Activists held a symbolic action of solidarity with Palestine during the performance of Israeli Apartheid supporter and 2018 Eurovision Song Contest winner Netta Barzilai at the Malta EuroPride opening concert. The activists present at the concert waved Palestinian flags and held placards condemning the pinkwashing of Israeli apartheid and occupation.
Netta Barzilai has regularly participated in initiatives organised by the Israeli state outside Israel, in initiatives that celebrate the banishment of Palestinians from their homeland, and in concerts of the far right. According to her, the bad reputation of the Israeli state on the international scene is simply a question of “bad PR” and not because of its politics of terror (see here).
This symbolic action of solidarity with Palestine serves as a reminder that Israeli state efforts to erase its oppression of the Palestinian people from the international agenda will never be successful.
Millions of people around the world continue to have Palestine in their minds and hearts and are ready to hold Israel to account for its colonisation of Palestinian land and its brutality against the Palestinian people.
Last month, five Maltese organisations, including pioneers in organising Pride events in Malta, called for Netta Barzilai’s invitation to be revoked. They stated that the principles of equality and freedom are not a menu from which one chooses at will, highlighting the huge contradiction that a manifestation such as EuroPride - which is supposed to celebrate love and equality - embraces personalities who are accomplices in racism, killings and ethnic cleansing of the Apartheid state of Israel. The organisers ignored the request to remove Barzilai from the event.
Netta Barzilai is a cultural ambassador for apartheid Israel, and the campaign “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” by Palestinian civil society calls for a boycott of her activities.
In the same way that in the nineties, the Apartheid regime in South Africa came to an end following international boycotts and sanctions, Palestinian civil society wants the world to put pressure on the Apartheid state of Israel using boycotts and sanctions against all those who, in one way or another, are accomplices in its actions.
Activists showed their support for the Palestinian cause by reminding the general public that Palestinians have been massacred in their thousands and that hundreds of thousands have been forced out of their lands by inhumane and illegal Israeli state actions since 1948. No amount of pinkwashing will erase these atrocities.