Foreign Affairs; Who Is Bibi?
Surely it must mean something. How can it not? How can it be that in the same week that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, comes to Washington to face a U.S.-imposed deadline on the peace process, the Israeli public is far more interested in the fact that an Israeli transsexual diva won the Eurovision song contest? The Israeli singer, Yaron Cohen, has been known ever since his sex change five years ago as the female vocalist Dana International. She won the prestigious Eurovision song contest in Britain last week — one of the most widely televised events in Europe and the Middle East, and when word of Dana International’s victory spread through Israel, late-night celebrating broke out in the main square of Tel Aviv. Over in Jerusalem, though, which will host next year’s Eurovision song contest, the ultra-Orthodox Deputy Mayor Haim Miller declared that events like Eurovision should ”stay in the land of the gentiles.” This upset Jerusalem’s Mayor, Ehud Olmert, who was quoted
