The annual Eurovision Song Contest is right around the corner, and as that fateful date approaches, calls for Hatari to be booted from the competition have grown louder, coming this time from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and UK Lawyers for Israel. In a recently released statement, the crux of their argument rests upon Rule 2.6 of the Eurovision Song Contest, which states:

"The ESC is a non-political event. All Participating Broadcasters, including the Host Broadcaster, shall ensure that all necessary steps are undertaken within their respective Delegations and teams in order to make sure that the ESC shall in no case be politicized and/or instrumentalized ... No lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political, commercial or similar nature shall be permitted during the ESC."

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Most recently, The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urged Hatari to withdraw voluntarily, rather than be banned altogether. Their reasoning is decidedly different from that of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, naturally--PACBI believes the best support for the Palestinian people that Hatari could show would be to boycott Eurovision altogether, as many have already done.

As PACBI is a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a grassroots campaign from the Palestinian people themselves, it naturally provides the band with an interesting choice: go to Tel Aviv to make a statement supporting Palestine, or honour the wishes of a Palestinian group and simply not attend at all.