First the good news, Israel can keep it’s song “Push The Button“. (Both Finland’s and Israel’s nuke threat songs can be found here) The bad news is how Finland’s YLE News reports the story, which ends in casting Israel in a negative light.
YLE also tries to downplay Ahmadinejad’s repeated threat of wiping Israel off the face of the map, stating instead that “he has called for Israel to be replaced by a Palestinian state.”
This is of course a complete lie, being nothing more than a spinning of Ahamdinjad’s words in order to make him less of a threat — in the minds of the Finnish public — than he actually is.
Read the following translation from Finnish. For some unexplainable reason, YLE chose not to translate this piece into English. Perhaps to keep their biased and inflammatory rhetoric towards Israel as local as possible, in order prevent outside scrutiny of themsleves? *L* KGS
Israel can keep its song as is.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decided at the beginning of the week that the words to Push The Button do not need to be changed. The Union announced in a Wednesday press conference, that all the songs entered into the competition have been approved.
The producer for the EBU, Svante Stockselius said the Union does not want to comment on individual song entries. According to Stockselius is is clear that there were a couple of songs that were discussed before their being approved.
The Israeli Broadcasting Agency (IBA) has defended its country’s Eurovision representative, the group Teapack. According to the IBA, the song is not a provocation, being more of peaceful gesture by expressing fears of violence and hope for world wide peace.
Israel came under scrutiny for referring to Iran
Israel came under further scrutiny, when its Eurovision entry was won the by the group Teapacks, that sang of nuclear war and crazy leaders. The song refers in a round-about-way to the Iran and its harsh worded leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Push The Button is sung in English, French and in Hebrew. The song’s musical style is a mixture of folk, rap and hard rock.
The song captures the Israelis’ prevailing opinion about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. President Ahmadinejad has said that Israel could be replaced by a Palestinian state.
Israel is believed to also have its own weapons program, and doesn’t belong to the international agreements for their removal.This isn’t the first time Israel has caused mixed feelings in the Eurovision contest. In the year 1998 the country won the competition with the transsexual Dana International, singing the song Diva. YLE News
Al Avai adds: It is clear that they (YLE) are distorting the news on purpose. The “wipe off the map” was so widely reported that it’s hard to get it accidentally wrong. Makes Israel sound like they are crying wolf. Nuclear weapons cannot be used to replace one adminstration (Jewish) with another! The threat can only be existential.
Note: Perhaps a few emails to its editor in chief might get YLE’s attention.
ari.jarvinen@yle.fi
atte.jaaskelainen@yle.fi
