Israel’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest has been thwarted in her attempt to champion disgraced fashion designer John Galliano, after the Israel Broadcasting Agency (IBA) declared such a move the move would be inappropriate "at a time when racism and anti-Semitism is rampant in Europe”.
An internal memo by IBA official Yoav Ginai rejected plans by singer Moran Mazor to wear a costume by the former Dior designer, who was sacked from his position at the helm of the internationally-renowned couturier amid allegations he racially abused Jewish fellow patrons of a bar in the Le Marais district of Paris. The claims stated he had declared his love for Adolf Hitler and told apparently-Jewish members of the public their mothers should have been gassed by the Nazis. He was later convicted at of the offences by a French court, following which the French government also announced they were revoking his 2009 Legion of Honour medal, with Socialist President Francois Hollande issuing an official decree refusing him the right to wear it.
Mazor’s agent Liam Productions has since confirmed its client will not be wearing Galliano’s designs during the competition, which will this year be hosted by Sweden, after Ginai’s internal memo rejected the designer’s subsequent attempts at rehabilitation as being sufficient to allow him to dress the Israeli Eurovision entrant.
The latest twist in Galliano’s fall from grace is likely to anger his champion of recent months, the Anti-Defamation League, following National Director Abraham H. Foxman’s insistence he has “worked arduously in changing his worldview and dedicated a significant amount of time to researching, reading, and learning about the evils of anti-Semitism and bigotry”.
In an official statement of solidarity with the British-born designer in January, Foxman concluded: “We believe that individuals can change their hearts and minds as long as they demonstrate true contrition.”
A month later, he once more leapt to his defence as he slammed a news piece by US daily New York Post purporting Galliano as having mocked traditional Chassidic (ultra-Orthodox) dress. Responding to an article featuring a paparazzi shot of Galliano on the streets of New York wearing a hat and long dark single breasted coat, with his hair styled in the traditional ringlets often associated with Chassidim, featured the headline “Shmuck!”, Foxman insisted the notoriously eccentric designer had “been on a pilgrimage to learn from and grow from his mistakes”.
Accusing his detractors of “trying to distort and destroy him”, he insisted the British-born Galliano had “spent hours with me and with others in the European Jewish community, including rabbis and Holocaust scholars, in an effort to better understand himself and to learn from his past mistakes”. Attacking the allegations as “at the very least, ignorance...at worst, a deliberate, malicious distortion in an effort to sell newspapers”, he insisted that closer inspection of the image disproved any attempt to emulate Chassidic attire, as “Chassidim do not wear fedora hats, pinstripe pants, blue jackets or an ascot tie”.