The Eurovision Song Contest begins this Tuesday. For the first time ever in its history, it may have been a catalyst for war.
Palestinian rockets started pounding Israel last weekend, in response to an Israeli airstrike which killed four and injured 60. In the heaviest barrage since 2014, Hamas sent 700 missiles into the country, killing four Israelis. Retaliatory fire killed 23 in Gaza, among them children.
Guess where this columnist was while all this was occurring?
Greetings from Tel Aviv in sunny Israel. And when I say sunny, I just mean the weather; it's not a word that you can attach to much else here. The weather has been great since my arrival more than a week ago, even throughout the missile attack which started last weekend.
What a great place this country is; I have discovered a new taste sensation every lunch and dinner of my tour. I have visited four restaurants that each makes the "best hummus in Israel". None of them was lying. I have discovered what is perhaps the closest one can get to an orgasm via food -- kenafha, an Arabian dessert made of goat's cheese and pistachio. And I have grown fond of coffee with cardamom sludge at the bottom of the glass cup.
And yet there is no escaping the tenseness that is Israel. This is a society on the edge of its seat. There is something jumpy and jittery in the air.
Last night, my friend Eilat and I shared a bottle of Israeli sauvignon blanc on Kahol beach watching the sun go down. Eilat was midway through an anecdote, arms flailing, when the sirens went off. She jumped. It was an announcement that the lifeguards were going home and that we should not swim in the water.
"You see?" said Eilat. "We're always so tense around here."
I am in this country for Eilat's 50th birthday, which was last Saturday, May 4, the day that the clashes between Gaza and Israel escalated. Eilat's party started at 12.30pm. It wasn't until about 5pm that I casually checked the BBC website for the latest news and saw the main story on the attack.
I was sitting with three Tel Avivians. My face must have been a little white when I looked up from my mobile phone and said: "Have you seen this news? They're firing at us!"
They broke into laughter. Not exactly the reaction I expected, until one of them said: "We didn't want to tell you and were hoping you wouldn't find out. It might have spoiled the party for you."
The thing about Israel is that it's not a very big place. It's not like being in Thailand when the bombs go off in the South; I can sit in my Bangkok home a thousand kilometres away and not feel any anxiety over that.
Here it's different. It's 90km from here to the Gaza Strip. That's as far as Bangkok to Ayutthaya. In March, a rocket made it to Mishmeret 30km north of Tel Aviv, meaning the rocket must have travelled overhead to get to its destination.
Last Thursday, I got a sense of what it's like when the missiles are pointed at you. It was Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel and at 10am, the sirens went off for two minutes in remembrance of that event. It was an eerie, dystopian, unnerving sound. I know I was meant to be concentrating on the Holocaust, but these are the exact same sirens you hear if Tel Aviv is under missile attack, telling you that you have 30 seconds to get to your home's panic room.
Luckily, Israel has a system in place called the "Iron Dome". It is an air missile interceptor system to defend itself against rockets fired from Gaza. The Iron Dome locates the rocket and shoots it out of the air. The system can also detect where the missile is going to fall, so if it is a non-residential area, they let them go. It is estimated to cost around 1.6 million baht per rocket intercept, so naturally the Israelis want to economise.
One of Eilat's kids had a friend who was on a bus that a missile missed by about five metres this week. The short clip of the blast posted online was harrowing to watch.
Eilat has a friend who lives near Efrat just south of Jerusalem in the West Bank. It's on a mountain. This is what she told me as we walked through the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem:
"We're probably about 50km from the Mediterranean, and on a clear night you can see the sun go down over it in the distance. It's beautiful. And this week, after night fell, we also watched as the Iron Dome rockets intercepted the Gaza missiles. One side's missile shot up, and the other side shot it down. It really was something to see."
One marvels at the kind of society in which one can enjoy the beauty of Mediterranean sunsets, followed by the beauty of missiles knocking each other out of the night sky.
There is a very good book on the Middle East called From Beirut To Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. In it, he describes a high-class Lebanon dinner party in which the hostess announces to gathered guests: "Would you like to eat now, or wait for the ceasefire?" This kind of scenario was very much being played out this week across southern Israel.
But not in Tel Aviv. Despite the intense shelling, life went on.
Tel Aviv is a frantic city of tense locals whose frustrations are taken out on the roads. You think the Bangkok roads are chaotic? Not half as bad as here, where drivers seem to be riding pressure cookers rather than Kias.
"Is this your father's street?" shouted an enraged taxi driver as he overtook Eilat with millimetres to spare. The streets of Tel Aviv are nothing but red lights and horns, which get blasted precisely one millisecond after the light turns green, and if you don't immediately accelerate, you incur the wrath of the Holy Land, as Eilat just did.
But back to those missiles. Why were they so intense and incessant this week? May 2, the day I arrived was Holocaust Day. Tuesday night, May 7, was the beginning of Memorial Day; at 8pm, those eerie sirens went off again and the whole country paused to remember the fallen.
Was this why Hamas launched the missiles?
Perhaps not. The answer could be a little more … melodic.
Just three kilometres from Eilat's house is the Tel Aviv Convention Centre, where the Eurovision Song Contest is taking place, starting this Tuesday and running until Saturday.
Some 42 countries are competing in Europe's annual high-profile salute to musical kitsch.
Here in Tel Aviv, the whole place is abuzz. There is a giant transistor radio at the Port of Jaffa playing Eurovision hits. Madonna is going to open the event. The whole world will be watching on.
Could it be that Hamas is directing its fire towards the Eurovision singers? It is not so bizarre an idea. And it could only happen here, in the Holy Land, where just about everything unholy under the sun plays out on a daily basis -- from bombs to Madonna.
