Briefs

UNABLE TO FILM IN UKRAINE, EUROVISION SONG CONTEST WINNERS MADE VIDEO IN ISRAEL

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest did not go Israel’s way—but even though the country didn’t make it to the final for the first time in six years, it did have some representation in Turin, Italy.

That’s because Ukraine, which won the competition with Kalush Orchestra’s Stefania rap song, filmed its introductory video in Israel.

The intro, known in Eurovision jargon as the “postcard,” features contestants who typically are filmed in a place of their choosing in the country that hosts that year’s contest (normally, the country that won the previous year).

But the war has complicated traveling out of Ukraine, where civilian flights have basically stopped since Russia invaded Feb. 24. And filming in the war-torn country has also become difficult and potentially dangerous.

So Ukraine’s Suspilne public broadcaster arranged for Kalush Orchestra to travel to Israel and record there their “postcard” video, which was shown in the grand final ahead of the contestants’ live performance.

The filming took place at the headquarters of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, in the very room where Chaim Weizmann was sworn in as Israel’s first president.

The final video does not feature Israel in any way. It shows the band members, who were filmed against a green screen, against drone footage of several monuments in Italy.

At a facility in Israel of the Jewish Agency, which helped bring Kalush Orchestra and 23 other contestants for an annual Israeli pre-Eurovision event called Israel Calling, the Ukrainian band also performed for Jewish refugees from Ukraine. About 50 of the refugees enjoyed a live, unplugged rendition of Stefania, a rap number featuring traditional Ukrainian instruments and motifs.

Ukraine was heavily favored to win this year’s competition in part because public voting plays a role in determining the Eurovision victor.

Israel is a Eurovision superpower with four wins so far. But for the first time in six years, the country’s entry didn’t even make it to the Grand Final.

ISRAELI POLICE RUSH FUNERALGOERS, NEARLY TOPPLING THE COFFIN OF AL JAZEERA JOURNALIST

Israeli police armed with batons and stun grenades rushed a crowd of funeral-goers in Jerusalem, nearly toppling the coffin of Shireen Abu Akleh, the prominent Al Jazeera journalist who was killed by gunfire Wednesday, May 11 during a clash in the West Bank town of Jenin.

Police said they rushed the funeral-goers on Friday, May 13 because they “disrupted the public order” by throwing stones. Videos of dozens of troops in helmets rushing the funeral-goers, at one point nearly causing the pall-bearers to drop the coffin, quickly went viral. Abu Akleh, an American citizen, was born and raised in Jerusalem. A correspondent for Al Jazeera for decades, she was seen as a role model to women Palestinian journalists.

Israeli army investigators said they had narrowed down the cause of Abu Akleh’s death to two possible sources: Israeli troops in a jeep, or Palestinian gunmen firing on Israeli soldiers. They want the bullet which killed Abu Akleh to determine whether Israeli troops were responsible, but the Palestinian Authority is refusing to hand it over and is squarely blaming her death on Israel.

Israeli leaders initially blamed Abu Akleh’s killing on Palestinian gunmen, but acknowledged within a day that Israeli forces may have been responsible. Biden administration officials have called for a robust investigation. President Joe Biden is due to visit Israel next month.

Israeli troops were in Jenin in part because it appears to be the hometown of several of the terrorists who carried out a spate of recent deadly attacks inside Israel.

Clashes in the city, which is under the sway of terrorist groups, with barely any control exerted by the Palestinian Authority, have continued. An officer in the Israeli police’s special anti-terror unit, Noam Raz, 47, died Friday, May 13 of wounds sustained in the clashes.

FRANCE’S NEW PRIME MINISTER IS THE DAUGHTER OF A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR WHO DIED BY SUICIDE

French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed as prime minister Élisabeth Borne, a former cabinet minister whose father, Joseph Bornstein, was a Polish Holocaust survivor who died by suicide when she was 11.

Borne, a 61-year-old former Socialist Party politician who previously had served as labor minister, is the second woman to hold the post and one of several people with Jewish roots, including Laurent Fabius and Leon Blum.

Joseph Bornstein and his three brothers, Isaac, Albert and Leon, were born to Polish-Jewish immigrants in Belgium. The family fled that country to France in 1940 when Germany invaded Western Europe.

Joseph Bornstein was arrested by occupation forces and deported to Auschwitz as a teenager in 1943 along with his brother Isaac, according to a filmed interview with Isaac Bornstein. Leon Bornstein was murdered at the Majdanek death camp in occupied Poland. Albert Bornstein, who was born in 1930, was murdered at Auschwitz.

But Isaac and Joseph, both of whom served in the French resistance before their arrest, survived until Auschwitz was liberated in 1945 and returned to France. Deeply traumatized by the Holocaust, Joseph Bornstein died by suicide in 1972, when he was 48 and his daughter, Elisabeth, was only 11.

Joseph Bornstein converted to Christianity after World War II to marry Elisabeth Borne’s mother, Marguerite Lescène. He suffered from epilepsy and other medical problems but, Isaac Bornstein said, “I think he never got over Auschwitz.”

Borne, who has never run for public office, is widely seen as a technocrat with little interest in media attention. Her nomination may also be temporary, pending the results of legislative elections set for next month.

She has led a tough negotiation against some trade unions since 2017, when Macron was elected for his first term. That year, she led a reform that forced the SNCF railway company to give up considerable pension benefits for its employees, a move the company resisted by mounting multiple strikes. (JTA)

ERIC ZEMMOUR ACQUITTED OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL CHARGE FOR SAYING FRENCH NAZI COLLABORATOR SAVED JEWS

A French court acquitted Éric Zemmour, a French politician, of denying a crime against humanity by saying that a French collaborator with the Nazis had saved most French Jews.

The Appeals Court of Paris confirmed an earlier ruling a lower court that said that Zemmour, a Jewish journalist with far-right views who ran unsuccessfully for president in April, was innocent of the action, which is illegal in France.

Several left-leaning anti-racism groups had filed complaints against Zemmour over his 2019 comments saying that Philippe Pétain, whom the Nazis allowed to administer a part of France after they occupied the country in 1940, had sacrificed foreign Jews living in France to save Jewish citizens.

The issue is divisive because it touches on the question of French complicity in the Holocaust. Multiple French presidents since Jaques Chirac have acknowledged collaboration by the French government, and public monuments honoring Petain have been removed across France. (A plaque honoring him remains in place in New York City something that local Jewish advocates want to change.)

But others dispute that history, especially in far-right circles and in some far-left ones. At least one renowned historian, Alain Michel, also advocates the theory that some of Pétain’s policies were guided by a desire to save French Jews.

The view held by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld is more widely held. Klarsfeld has called Zemmour’s interpretation “completely false.”

Zemmour is running for a seat in the French parliament in the June 12 election. He came in fourth in the first round of the presidential elections in April. In the final round, President Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Party rally. (JTA)