Israel... 12 points!
Israel goes apocalyptic for Eurovision
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Thursday March 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
It was a choice that perhaps owed more to the public mood than to any cute lyrical hook or novel musical riff.
Asked to pick a song for this year's Eurovision song contest, Israelis paid little heed to the eternal Eurovision themes of peace, love and harmony and settled instead for a number about the threat of terrorism and Armageddon called Push the Button.
The track, sung by the Teapacks in English, French and Hebrew, is a peculiar but confident amalgam of eastern sounds, rock and rap.
It was chosen this week as the country's preferred song in a phone-in television show and now the band will go forward to the Eurovision finals in Helsinki in May.
"The world is full of terror, if someone makes an error, he's gonna blow us up to kingdom come," sings Kobi Oz, leader of the Teapacks.
"There are some crazy rulers, they hide and try to fool us, with demonic, technological willingness to harm. They're gonna push the button, push the button."
The Teapacks, who like to say they make music with a message, have sung in the past about social ills, crime, poverty, foreign workers and sometimes about love too. Of his current song, Oz said: "It has the right vibe and it's multicultural."
The band was formed in 1988 in Sderot, a small, poor Israeli development town close to the heavily guarded border with the Gaza Strip. Sderot, as the nearest town, has been the frequent target of makeshift Qassam rockets launched by Palestinian militants from inside Gaza.
Their song Push the Button, which can be heard on their MySpace page, has been interpreted as a description of life caught between rocket fire on the one hand and the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran on the other, two of the principle threats much debated these days by Israel's politicians, generals and journalists.
"I don't wanna die, I wanna see the flowers bloom, don't wanna go kaput-kaboom," sings Oz. "And I don't wanna cry, I wanna to have a lot of fun, just sitting in the sun, but nevertheless he's going to push the button, push the button..."
The Teapacks will hope to follow in the footsteps of Israel's last great Eurovision contender, the transsexual Dana International, who sang an altogether different song called Diva, which swept her to victory in Birmingham in 1998.
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