Jewish singer Noa and Arab singer Mira together will represent Israel in Eurovision 2009

Billed as a song contest, Eurovision has always been about politics too.

Citing Israeli news sources, Esctoday reports that Israel's Eurovision committee "has decided to propose the singers Noa and Mira Awad to represent the country in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow. IBA has confirmed the news to esctoday.com. Awad, being an Arab-Israeli, will be the first one of her community to represent Israel in the song contest. The Israeli Atrists Union represntative, who was a member of the jury, commented to Ynet.co.il: "I appreciate Marina as an artist and hope we will see her on the Eurovision Song contest's stage in future. Noa is currently the most successful Israeli artist abroad, and I am confident they will make us proud".

It seems that Noa was first selected this morning on her own to represent Israel in Eurovision, and then conditioned her participation in performing in a duet with her friend, Arab-Israeli singer, Mira Awad."

Eurovision-related website also links to a few years old video of Noa & Mira performing the Beatles hit "We can work it out". Their statements on the situation in Middle East, while not being related to the current situation in Gaza, still relevant. Although I do not particularly like their performance of "We can work it out", I like the idea behind their act.