From Uruguay to Oslo: Israel’s Anthem Echoes Worldwide

From Uruguay Through Oslo to Israel – Why Is the Whole World Obsessed with Israel’s National Anthem?

The following text was published on Yom Kippur (September) 2023 in the Tectonic Shift Facebook group and was supposed to be posted on this blog after the Sukkot (Simchat Torah) holiday, on October 8, 2023. For obvious reasons, I did not publish it then, and now, as it becomes increasingly relevant (see previous post about Yuval Raphael’s ESC Success), I am sharing it here as well.

Two and a half years ago, a contestant named Lucia Abelar took the stage at the auditions of Got Talent Uruguay. She began singing in Hebrew with a song that seemingly no one in the audience recognized – Hatikvah (The Hope). Her performance stirred the crowd and the judges. After singing, she explained what the song was (despite not knowing a word of Hebrew!), and the judges unanimously voted to send her to the next round.

At the exact same time, in May 2021, the collaboration between Noa Kirel and Omer Adam was released, where the two performed their version of—you guessed it—Hatikvah. This time, it was a rhythmic version fitting for pop artists, blending English to make it “glocal” (global + local), and the video clip—surprisingly minimalist given the stars, but not surprising considering the trend.

These two simultaneous events, completely coincidental, caught my attention. I tried to understand if it was pure coincidence or if it was a tectonic shift rumbling beneath the surface. I continued searching with my “trend seismograph” for more events to understand the answer.

That same month, HBO launched the film Oslo, about the behind-the-scenes efforts to establish talks between Israel and the PLO, aiming to create dialogue and bring peace.

I wondered why this topic would interest people around the world right now and what the timing was all about. The answer came from Kirel and Adam’s video clip—in the opening of the song, they sing in English: “We have hope for peace.”

Let’s rewind a bit to December 2020: Gideon Sa’ar left the Likud party and established a new party, aptly named New Hope.

And if we widen the radius and look at what happened in this context around the world: Lidewij Edelkoort, one of the world’s leading futurists specializing in fashion and design, launched The World Hope Forum in April 2020. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because it was established as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum, aiming to rebuild society after the pandemic.

In an interview to Dezeen she said: “By the end of this pandemic, as if after a war, only our buildings will remain standing and everything else will have changed,” writes Edelkoort in the manifesto, which is published in full below. “The economy of hope has the potential to transform society from within.”…

“The World Hope Forum is a new gathering that will include climate change on its agenda as well as caring for all neglected people involved in production chains and services,”

In her manifesto, Edelkoort writes the following:

“Under siege from the Covid-19 virus, many people have come to understand that they should change their behaviour patterns, no longer travelling too much, producing too much, consuming too much or using up too many resources,” 

“The comfort of being at and working from home, wasting time instead of money, has led people away from their addiction to material things and into a realm of sharing, caring and making.”

“Disasters are known as powerful ignition tools for radical ways of transforming business practices,” she adds, predicting that fashion will ditch its “insane” practices and that the world will see a revival of small-scale, home-based production.

“Many countries will fund the return of production to their own shores and outsourcing will become more diverse and less excessive, taking better care of workers and the environment,” she writes.

Back to the present: Over the past six months, Israel has been experiencing a social fracture around the issue of judicial legislation that the coalition is trying to pass. After Gideon Sa’ar tried to bring the message of hope to his voters, the leaders of the protest also adopted it (whether consciously or subconsciously) by using the message of hope. The protest slogan “To be a free people in our land” became prominent. The protest headquarters called themselves “Free in Our Land,” and simultaneously, Ran Har-Nevo appears on all social media channels under the profile called Yalla Tikva (Come on, Hope), with the description: “We came to turn machines of poison into a machine of hope.”

We are approaching Yom Kippur, so the timing of the Golda movie is obvious, but just like HBO’s Oslo, I wondered why the story of Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War would interest the world now. Golda was Israel’s Prime Minister during one of the most traumatic wars for Israel. Although it was only after her tenure that Menachem Begin signed the peace agreement with Egypt, the answer to my question likely lies in the image from Sadat’s visit to the Knesset in 1977. After being the bitterest of enemies, Golda and Sadat paved the way for peace between the two nations, rekindling hope in people’s hearts.

We’ve started a new year, approaching new municipal elections and Supreme Court rulings. After three turbulent years filled with events that brought despair to people’s lives: a global pandemic, lockdowns, economic crises, layoffs and resignations, war between Russia and Ukraine, supply chain crises, rising inflation, and a climate crisis threatening our food supply and bringing extreme weather that wreaks havoc wherever it strikes. All of these have led to despair, burnout, escapism (see the previous post on Facebook about Hogwarts as an example), changes in priorities for the future, and a lot of searching for sparks of hope.

So, is it any wonder that right under our noses, signs reflecting the public’s mood are emerging, pointing to the development of a trend of calls for hope? Combined with the mega-trend I call “Back to the Roots,” it’s not surprising that suddenly Hatikvah is appearing everywhere.

The only question that remains is: Who will be the next business and political leaders who understand how to inspire hope in people’s hearts?