Don’t praise Iceland’s Hatari for violating Eurovision boycott
Waving a Palestinian flag does not make up for crossing a picket line.
-20 May 2019
Iceland’s Hatari gained much attention for their stunt during the Eurovision Song Contest final on Saturday night when they briefly held up Palestine flag scarves in front of the television cameras.
They won ecstatic praise on social media, but this should not obscure the reality: that Hatari crossed the picket line called for by Palestinian civil society.
In fact, what they did was an act of anti-solidarity that ultimately harms Palestinian efforts to end Israel’s increasingly violent and brazen regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.
Iceland’s #Hatari member posted on Instagram how security @ #EurovisionTelAviv confiscated their #Palestine flags👇🏻pic.twitter.com/IyCBChyvDC— Noa Landau נעה לנדאו (@noa_landau) 18 May 2019
The point is not difficult: if a trade union calls a strike and some workers decide to cross the picket line, but to flash union badges at the strikers as an “act of solidarity,” everyone would understand that the strike-breakers are still scabs.
Their use of union symbols to cover their betrayal would rightly be seen as rubbing salt into the wound and earn the scorn of striking workers.
The point of a collective action like a strike or a boycott is to raise the cost to the oppressor of violating the rights of the oppressed, so that the oppressor is forced to stop their oppression.
Scabbing undermines the principle and effectiveness of collective action – whether it is a strike by workers against an abusive employer, or a boycott called by a people fighting for their very existence.
Giving a pass to scabs sends a message to others that it is okay to cross the picket line, that scabs can have their cake and eat it by accepting the benefits of collusion with the abuser and yet still be praised while they harm the collective.
Moreover, when the BDS movement – for boycott, divestment and sanctions – is under unprecedented attack by Israel and its European and American allies who smear it as anti-Semitic, it is more important than ever to defend this form of solidarity.
That BDS is a nonviolent, universalist and anti-racist movement has not stopped some western politicans from slandering it.
Tremors, turbulence & terror in Mid East remind us of urgent need for peace: two-state solution. But the foundations for peace are respect & coexistence. Boycotting Israel — the world’s only Jewish state — is antisemitic. I salute Germany for taking stand.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world…
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Asked to boycott
Yet it appears that a brief visual of a Palestinian flag generates such strong emotions in some people that the ability to think clearly about these acts and their consequences evaporates.
So let’s be clear about what happened.
In April, PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, asked Hatari not to go.
“Palestinians are calling on all Eurovision contestants to withdraw from the contest in apartheid Tel Aviv,” PACBI stated.
“This includes Iceland’s entrant Hatari, in particular, who are on the record supporting Palestinian rights.”
“Artists who insist on crossing the Palestinian boycott picket line, playing Tel Aviv in defiance of our calls, cannot offset the harm they do to our human rights struggle by ‘balancing’ their complicit act with some project with Palestinians,” PACBI added.
“Palestinian civil society overwhelmingly rejects this fig-leafing, having learnt from the fight against apartheid in South Africa.”
In addition, there had been extensive behind-the-scenes discussions with Hatari.
The group visited the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, where band member Matthias Haraldsson described the situation as “apartheid.”
Despite this, Hatari went on to do precisely what Palestinians had asked them not to do: they crossed the picket line and tried to offset it with the fig-leafing gesture of waving flags.
PACBI’s response to Hatari’s action was in line with the position it had communicated to the band before the contest:
