TEL AVIV, Sunday, May 19, 2019 (WAFA) – Members of the Icelandic rock band Hatari had banners featuring the Palestine flag and reading "Palestine" confiscated from them at the Eurovision Song Contest venue while their public vote was being announced.

The band, described on the Eurovision site as an “award-winning, anti-capitalist, BDSM, techno-dystopian, performance art collective” have said they are against Israel hosting the contest, which has been the subject of boycott calls by pro-Palestinian groups.

In the final section of the show, members of the band displayed banners depicting the Palestine flag as cameras turned to them.

Einar Stef, one of the band‘s members, posted a video to Instagram showing staff holding one of the banners and asking for the rest of them to be handed over.

The band, who finished tenth in the contest after receiving a sizeable public vote, earlier in the week described Israel’s hosting of the competition as propaganda and a whitewash.

Eurovision, the popular show of musical talent from all over the world, has faced boycotts and social outcry over this year’s venue of Tel Aviv triggered by a win of the Israeli musician Netta’s win in Lisbon last year.

Critics of Israel‘s hosting of the event said the country was trying to whitewash its crimes using popular entertainment to draw attention away from the subject of their occupation.

In January, 60 LGBT groups signed a statement accusing Israel of distracting “attention from its war crimes against Palestinians” and “forwarding its pinkwashing agenda, the cynical use of gay rights to distract from and normalize Israel’s occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”

M.N