Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1115758
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 MAY 2019 JAMES DEBONO "UNFORTUNATELY, Israel is blatantly using this Euro- pean event to present itself as if possessing another pretty face, and to distract the at- tention from its war crimes against Palestinians," says Walid Nabhan, the Maltese writer of Palestinian origin. Nabhan, winner of the Eu- ropean Union Prize for Lit- erature (EUPL) in 2017 for his novel L-Eżodu taċ-Ċikonji, does not mince his words in decrying the Eurovision Song Contest as a public relations exercise for a regime which continues to deny Palestinians their right to self-determina- tion. Nabhan, who recently trans- lated Dun Karm Psaila's mas- terpiece 'Il-Jien U Lilhinn Minnu' and a selection of his other poems in Arabic, was speaking of the latest massa- cre in Gaza, when Palestinians were killed and 51 injured by Israeli forces during the week- ly Friday protests in the Gaza strip. In 2018, Israeli security forces killed 290 Palestinians, including 55 minors. Of the casualties, 254 were killed in the Gaza Strip, 34 in the West Bank and two within Israel. Since late March 2018, Pal- estinians in Gaza have been holding the March of Return protests along the fence with Israel. During these protests, Israeli forces use extensive live fire against demonstrators. As a result of this open-fire policy, 190 demonstrators have been killed – 65% of all Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this year. These include a woman and 34 minors, three of whom were 11-years-old and one four-year-old. Most of them were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone. In the same timeframe Pal- estinians killed seven Israeli civilians in the West Bank, and seven members of Israel's security forces – five in the West Bank, one on operative duty in Gaza, and one on the Israeli side of the fence with Gaza. Amid the apartheid and mas- sacre of Israel's occupation of Gaza, Israel will once again be hosting the Eurovision Song Contest, after it took last year's honours with pop pow- erhouse Netta Barzilai. "Definitely Palestinians feel disappointed to see coun- tries from the civilised world and from the neighbourhood beautifying an Apartheid state which thrives on racism and exclusivity," Nabhan told MaltaToday when asked on his reaction to the hype sur- rounding this event. The Eurovision Song Contest coincides with the re-election of a far-right Israeli govern- ment and attempts to impose a new order in the Middle East by US President Don- ald Trump. After recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the new Kushner-Trump plan envisions a dismembered Pal- estinian state with the full Is- raeli annexation of the settle- ment blocs in the West Bank, which would be stretched out to reach other isolated settle- ments. "This involves wiping out Palestine completely from all geography and history books.... for Palestinians, his- tory seems to be moving in the opposite direction," Nab- han says. "In this way the Palestin- ians continue being robbed of their land, memory and iden- tity. There is no precedent in human history to the case of a foreign minority destroying the fabric of the indigenous majority, occupying their land and expelling them out of their homes." Nablan does not enter the merits on whether Malta should have boycotted the Eurovision, but says he is dis- appointed by the general hy- pocrisy of the European Un- ion at a time when Palestine commemorates the 70th an- niversary of the Nakba – the "catastrophe" of 1948 – when over 700,000 Palestinian Ar- abs fled or were expelled from their homes after the war of that same year between Arabs and Israelis. "Un- fortunately, since Malta joined Europe in 2004, it became part of this hypocritical block," Nabhan muses. Yet it was not al- ways like this. Former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff and former President Guido de Marco were foremost supporters of the Palestinian cause. Thou- sands of Maltese attended national protests supporting Palestinian rights in 2002, during which political leaders Alfred Sant and Eddie Fenech Adami wore the Palestinian keffiyeh as a sign of solidarity. Yet such vocal solidarity has been absent in more recent times, save for a strong decla- ration by George Vella before being chosen for the Presi- dency. NEWS Eurovision 2019 Europe will tune in to its annual celebration of pop schmaltz and camp muzak. Will the mawkishness of Eurovision hide host country Israel's massacre of Gazans? 'A pretty face on an Apartheid regime' A ceasefire with Israel appears to have ended a deadly two-day escalation of violence. Here, a Palestinian girl stands in front of a building on Monday that was destroyed during Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City over the last weekend Bottom: The explosion from an Israeli airstrike is seen in Gaza City on 4 May. A building housing the Turkish Anadolu news agency's Gaza office was destroyed by Israeli forces that evening Left: Israeli pop singer Netta, who clinched the ESC trophy last year... and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, a life-long advocate of Palestinian rights, has called on on the ESC artists participating in Tel Aviv to boycott the event over Israel's treatment of Palestinians Acclaimed Maltese author Walid Nabhan: 'Palestinians feel disappointed to see countries from the civilised world and from the neighbourhood beautifying an Apartheid state which thrives on racism and exclusivity'