-divisive’ location and eventually the Israeli organizers capitulated.39 Staging the competition in Tel Aviv, with its LGBT-friendly atmosphere and fan base, was much more compatible with the ‘European’ values of the contest.40 The Israeli retreat from ‘next year in Jerusalem’ reflected the importance accorded to the hosting of the competition in Israel at all. This was further illustrated just a few days before the competition itself, against the background of a volatile security situation in which barrages of rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israeli cities. While Israel responded with limited counter-attacks, a ceasefire was quickly arranged and observed.41 Despite officials’ outspoken rejections of such insinuations, analysts, critics and public discourse all pointed to the impact of the upcoming competition on the decision-making process as leading to Israel holding back in its reaction in Gaza. As the competition drew nearer, the content and style of the competition broadcast itself became the new site for the Tel Aviv vs Jerusalem debate, which evolved into a debate over details and style. What elements should Israel bring to the show, and which of the narratives would these elements best present to the world? The opening and interval acts could be seen as mostly highlighting the narrative of Israel as a liberal and cosmopolitan state. One of the hosts of the show was a familiar Israeli Arab (Christian) TV presenter, Lucy Ayoob. Of particular note was the performance in the first semi-final of Dana International, the transgender singer who had won the competition for Israel in 1998. As she sang, a ‘kiss-cam’ surfed the crowd and zoomed in on couples kissing—including several LGBT couples.42 The message of the performance, the camera and the focus on a queer couple's kiss is that of Israel as an LGBT-friendly host for an LGBT-friendly Eurovision event. All in all, the event and the festivities surrounding it were an exemplary showcase of the Tel Aviv identity. To conclude, hosting the 2019 ESC revealed the national desire to use the stage to screen a positive image of Israel to Europe, the internal divisions over what national identity should be screened, and the impact of EBU pressures on this domestic contestation. However, rather than cementing a national Israeli identity, as one would expect, it actually sharpened the internal divisions. Once the Jerusalem venue was rejected, official Israel with its right-wing government largely detached itself from the event. Minister Regev herself was not invited to the event, while others in political roles—including the prime minister—were invited but did not attend, nor did they acknowledge what was internationally acclaimed as a successful mega-event.43 Capturing this internal divide, the day after the contest, a left-wing columnist of the Haaretz newspaper published a column headed ‘What if Tel Aviv declared independence?’.44 Eurovision as a stage for critical voices: boycott versus engagement The previous section focused on the domestic identity negotiation that took place in Israel in the context of its hosting of the 2019 competition. This section introduces the identity politics of the ESC at the transnational level and within various domestic European settings. For actors critical of Israel/Israeli policies, the long process leading to the final competition in Israel provided multiple opportunities to voice their criticism. They did so by engaging in identity politics with different actors, directly and indirectly. On one level, they sought to challenge the liberal identity that Israel tried to project, as described above. On a second level they sought to challenge individuals, groups and states across Europe who participated in the Eurovision event in different capacities, claiming that to participate in this event in Israel was contrary to their self-identity as liberal individuals (or states) supporting human rights. Reactions of various actors critical of Israel to its planned hosting of the ESC also reveal a debate between two strategies of resistance via culture. On the one hand there was the call for a boycott voiced by various BDS-related groups, aimed at de-normalizing Israel and the continuing occupation; on the other hand, there was the call for this stage to be used to perform symbolic resistance through participation, symbolic acts that would receive worldwide exposure. This approach was promoted by the Icelandic group Hatari, which chose to participate and protest at the event's final. In the following paragraphs we examine these actors, their arguments and their actions. The most prominent critiques and actions were taken by individuals and groups within the transnational BDS movement. In the 14 years since its establishment, the BDS movement has been engaging increasing numbers of activists and has been most significantly active in the cultural and academic fields, with a number of artists cancelling planned shows in Israel, and several important academic associations and student unions endorsing the movement and cutting ties with Israeli universities and academics. In the cultural sphere, it targets individual artists who are willing to perform in Israel, and Israeli artists and groups who perform abroad. Its goal is mostly to raise awareness and disrupt what is perceived by activists as the normalization of the occupation through the conduct of normal relations with the state of Israel. The anti-Eurovision campaign that followed Netta Barzilai's victory reflected both a desire to mitigate the damage to the BDS campaign to boycott Israel caused by the victory itself, and a proactive rationale, seeing Israel's hosting of the event as an opportunity to use this high-profile mega-event and the entire process leading up to it to promote awareness of the cause and campaign. Targeting the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel was especially important for BDS activists not only because it was such a high-profile media event, but also in the light of the close association of the ESC with the LGBT community, as noted above. If for Israel hosting the competition would contribute to its portrayal as a ‘gay rights holder’, then for those critical of Israel this was a claim to be challenged. The fact that a significant component of Eurovision fans are members of or sympathizers with this community, and that participation in the Eurovision festivities is considered a celebration of the community, made the potential identity clash here even more evident. There is close cooperation between various transnational queer groups and BDS activists, bringing together what was termed the ‘pinkwatching’ of Israel and the promotion of BDS.45 As a transnational movement, BDS mounted activities in the different domestic settings of the various participating states. The targets of pressure in the Eurovision case were semi-national (the national broadcasting agencies), societal (calling for public pressure to boycott the competition) and individual (calling on artists competing to represent their state in the ESC not to take part). Below we trace both the rhetoric of pro-boycott activists across the various participating states and the domestic reactions to these efforts. The official BDS position appeared on its main website under ‘Boycott Eurovision 2019’. It argued that Israel was cynically using the ESC as part of its ‘Brand Israel strategy’ through what they call ‘art-washing’, citing Prime Minister Netanyahu who called Netta Barzilai Israel's best ambassador.46 It encouraged the spread of the call for a boycott over social media, and asked supporters to join local BDS organizations in their home countries. The website allows you to enter the name of the state you live in, and then search for a list of local organizations you can join. Until October 2018, when states were required to confirm their participation in the competition, calls were targeted at the national broadcast agencies. In early September a group of artists from across Europe published a letter supporting the appeal from Palestinian artists for a boycott of the 2019 ESC, claiming there could be no ‘business as usual’ with Israel.47 In practice, these efforts had no impact on the participation of public broadcasters. The next focal point for protest was the period leading to the national selections of Eurovision representatives. In the United Kingdom, a group of British cultural figures called upon the BBC to ‘act on its own principles’ and ‘press for Eurovision to be relocated to a country where crimes against freedom are not being committed’. It is interesting that the letter was challenging the BBC—the national public broadcasting organization—as well as individual artists (‘For any artist of conscience, this would be dubious honour’). The BBC, in turn, responded by underlining its commitment to air the contest, and stressing that the ESC is not a political event.48 In France, two Muslim candidates who competed in the ‘Destination Eurovision’ national competition faced direct harsh criticism for their principled willingness to perform in Israel. One of them, the winner Bilal Hassani, received death threats and was exhorted not to appear. As a member of the LGBT community, he was under pressure from opposite directions, criticized by conservative Muslims on the one hand, and on the other by members of his community for participating in Israel's alleged ‘pinkwashing’ campaign. Hassani responded by saying: ‘Sometimes there are people who try to make it a political event but I'm not about that. The stage is a sacred place.’49 Other artists targeted by boycott campaigns responded in a similar fashion, insisting that the competition should not be viewed as a political event. Against this call for a boycott, a second critical voice emerged in the 2019 competition, represented by the Icelandic representatives Hatari. Hatari is a super-satirical, anti-capitalist techno-pop and performance art trio. The group argued that the very act of hosting the ESC in Israel was a political act: So that in itself is a breach of the Eurovision rules. You can't go to Tel Aviv and perform on that stage without breaking the rules of Eurovision. That goes for us and everyone else. And you can't be completely silent about the situation, as the silence in itself is a massive political statement too.50 However, instead of boycotting the competition altogether, the group decided to use the stage to make a statement. The group had made headlines even before they were chosen as the Icelandic representative in the contest, by publicly declaring that they intend to use the Eurovision stage to voice criticism of Israel, and officially challenging Prime Minister Netanyahu to a ‘friendly bout of glima’ (an Icelandic traditional form of trouser-grip wrestling). The Icelandic public had eventually chosen Hatari to represent Iceland with their song ‘Hate will prevail’, whose satirical lyrics warned about a dystopian future. The group's national victory is interesting, given the very significant voices within Iceland that were calling for an outright boycott of the competition in Tel Aviv, reflecting the thinking and discussion within Iceland triggered by the location of the 2019 contest. Hatari explained: Our power as court jesters is to evoke a discussion. People can have their opinions about the quality of the Hatari performance, but it goes to show that the themes we bring to the stage are things that need exploring; people want the opportunity for dialogue. It's a heated, emotional topic.51 In the aftermath of the competition the group released a single together with a Palestinian artist, Murad Bashar.52 In an earlier interview Hatari members pointed out that they were ‘the pink elephant in the room’,53 signalling the plurality of voices within the LGBT community about the most appropriate resistance strategy to pinkwashing events. Finally, Hatari also demonstrated the multiple levels on which the identity contestation surrounding the ESC was taking place. Their general anti-capitalist message was aimed not only at Israel, but also at problematic developments in Europe.54 All these messages found a spectacular outlet on stage in Tel Aviv. The Icelandic band's declarations of intent to use the competition to voice criticism of Israel elicited harsh state-level reactions in Israel from the nationalist-narrative groups; an interministerial task force considered banning the group from Israel.55 Eventually, despite the comments of some politicians on the matter, the group was admitted to the country and allowed to perform in the competition. In the finals, they used the air time from the backstage ‘green room’ while their position was announced to present Palestinian flags on scarves. They were not the first to display this symbol: Madonna, who appeared in the intermission as a guest performer, made a political statement by having two of her dancers embrace, one with a Palestinian and one with an Israeli flag on their backs. Both gestures were received with much anger in Israel,56 and an official EBU statement denouncing the political gesture was made.57 The response of the BDS movement to both the Icelandic group and Madonna's political gestures brought to the forefront the conflict between the approaches of protest through engagement and protest through boycott: the BDS movement rejected these acts as ‘fig-leafing’, refused to accept the protest as solidarity and insisted it damaged rather than assisted the cause.58 This controversy reflects a much more fundamental debate about the normatively and practically most appropriate use of cultural tools to engage with international conflicts or perceived wrongs. These different approaches reflect different understandings of the potential of popular culture, centred respectively on the power of denial and the power of communication and dialogue—dialogue which may be critical and harsh rather than peaceful and reassuring. Exploring this dichotomy is beyond the scope of this article. The politics of depoliticizing the ESC: the EBU and participating states Given the above discussion, it is clear that by agreeing to conduct the competition in Israel, the EBU and its member states59 were inevitably taking a political stance—both vis-à-vis critics of Israel and its policies, and vis-à-vis Israel itself. However, the EBU, as the umbrella organizer of the event, made every effort to formally ensure that the event was depoliticized. As noted above, the EBU insisted on a ‘non-divisive’ location for the competition, effectively pushing the reluctant Israeli government to choose Tel Aviv. It also threatened to cancel the event in Israel should the new Israeli Broadcasting Agency Law, which was to divide the public broadcasting service, be passed. The proposed law was perceived as weakening the broadcasting service by splitting it up, therefore threatening its autonomy, which is a precondition for membership of the EBU. The perceived importance of hosting the competition is reflected in Netanyahu's decision to freeze the promotion of this law, his own brainchild. That the EBU managed to intervene practically in the making of a domestic law, as well as ensuring that the event would be staged in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem and demanding early on in the planning stages that fans be allowed to enter Israel regardless of their political opinions,60 demonstrates the administrative power of an international institution over member states. In the Israeli case this was especially powerful, in view of the EBU's role as the legitimacy granter, approving the holding of the competition in Israel. In opposition to the EBU decisions, the critical calls for a boycott sought to unravel this portrayal of the competition as an apolitical event. While calls for a boycott emerged in several European states, all seem to have been answered in a similar manner, echoing the EBU message that the Eurovision Song Contest is not a political event and rejecting the boycott. In Ireland, where BDS activities had been prominent well before this episode, the Irish national broadcaster RTE was put under pressure by local activists presenting a petition calling for a boycott of the ESC. Its response was to declare that it would not sanction employees for refusing to travel to Israel to attend the ESC, and that it would cover the event more broadly and not purely as an entertainment event.61 In Germany, the head of entertainment at the national broadcasting agency, the NDR, explained why it did not support a boycott, stressing that the ESC was a ‘non-political entertainment program’ and that there would be no discussion with EBU members and affiliates about a boycott of the competition in Israel.62 In January 2019 the EBU circulated a memo among participating national broadcasting agencies, with guidance on how to deal with multiple BDS challenges. The memo explained who was behind the boycott campaign, what strategies they were likely to use, and what to do ‘should your artist be contacted’. It set out the official EBU position on the matter, stressing that Israel's public broadcaster KAN had won the right to host the event, in line with the rules of the competition, and that this was a non-political entertainment event that celebrated diversity through music, and suggested sticking to that response.63 This EBU stance had sufficient force to enable national broadcasting agencies to withstand local criticism and pressures. Its insistence on the non-political nature of the ESC itself can, of course, be read in very different ways. The liberal reading, to which the EBU adheres, points to the normative importance assigned to separating ‘culture’ from ‘politics’, and adhering to strict rules and formalities, because this is the only way to enable interactions across states and societies even in the face of tremendous strains and disagreements. The formal insistence on the event being non-political helped to endorse the holding of a liberal cultural festival in Tel Aviv while detaching it from the ‘political’ foreign policy debates with and criticism of Israel. For European governments this was an attractive solution, in part because they might not want to get into unnecessary foreign policy skirmishes with Israel, and in part because the debate touched upon the highly sensitive issue of rising anti-Semitism in Europe. This unusual sensitivity was exemplified in a brief episode in England, when the popular morning television show Good Morning Britain posted a yes/no poll in its Twitter account on the question of whether Britain should boycott the competition in Israel. The post generated angry responses, suggesting that the very question was likely to elicit anti-Semitic reactions, and was quickly removed, with a clarification offered by the show.64 Given this very high sensitivity, sticking to the ‘non-political event’ mantra seemed like the best rhetorical strategy to avoid touching this raw nerve. This section has demonstrated how the various critical voices calling for a boycott of the competition were not only a concern for the host country Israel, but became an issue in the domestic politics of multiple European states, where attempts were made to challenge their own identity as liberal, human-rights-promoting states, and consequently became embroiled in their respective domestic contestations. At the same time, it has demonstrated the importance of the EBU as the official institution that enabled participating states to uphold the claim that they were taking part in a ‘non-political’ event, and therefore to avoid the potential domestic identity contestation that BDS activists attempted to generate. Conclusions The whole process leading to the mega-event in Tel Aviv—involving multiple European capitals and national competitions, and nearly a year of media coverage and discussion—made the ESC a significant arena of political contestation, spanning domestic, international and transnational spaces, and involving the affirmation, negotiation and challenging of national and transnational identities. In this article we have traced these different dimensions of identity politics and how they influence one another. Several conclusions emerge from this research. First, hosting mega-events serves as a potential battleground for identity contestation, as well as a potential source of nation-branding and soft power. These events offer fertile ground for various contending actors, as well as for scholars interested in studying the interplay between states and transnational civil society groups. The 2022 football World Cup in Qatar, for example, is already providing another fascinating case where similar processes are taking and will take place. Second, the processes described above point to the need to study the activities of transnational advocacy networks such as the BDS movement, not only in the context of their interaction with the target state, but mainly in their local activities in different locations. Transnational actors still operate in domestic settings. Third, the case demonstrates the potential power of seemingly technical bureaucratic international organizations, in this case the EBU, in their roles as bestowers of legitimacy on their members and as deflectors of criticism. As such, they inevitably become actors in multiple games of identity politics in their different member states. Fourth, the debates about the appropriate relations between popular culture and politics that were described here in the context of the ESC suggest that this is a political, academic and normative issue that needs to be seriously discussed. Finally, with regard to the case itself, the 2019 ESC story demonstrates the very limited power of BDS advocacy at present, when it comes to contesting events that are sponsored by states. At the same time, it demonstrates the heightened anxiety surrounding identity within Israel, expressed in the intense preoccupation with the competition. It also demonstrates the divide within Israel between competing narratives of the state. ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ turned into ‘next year in Tel Aviv’—a tale of two cities. Footnotes 1 " This statement can be understood literally, but also bears a strong Jewish connotation, as it is the last line in the Passover Seder prayer. Over the centuries it has embodied the longing of diaspora Jews for Jerusalem. For Orthodox Jews it embodies the longing for the arrival of the Messiah, but for most secular Israeli Jews as well it is a very familiar phrase, associated with Jewish tradition. 2 " For a recent important exception, see Paul Michael Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti, ‘The soft power–soft disempowerment nexus: the case of Qatar’, International Affairs 94: 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 1139–57. 3 " Kyle Grayson, Matt Davies and Simon Philpott, ‘Pop goes IR? Researching the popular culture–world politics continuum’, Politics 29: 3, 2009, pp. 155–63; Galia Press-Barnathan, ‘Thinking about the role of popular culture in international conflicts’, International Studies Review 19: 2, 2017, pp.166–84. 4 " Within critical IR research there has been criticism of this liberal view of soft power, developed by Joseph Nye. This criticism pointed to the less positive sides of ‘soft power’, and emphasized the importance of representational struggles (discussed later in this article). See e.g. Janice Bially-Mattern, ‘Why “soft power” isn't so soft: representational force and the sociolinguistic construction of attraction in world politics’, Millennium 33: 3, 2005, pp. 583–612. 5 " See Roger Brubaker, Nationalism reframed: nationhood and the national question in the new Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), intr. and ch. 3. 6 " See e.g. Ayşe Zarakol, After defeat: how the East learned to live with the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jelena Subotić and Ayşe Zarakol, ‘Cultural intimacy in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations 19: 4, 2013, pp. 915–38. 7 " See e.g. Jennifer Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics: state identity and the security dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations 12: 3, 2006, pp. 341–70; Brent Steele, Ontological security in International Relations: self-identity and the IR state (London: Routledge, 2008); Catarina Kinnvall, ‘Globalization and religious nationalism: self identity, and the search for ontological security’, Political Psychology 25: 5, 2004, pp. 741–67; and recently the 2018 special issue of European Security on ‘Ontological (in)security in the European Union’, edited by Catarina Kinnvall, Ian Manners and Jennifer Mitzen. In the Israeli context, Amir Lupovici points to the dilemmas generated by the desire to promote simultaneously different components of Israeli identity, which generate a sense of an ontological dissonance: see Amir Lupovici, ‘Ontological dissonance, clashing identities, and Israel's unilateral steps towards the Palestinians’, Review of International Studies 38: 4, 2012, pp. 809–33. For a recent exploration of the relational nature of ontological security, see Simon Frankel Pratt, ‘A relational view of ontological security in International Relations’, theory note, International Studies Quarterly 61: 1, 2017, pp. 78–85. 8 " See e.g. David Black, ‘The symbolic politics of sport mega-events: 2010 in comparative perspective’, Politikon 34: 3, 2007, pp. 261–76; Sven Ismer, ‘Embodying the nation: football, emotions and the construction of collective identity’, Nationalities Papers 39: 4, 2011, pp. 547–65; Vitalii Aleksandrovich Gorokhov, ‘Forward Russia! Sports mega-events as a venue for building national identity’, Nationalities Papers 43: 2, 2015, pp. 267–82. 9 " Christopher S. Browning, ‘Nation branding, national self-esteem, and the constitution of subjectivity in late modernity’, Foreign Policy Analysis 11: 2, 2015, pp. 195–214. See also the debate surrounding ‘Global Britain’: Wilfred M. Chow, Enze Han and Xiaojun Li, ‘Brexit identities and British public opinion on China’, International Affairs 95: 6, Nov. 2019, pp. 1369–88. 10 " Anna Alekseyeva, ‘Sochi 2014 and the rhetoric of a new Russia: image construction through mega-events’, East European Politics 30: 2, 2014, pp. 158–74. 11 " Scarlett Cornelissen, ‘Scripting the nation: sport, mega-events, foreign policy and state-building in post-apartheid South Africa’, Sport in Society 11: 4, 2008, pp. 481–93. 12 " See e.g. Zarakol, After defeat. 13 " Krzysztof Jaskulowski and Piotr Majewski, ‘The UEFA European football championship 2012 and pop nationalism in Poland: between confirmation and contestation’, Identities 23: 5, 2016, pp. 555–71; Richard Giulianotti, Gary Armstrong, Gavin Hales and Dick Hobbs, ‘Sport mega-events and public opposition: a sociological study of the London 2012 Olympics’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 39: 2, 2015, pp. 99–119. 14 " See Brannagan and Giulianotti, ‘The soft power–soft disempowerment nexus’, pp. 1152–4. On the efficacy of naming and shaming, see Jack Snyder, ‘Backlash against human rights shaming: emotions in groups’, International Theory, publ. online Dec. 2019, doi:10.1017/S1752971919000216. 15 " Bowersox, ‘Naming, shaming, and international sporting events: does the host nation play fair?’, Political Research Quarterly 69: 2, 2016, pp. 258–69. 16 " Malcolm MacLean, ‘Revisiting (and revising?) sports boycotts: from rugby against South Africa to soccer in Israel’, International Journal of the History of Sport 31: 15, 2014, pp. 1832–51. 17 " Gad Yair, ‘Douze point: Eurovisions and Euro-divisions in the Eurovision Song Contest—review of two decades of research’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 22: 5–6, 2018, pp. 1013–29; Gad Yair and Daniel Maman, ‘The persistent structure of hegemony in the Eurovision Song Contest’, Acta Sociologica 39: 3, 1996, pp. 309–25. 18 " Shannon Jones and Jelena Subotić, ‘Fantasies of power: performing Europeanization on the European periphery’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 14: 5, 2011, pp. 542–57. See also Catherine Baker, ‘Wild dances and dying wolves: simulation, essentialization, and national identity at the Eurovision Song Contest’, Popular Communication 6: 3, 2008, pp. 173–89. 19 " Paul Jordan, The modern fairy tale: nation branding, national identity and the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia (Tartu, Estonia: University of Tartu Press, 2014). 20 " Murad Ismayilov, ‘State, identity, and the politics of music: Eurovision and nation-building in Azerbaijan’, Nationalities Papers 40: 6, 2012, pp. 833–51. 21 " Catherine Baker, ‘The “Gay Olympics”? The Eurovision Song Contest and the politics of LGBT/European belonging’, European Journal of International Relations 23: 1, 2017, pp. 99–100. 22 " Cynthia Weber, Queer International Relations (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016), ch. 3, ‘The “normal homosexual” in International Relations’. 23 " See Weber, Queer international relations, p. 113; also Baker, ‘The “Gay Olympics”?’, pp. 97–121; Jessica Carniel, ‘Skirting the issue: finding queer and geopolitical belonging at the Eurovision Song Contest’, Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2: 1, 2015, pp. 136–54; Aeyal Gross, ‘The politics of LGBT rights in Israel and beyond: nationality, normativity, and queer politics’, Columbia Human Rights Law Review 46: 2, 2015, pp. 81–152; Dana Heller, ‘t.A.T.u. you! Russia, the global politics of Eurovision, and lesbian pop’, Popular Music 26: 2, 2007, pp. 195–210. 24 " Baker, ‘The “Gay Olympics”?’, p. 105. 25 " Cited in Baker, ‘The “Gay Olympics”?’, p. 109. 26 " On the EBU and European identity, see Cornel Sandvoss, ‘On the couch with Europe: the Eurovision Song Contest, the European Broadcast Union and belonging on the old continent’, Popular Communication 6: 3, 2008, pp. 190–207. 27 " Daniel F. Wajner, ‘“Battling” for legitimacy: analyzing performative contests in the Gaza flotilla paradigmatic case’, International Studies Quarterly 63: 4, 2019, pp. 1035–50. 28 " The BDS movement is a transnational advocacy network, calling for pressure to be applied on the state of Israel through the severing of economic, cultural and academic ties with any actors affiliated with the state. It was launched in 2005 with a public appeal from Palestinian civil actors to put pressure on the Israeli public and institutions. It officially demands from the state of Israel ‘ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall, recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194’. See Ibrahim G. Aoudé, Morgan Cooper and Cynthia G Franklin, ‘The “I” in BDS: individual creativity and responsibility in the context of collective praxis—an interview with Omar Barghouti and Falastine Dwikat’, Biography 37: 2, 2014, pp. 709–22; ‘What is BDS?’, https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 13 Dec. 2019.) 29 " Naama Lutz, The war against the BDS: securitization of ‘naming and shaming’, MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2017. 30 " Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: the dynamics of multiple citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 31 " Joel S. Migdal, State in society: studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 166. 32 " Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, ‘“Jerusalem assassinated Rabin and Tel Aviv commemorated him”: Rabin memorials and the discourse of national identity in Israel’, City and Society 10: 1, 1998, pp. 183–203. 33 " Ofir Akunis, Facebook page, 13 May 2018, https://www.facebook.com/OfirAkunis/posts/10155618345371909. 34 " The US move also prompted what became a ritual Friday mass demonstration of Palestinians along the Gaza fence, leading to weekly violent encounters with Israeli soldiers across the fence, and to over 200 casualties since then. These added fuel to the calls to boycott the competition. 35 " ‘Prime Minister's Office—PM Netanyahu and his wife participated in a reception of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in honor of the United States delegation to celebrate the opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem’ (Hebrew), Prime Minister of Israel, official website, 13 May 2018, https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/news/event_welcome_usa130518. 36 " Protocol of Knesset Meeting 345, Israeli Knesset, 13 June 2018. 37 " Merav Michaeli (Hamachane Hatzioni party), Facebook page, 13 May 2018 https://www.facebook.com/MichaeliMerav/posts/1889034014453629 (emphasis added). 38 " See Tamar Zandberg (at the time, the leader of the Meretz party, the main representative of the Israeli political left), Facebook page, 17 May 2018, https://www.facebook.com/tamarzandberg/posts/1297302430399921. 39 " Ran Boker, ‘After “Messi” soccer spat, Europeans demand “non-divisive” location for Eurovision’, Ynetnews, 6 July 2018, https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5281194,00.html. 40 " Christopher Muther, ‘Welcome to Tel Aviv, the gayest city on Earth’, Boston Globe, 17 March 2016, https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2016/03/17/welcome-tel-aviv-gayest-city-earth/y9V15VazXhtSjXVSo9gT9K/story.html. 41 " Isabel Kershner, ‘Eurovision arrives in Tel Aviv, in range of rockets and the focus of protests’, New York Times, 15 May 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/world/middleeast/eurovision-israel-tel-aviv.html; Isabel Kershner and David Halbfinger, ‘After intense fighting in Gaza, Israel and Palestinians observe ceasefire’, New York Times, 5 May 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/world/middleeast/gaza-rockets-israel-palestinians.html. 42 " ‘Eurovision: gay kisses upset Belarus TV host’, BBC News, 15 May 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-48283982. 43 " ‘Netanyahu officially invited to Eurovision, Regev said to be snubbed’, Times of Israel, 30 April 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-officially-invited-to-eurovision-regev-snubbed-report/. 44 " Rogel Alpher, ‘What if Tel Aviv declared independence?’, Haaretz (Hebrew), 19 May 2019, https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.7253932. 45 " See e.g. ‘Pinkwatching Israel’, https://www.pinkwatchingisrael.com/about-us/. 46 " BDS movement, ‘Boycott Eurovision 2019’, 24 July 2018, https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-eurovision-2019. 47 " ‘Boycott Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel’, Guardian, 9 July 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/07/boycott-eurovision-song-contest-hosted-by-israel. 48 " Ben Beaumont-Thomas, ‘British cultural figures urge BBC to boycott Eurovision in Israel’, Guardian, 29 Jan. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/29/british-cultural-figures-urge-bbc-to-boycott-eurovision-in-israel. 49 " ‘Despite death threats, France's Eurovision entrant looking forward to Tel Aviv’, Times of Israel, 30 Jan. 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/despite-threats-france-eurovision-entrant-looking-forward-to-tel-aviv-visit/. 50 " Rob Holley, ‘Iceland's Eurovision hopefuls Hatari: “We're the pink elephant in the room”’, Independent, 12 March 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/hatari-interview-eurovision-2019-iceland-song-israel-tel-aviv-boycott-a8818626.html. 51 " Holley, ‘Iceland's Eurovision hopefuls Hatari’. 52 " See David Smith, ‘Iceland's Hatari collaborate with Palestinian artist Bashar Murad in “Klefi/Samed”’, wiwibloggs, 24 May 2019, https://wiwibloggs.com/2019/05/24/icelands-hatari-collaborate-with-palestinian-artist-bashar-murad-in-klefi-samed/239460/. 53 " See ‘Despite death threats’, Times of Israel. 54 " The lyrics of their song included the ominous line ‘Europe will crumble’. 55 " Noa Landau and Itay Stern, ‘Israel to examine whether Iceland's Eurovision reps plan to violate boycott law’, Haaretz, 10 March 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/eurovision/.premium-israel-to-examine-whether-iceland-s-eurovision-reps-plan-to-violate-boycott-law-1.7004517. 56 " Agence France-Presse, ‘Israeli culture minister criticises Palestinian flags at Eurovision’, Guardian, 19 May 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/19/israel-culture-minister-criticises-palestine-flags-at-eurovision. 57 " Dan Williams and Rami Ayyub, ‘Netherlands wins Eurovision contest; Madonna flag display causes stir’, Reuters, 19 May 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-music-eurovision-idUSKCN1SO0RP. 58 " Emma Kelly, ‘Iceland's protest at Eurovision rejected as fig-leafing by Palestinian group’, Metro, 19 May 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/19/icelands-protest-israel-eurovision-rejected-fig-leafing-palestinian-group-9598471/. 59 " Officially, the members of the EBU and the participants in the ESC are not states but national broadcasting services. In practice, however, it is clear that they represent states. 60 " ‘Eurovision clashes with Israel as host country’, Deutsche Welle, 5 Sept. 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/eurovision-clashes-with-israel-as-host-country/a-45359511. 61 " Órla Ryan, ‘RTÉ won't sanction employees who refuse to travel to Israel for Eurovision’, TheJournal.ie, 30 Sept. 2018, https://www.thejournal.ie/rte-eurovision-boycott-4258798-Sep2018/. 62 " Anthony Granger, ‘Germany: NDR does not support a boycott of Eurovision 2019’, Eurovoix, 11 Sept. 2018, https://eurovoix.com/2018/09/11/germany-ndr-does-not-support-a-boycott-of-eurovision-2019/. 63 " EBU, ‘Boycott campaign—Eurovision Song Contest 2019’, 22 Jan. 2019. 64 " ‘Good Morning Britain clarifies why it deleted Eurovision boycott poll’, Jewish News, 2 Aug. 2019, https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/outrage-after-good-morning-britain-asks-if-eurovision-should-be-boycotted/. Author notes " This article greatly benefited from comments received during presentations at the International Studies Association (ISA) annual meeting in Toronto in March 2019, and the annual meeting of the Israeli Association of International Relations at Tel Aviv University in June 2019. The authors wish to thank Shani Bar-Tuvia, Oren Barak, Kyle Grayson, Gadi Heiman, Arie Kacowicz and Siobhan McEvoy-Levy for their comments and suggestions, and Lee Amram-Eilat for her research assistance. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. This research benefited from the financial support of the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), grant no. 692/18. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - The multilevel identity politics of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest
JO - International Affairs
DO - 10.1093/ia/iiaa004
DA - 2020-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-multilevel-identity-politics-of-the-2019-eurovision-song-contest-gYHk69U6w9
SP - 729
VL - 96
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -