Dana International: Newspaper articles before 090598

Eurovision Song Contest: She is this year's most spectacular Eurovision artist. Israeli Dana is transsexual, and had a sex change six years ago. At home, the orthodox Jews are enraged. By Kjersti Mjør.

"Don't forget, this is a song contest, not a sex contest," Dana admonishes the full press conference in the Eurovision city.

She is spectacularly beautiful, with a deep cleavage and a highly unusual past for a Eurosong participant. Dana was baptized [sic] Yaron Cohen, and spent her first 20 years as a man. He made his living as a drag artist for a long time, but in 1993 Yaron changed sex from him to her. Today she uses the stage name Dana International.

She is a huge star both in Israel and Egypt, and her records have gone both gold and platinum. Whatever the outcome of the fainal, the single is predicted to be a great success in the US and Europe. But orthodox Jews in Israel are in rage, and have the opinion that she is bringing shame on her country. And this in the year where Israeli is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

"As an artist, of course I'm happy about all the noise around my Eurovision participation. But as a private person, I'm sad. Whatever I do for my country, whatever I achieve, the orthodox Jews will condemn me," Dana says.

- What have you got to say to those who oppose you?
"Nothing. Those who are against gays do not deserve any attention. I only care about those who are on my side, those who care about human rights, and who show people with my past respect."

Rumours are rife about curvy Dana's outfit for the big evening. Lots of feathers, according to some sources. The French celebrity designer Jean Paul Gaultier in Paris has made the dress, but that's about all Dana wants to say regarding the matter.

"Except that it's so delicate and expensive it should end up in a museum afterwards," she says. And it seems she means it.

- What will be the first thing you do if you win?
"Then I'll take the first plane home, give hugs to my family and friends, and say: 'What did I tell you?' Then I hope to tour Europe. Just invite me!" Dana the diva laughs.

Birmingham (Dagbladet) "A victory in the Eurovision Song Contest would be a great gift for my country," says Dana International. Yesterday she charmed the press to bits. By Knut Utler.

The Israeli participant in this year's international Eurovision Song Contest final received a full house when she met the press in Birmingham yesterday afternoon. First she received warm applause during the rehersals of her entry 'Diva'. Then standing ovations when she entered her own press conference - half an hour late.

There were high expectations around the meeting with Dana International. Not the least because her background is so unusual, and because she is disputed both in her own country and in Israel's neighbouring countries. Briefly told, the reason is that Dana was born (in 1972) as a man - as Yaron Cohen. As he embarked on a career as an artist in the early 90s, she decided to have gender reassignment surgery. The operation was performed in London in 1992.

This - combined with the enormous success she enjoys in Israel - has been difficult to swallow for many. Especially among the ultra-orthodox. "They condemn me. I find that sad. So I still have to battle against diehard conservative views, even though by far most people have accepted me for who I am," Dana says.

She stands a good chance to win Saturday's final. The odds are definitely in her favour. "It would be a great gift for Israel"

Thus the Israeli delegation emphasise she is a symbol of courage. Her personal history is no longer the main point in Israel. "Some think I have been chosen for the Eurovision Song Contest because of my background. I hope that is not the way people will think when they see me on television. This is a song contest, not a sex contest," she says.

At the same time, it is an unusually beautiful woman who will be on-screen Saturday. "You look gorgeous!" exclaimed one journalist during yesterday's press conference. She will be no less beautiful by participating in the final in a exclusively designed outfit/dress by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Dana also advocated for the right to have a gender reassignment. This is actually banned in a number of countries. "In Israel it is allowed because we are a liberal country," she said.

Hot: There was no doubt who is among the hotter artists in the Eurovision-city Birmingham: Israeli Dana International got a lot of attention.

Birmingham (Dagbladet) The most sexy woman of the Eurovision is really a man. The gender operated Dana International (30) creates hysteria in the Eurovision-city. "EuroSong is a song contest, not a sex contest," says Dana. By Anders Grønneberg

Photo: © Dagbladet/Jon Terje H. Hansen In her native Israel she is both condemned and has received death threats. "I am sorry I constantly have to battle ultra-orthodox Jews. But I am happy to be here and hope I am going to win. That would be a gift for Israel," Dana says.

Dressed in a corset
Hundreds of journalists showed up at the press conference yesterday afternoon. Dana cancelled her meeting with the press two days ago, supposedly because she was unhappy with the rehersals. One after she had sung her dreadful song 'Diva' - and half an hour after she should have met the throngs of press photographers and reporters hungry for news - she slunk elegantly over the podium dressed in a strapless and dead tight corset. Dana has a face and a body most women can only envy her. But how did she accomplish it - not only becoming a woman, but a very beautiful one at that? "I took hormones and did the usual. On top of that, I work out and hardly eat at all."

Mossad agent
Dana speaks about herself in a very frank manner, well aware that we adore her story. When she was 23, she had surgery. The man Yaron became the woman Dana, named after her second hit. "I represent gays and lesbians from all over the world," she says.

She is not only hated, but also loved in the Jewish state - and in the Arab world for that matter. "I am denied entry to Egypt. They claim I am a Mossad agent who corrupts the country's youth. My records are pirated in Arab countries, Dana says and confides in us that she loves Arabic music, pop and rock.

Lovely diva
Never have we witnessed the Eurovision-universe go off its rockers in the way we now are because of this Dana. But what does she do in Birmingham when she is not at rehersals? "I shop. Yesterday I went to fashion boutiques, don't ask me where. I bought some gorgeous clothes - and other things ordinary girls buy," Dana says smiling.

Two months ago Dana met the fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, and they started a relationship of clothes. "Jean-Paul has designed the outfit I am going to wear at the final on Saturday. It is expensive and exclusive, and ought to end up in a museum when the final is over," Dana says.

20 minutes later the happening is over. Now the turn has come to the photographers, and they throw themselves lustily at the scantily clad prey. Dana poses with bare shoulders and shows off her breasts. Like a Diva. The only one at the Eurovision. But like Dana said: "EuroSong is a song contest, not a sex contest."

In our opinion, that is open for discussion.

Birmingham (VG) She has been voted the most popular woman in Israel. But the diva Dana International (25) is actually a boy. By Kurt Bakkemoen

The fact that Israel is sending a transsexual who has had a gender reassignment operation to the Eurovision Song Contest with the disco-inspired tune ‘Diva’ has not passed without a mention: In her home country she has received death threats. She is banned in Egypt. And in the Eurovision-city Birmingham she created chaos for the press.

Disappeared
Yesterday the former man lived up to her image as an unpredictable diva: She did not feel like showing at the announced press conference! Dana arrived at rehersals, sang and disappeared with her fiancé, the male Israeli DJ Ofer Nisim. He has written Dana’s entry. But around one hundred eager journalists full of expectation waited in vain for a press meeting annouced to take place after the rehersals.

Dana International is so far the artist who has received the most attention in the Eurovision-city Birmingham. Not very strange, as she is the first one to enter the Eurovision after having had a gender reassignment operation. On top of this, she was recently voted the most popular woman in Israel.

He/she was baptised Yaron. “I have always felt I am a woman,” says Dana.

Played with girls
Even at an early age, he played with dolls and was together with girls. He loved putting on make-up, and made fun hairstyles on himself and his girlfriends. Cars and footballs were not among Yaron’s favourites.

He wore women’s clothing, and as a teenager he took pills to develop breasts. Five years ago he took the full step and had a gender reassignment operation in London. “I like women, but only as friends. I love brushing their hair and to exchange beauty tips. I have never kissed a woman,” Dana says in an interview with an Israeli youth magazine. She has two female favourites - the super model Cindy Crawford and the Israeli artist Ofra Haza.

Dana started singing as an 8-year old, and has become a mega-star in her home country. Her three albums have gone gold and platinum, and she has had around 20 songs on Israeli hitlists. It is difficult to get hold of Dana’s records abroad, and in the neighbouring countries Egypt and Jordan they are banned and sold under the counter.

Her performance here in Birmingham has outraged orthodox Jews in her home country. Their opinion is that she represents the devil himself. She has also received death threats, she told recently in a TV-interview.

She will go on stage in a costume signed by the French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier and has one major aim with her Eurovision entry: To get a career in Europe.

Did you know?
The tune Dana is to sing on Saturday is a modern, disco-pop song with a catchy refrain. It has exactly the same speed as Gina G’s entry in Oslo, ‘Ooh aah, just a little bit’ - 138 beats per minute.

...so says Israel’s deputy health minister - about this year’s Israeli entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. Transsexual singer Dana International, above, who was born a man, is the latest (and most bizarre) target of the country’s ultra-orthodox extremists. Tom Gross reports from Tel Aviv.

When Israeli pop star Dana International greets you in her Tel Aviv apartment, she bears none of the trappings of a flamboyant celebrity - nor of the man she once was. Slim and elegant, she is dressed in a black sweater and blue jeans. Her long dark hair is bunched neatly in a bow and she wears just a hint of make-up.

On stage it’s a different story. There she is an extravagant showgirl as she struts up and down in a low-cut dress, extensions flying from her hair, belting out catchy tunes in a beguiling voice. She puts on a glittering display.

Already dubbed “Queen of the Levant”, Dana, 26, is likely to live up to her adopted surname - International - and reach an estimated 100 million viewers when she represents Israel at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Birmingham on 9 May. “I know that Eurovision is the most naff thing on earth,” she says, “but it still gives you a big, beautiful international stage. Winning could make an enormous difference to my career. Look at Abba.”

However, Dana’s hopes of winning for her country have been overshadowed by an angry lobby of ultra-orthodox Jews, a vociferous and increasingly powerful segment of Israeli society which has been vehement in its denunciations.

“Usually the Eurovision Song Contest interests me about as much as the temperature in the Antarctic,” says Israel’s deputy minister of health, Rabbi Shlomo Ben-Izri, a member of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, the second biggest in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. “But as a son of the Jewish people this utterly offends me. The Jews have always been a light unto the nations. They will now be a darkness. Everyone abroad will say, ‘Look at those Jews and what they are sending to perform, some kind of crossbreed.’ Dana is an abomination. Even in Sodom there was nothing like it.”

The Israel Broadcasting Authority is stubbornly standing by its choice. Gil Samsonov, chairman of its selection committee and a member of the governing Right-wing Likud party, says Dana’s song, Diva, is “far and away the best” of the 33 entries considered. “We checked only the body of the song,” he adds, “not of the singer.”

Dana, from a working-class Yemenite-Jewish family, has done her best to ignore ultra-orthodox hostility. “Religious extremists can really twist anything to suit their purpose. They can find what they want in the Bible. They take sentences and say, ‘Ah, this proves homosexuals deserve to die.’ The God in whom I believe doesn’t murder people. He doesn’t care if I have breasts or not. He cares about the soul. I keep Jewish traditions in my own way. For example, I keep kosher.

“It makes me very sad that the foreign media image of Israel is primarily one of bombs and fanatical rabbis and settlers. They don’t know us at all. At Eurovision, I will carry the flag of a free, liberal Israel and of an Israel which knows how to have fun.”

Dana has also come under harsh attack in the Arab world, where, despite attempts by the authorities to ban her, an estimated five million illegal cassettes of her music have been sold. Under the headline “The Israeli Dana drives 20 million Arabs crazy”, one Jordanian magazine labelled her work “prostitution by singing”. “She moans while she sings and stimulates forbidden passions,” it warned readers. Other Jordanian weeklies have branded Dana an “abomination” and her songs “filth”. But tough censorship has only increased demands for her songs.

In Egypt, the authorities have banned not only Dana’s music but the singer herself. “I am very sad that I am not allowed to go back to Egypt,” she says. “After I filmed a TV commercial for an Israeli fashion house in front of the pyramids, the interior ministry accused me of having been sent by the Mossad to undermine Egyptian society. They wrote I was a spy and I was this way because my father had raped me. My photo appeared on the front page of the newspaper. I am very sorry to say that two police officers who posed for this photo with me are now serving prison sentences for this ‘offence’.”

Israel has twice won Eurovision in 1978 and 1979. This year, Dana thinks she has a good chance. She says she has decided to dress “like a simple woman, not like a drag queen”. She will be wearing Jean Paul Gaultier.

Dana was recently voted female singer of the year in Israel, by both a popular radio station and a leading youth magazine. Others, too, have embraced her with enthusiasm. Yitzhak Mordechai, the burly middle-aged Israeli defence minister and a former deputy head of the Israeli army, was recently spotted on television tapping his feet to Dana’s beat at one of her concerts.

It is a source of irony, considering the outrage that Dana has caused, that minority rights have advanced greatly in Israel over the past few years and homosexuals there now enjoy one of the most liberal legal environments in the world. The army, the state airline El Al, Tel Aviv university and the Foreign Ministry have granted full benefits to partners of gay employees, and gays and lesbians who maintain a common household with their partners were officially counted as spouses in the last national census. Yet most Israeli transsexuals remain in the closet, asserts the singer.

“I think it was very easy for my parents to accept my case. When virtually a whole country is celebrating with you, calling you Dana and saying ‘we accept your new daughter’, then it’s much easier for them too. My parents’ neighbours encourage them, fans ask them for autographs, and they get wrapped up in the excitement.

Dana, who was named Yaron after an uncle who was killed in an Arab terrorist attack a few months before she was born, says she is heartened by the positive reaction of her grandparents. “Last time I was visiting my grandparents, who come from quite a primitive background in Yemen, they were asking, ‘Hi Dana, come sit here with us,’ and I asked my mother, ‘Hey, they remember who and what I am?’ I was confused. I wouldn’t have minded if my family had felt they wanted to continue using my birth name, because they are, after all, my family, but they were quite happy to use my new name.”

Israel is famous for many things, but transsexual divas are not among them. That could change when Dana International takes the stage next month to represent Israel at the annual Eurovision competition in Birmingham, England, an international song contest. Prior to her sex change, Dana, 26, was a Tel Aviv man named Yaron Cohen. She burst onto the Israeli pop music scenes in the early 90's with catchy tunes like 'Saida' -- a song inspired by the Tel Aviv drag scene, which she can sing in Hebrew and Arabic -- and has since earned a devoted following throughout Israel and the Middle East.

Predictably, Dana's flashy prominence irks Israeli conservatives, and religious members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, called for a ban on her performing in England.

Dana is suitably defiant about her foes, but she also has stinging words for closeted Israeli homosexuals who, she says, stayed silent while she was attacked. Politics aside, Dana hopes her Eurovision appearance will show the world a different side of Israel. 'The global media only want to show wars and soldiers,' Dana says, 'but there is another Israel, a 'regular' Israel, with people who eat at McDonald's, people who do not hate anyone.

Long, black hair down to the shoulders, eyes like a young deer, a lithe body that moves to the rhythm of her deep voice, provoking. A transsexual will represent Israel to the next Eurofestival, which will take place in Birmingham, the coming May 6, 1998. Yaron Cohen, but known mostly as Dana International, his showbiz name, has been chosen last Monday in Tel Aviv, amongst wide controversy.

Another blow to the already vacillating myth of Israeli "machismo."
The most authentic expression of a country which has moved in a few years from the stereotype of an all-military youth, Spartan educated, always ready for the next war, to today's disco-party transgressive reality, from Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashdod, or Eilat. The new Israel where Aviv Geffen reigns, another "hard rock" singer, who is always ready to ironize upon the military and to exalt conscientious objectors.

But Dana is even more daring. An insolent offence for the rabbis and the religious political parties who contest the choice and would like to cancel Israel's participation to the Festival. She accepts the challenge, happily: it's all free publicity. She speaks about her "trans" choice and her London medical operation in 1993. "I like being extreme. I have been a homosexual since I was 12 or 13. The surgery was an inevitable choice," she explains. Until today, she has released two recordings. The most important of the two, "Umpatampa," out two years ago, has sold over 45.000 copies, a record for the Israel market, and second only to Rita, the queen of local pop. Her music is full of rhythm, with simple and repetitive verses, rich in Arab content.

Dana has one more thing going for her: she is fluent in Arabic, which she learned growing up in her family of Yemenite origins. This explains the big popularity she has in Egypt. According to her agent, Ofer Nissim, Dana has sold over 500.000 cassettes in Cairo, especially of her second album "Saida Sultana." But they are all pirate copies.

The Shas political deputies, which with 10 seats represents the strongest religious party, have declared all out war to her. They refuse to call her by name. They refer to her as "ha-itzur ha-ze," meaning "that creature." Woman or man? To them it is not important. Hebrew law on this subject is based on Leviticus: "You shall not lay down with a man as with a women. It is an abomination to your Lord God." The same law envisions the death penalty for homosexuals.

"I am ashamed of this choice, an offence to all of us Jews. Israel should be the light for other nations, and instead we have fallen into darkness," Rabbi Shlomo Ben Izri, Israel's Deputy Health Minister has thundered. But to no avail: Israel's High Court of Justice has given the go-ahead to the decision made by the appointed festival commission. Dana will sing the song "Diva".

"I sing for all of my country. The religious people are Jews but not Israeli. While the true Israeli are Jews and Israeli at the same time. Furthermore, I sing also for Muslims and Christians. If the Orthodox want to live by the law of 2000 years ago, well, that's tough for them. They will not hesitate to resort to violence to stop me" Dana declared to the daily "Ma'ariv." And to defend her, Shulamit Aloni, a former Minister of Education, intervened last night on national TV.

Israeli singer Dana International was once a man, but she will represent Israel as a transsexual in the Eurovision song contest in Birmingham next year.

He was born Yaron Cohen into a Yemenite-Jewish family. Four years ago in London, he underwent a sex change operation. Now, as Dana International, one of Israel's top female singers, she is going to sing for her country in next year's Eurovision Song Contest. Already religious politicians are chorusing their disapproval.

Two years ago, Ms International's song Goodnight, Europe, was second in the national pre-Eurovision contest, and the disappointed chanteuse acknowledged that it would "probably have caused a major scandal to have Israel represented in Eurovision by a transsexual".

But this week she went one better: the Israeli selection committee named her to sing Diva, chosen from 33 entries, at the contest being held in Birmingham next May. And the scandal is indeed unfolding.

Leading the critics is Shlomo Benizri, a media-hungry member of the Knesset from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who lamented yesterday that, far from fulfilling its divine mission to serve as "a light unto the nations", Israel was sending "a message of darkness" by having Ms International represent it. The only reason sex changes weren't proscribed by the ancient rabbinical sages, he said, was because they never conceived of such "an abomination". The singer had committed "an act worse than sodomy", he stormed.

There may indeed have been an element of deliberate headline-stoking in the choice of the singer, given that Israel has seen a decline in its Eurovision fortunes in recent years. But equally, Ms International is a highly regarded and highly popular local performer, whose albums sell by the tens of thousands, and whose fame has spread across the border to Egypt.

Discovered singing in a sleazy Tel Aviv drag show eight years ago, the dark-haired, slim, statuesque Ms International says she has long been trying to broaden her appeal to match her adopted family name, and hopes that Eurovision will do the trick. Her manager promises the Eurovision audience "the three most professional and amazing minutes on stage." Knesset member Benizri will doubtless be forgoing the pleasure.

Tel Aviv's secret weapon, Dana International is an Israeli transsexual whose music wooed Egypt before it was banned and confiscated. By Andrew Hammond.

Born Yaron Cohen, a Yemeni Jewish male, she became Dana International, a singing, dancing, Tel Aviv drag queen. A complete sex-change and two albums later, she narrowly missed being voted to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995. "People who meet her can't believe she was a man," says her manager/producer Ofer Nissim. "And when she sings you can't believe it either."

None of which would have had any significance in Egypt had Dana not recorded several of her songs in Arabic. Not only did she become hugely popular amongst Israel's Oriental Jews, but her kitschy music with its gaga lyrics also found an appreciative audience in Cairo, where she's known as Saida Sultana, after the title track of her first album, 'My name is not Saida.' If being an Israeli and a transsexual weren't enough, Dana's lyrics were the nail in the coffin--an innuendo-laden mix of street-language Egyptian and Arabic-Hebrew hybrid words that loiter in the songs with intent. The Egyptian media frothed predictably at the mouth, author Emad Nassef lambasting Dana as a "Jewish prostitute" who was manufactured "to unleash her moans and shameless words from the city of a thousand minarets." Dana's tapes were banned, though this didn't diminish her popularity in the least and she remains one of the hottest selling artists in Cairo of recent years--albeit under the counter. Andrew Hammond went to see what Dana had to say.

"She's saying, all of you can have the potatoes, and all of you can have the apples, but for me zee big banana. It's for the Italians." As the music pounds away and the images shimmy past on the huge screen, svengali-like producer Ofer Nissim expounds with evident pleasure on the lyrics of Dana International's latest song, Cinquemilla. It has just been released in Italy. And, minus the trademark Arabic, it's one of a series of songs that marks the beginning of the record company Helicon's plans to make Dana a star of the dance scene in Europe.

Preparing to go international, now they can fondly reminisce about their salad days shocking the Egyptians. Two years ago their highly synthesized, big-beat dance music became a huge hit in Cairo. Dana's tapes sold in their thousands and were played in discos across the country, but once the press caught on the cumulative weight of the outraged headlines resulted in a ban, then confiscation. It's a rainy afternoon, and we are tucked away in a very record industry flat in downtown Tel Aviv. Behind us is a huge poster of Dana.

Nissim, long-haired and lithe, slides over to the kitchen and begins on the title track of the last album Magnuna (Crazy). He is unstoppable. "Dir baalak minni, Ya Shaweesh". It means 'watch out for me, Mr Policeman. I'm a respectable lady.' The respectable lady, he is convinced, can make a big bang abroad because she has two things that no other transsexuals have: the looks and the voice. "Most transsexuals never lose their male voices," he says. It comes to mind that perhaps the wild-eyed, Israel-bashing Cairo press has been missing the point. The demonic products of Tel Aviv's "factories of death" aren't shampoos that make Egyptian hair fall out, Nescafe that gives Aids, or creams that knarl the skin--it's a Yemeni Jew who had a sex change for the sake of fame. A sort of Frankenshtein. Nissim's eyes sparkle at the thought.

This train of conversation is broken by the sound of the doorbell. The diva has arrived. Tight jeans, stretch top, hair tied back: she is undeniably attractive and at first a touch nervous. A selection of scandalized articles from the Egyptian press brought as an offering serve to relax her. They concern her controversial trip to Cairo last year. The pair of them whoop with delight. A media scandal. Publicity.

Says Dana, "First of all I came like an Orthodox girl, all covered up. I didn't want anyone to recognize me because they had pictures of me, they had written about me before in Egypt and that's why we went inside Egypt very quietly."

The local press only found out after the event that soldiers, felucca-owners and tape sellers in Khan Al Khalili market had frolicked on film with "the Israeli singer of sex" when she came to do a shoot for an Israeli fashion company. The few days were facilitated by Egyptian musician Walid Shaalan, oblivious to the ruckus the event was to cause after she left. That wasn't the only thing he was oblivious to. "Just when we had finished showing them around, one of them turned to me and said 'You know she was a man?' I couldn't believe it," Shaalan says.

Dana is warm about the country. "You know there are so many people in Cairo, you can never tell whether people recognize you as the singer or because they look at you because you are a very attractive girl," she says. "But I was very surprised, I think Cairo is a very beautiful city. For me as an Israeli to enter an Arabic country for the first time, I had mixed feelings. I was afraid, on the one hand, and I was very glad to have the chance to see Cairo because I learnt a lot about Egypt in school. And I was very surprised that the people are very nice. They are very warm, they have high morality, they treat you well. I had no problems there. That's why it makes me a little bit sad, because the people are so nice--so how come the government have forbidden my music?"

She is probably right to conclude that she has been picked on here for political reasons. "They claim that I try to laugh about their language, that it's not honorable for me to sing songs in Arabic. But the most important fact is that Egypt does not want a cultural relationship between Israel and Egypt and that's the main reason [the Egyptian press campaigned against me]," she says. "I'm sure that Mubarak doesn't have a problem with me."

But one wonders whether it runs deeper than that. Her songs are laden with Arabesque clichés of what the West thinks is an Oriental sound; coupled with the use of colloquial language, screeches and grunts it all evidences a level of impropriety one doesn't find in bona fide Arabic pop music. It's all very contrived and not a little condescending. "For sure the mindset that produced this lowly material understands well the way to get to the Arab listener," wrote Mohammed Al Ghity in a book that flooded bookstands in 1995, 'A Scandal Called Saida Sultana.'

On the other hand, considering that Arabic pop music has taken on pretty much all the sounds that Europeans parcelled as "the Orient," and that people in the music industry itself even talk of the "Oriental," or "Eastern" sound, in many ways the Nissim-Dana phenomena is a case of Israelis beating the Egyptians at their own game.

Truth is, Israel's cultural commentators also had a problem with Dana International when she first appeared. When Nissim discovered Cohen crooning at a Tel Aviv drag show seven years ago, took her and moulded her into Dana International, he was in a sense holding a mirror up to Israeli society. Many didn't like what they saw. Israel's macho self-image was neatly skewed by the mincing hordes of Tel Aviv uncovered by Dana's rise to fame. And the bigoted attitudes to gay culture she exposed almost gave the impression that Israel was at heart, well... Arab. But this mini identity crisis passed by and Israel has rest assured of its Western liberal credentials. Perhaps the angst runs both ways though. She may have scandalized Israeli, then Egyptian society, but her Arab background is something of a touchy subject. "I was brought up here," she says tersely. "We don't speak Yemeni, we don't have traditional Yemeni things. I think I'm an Israeli in everything I do. I don't have the roots. My roots are from Israel, not Oriental."

Maybe that's why she seems to have tired of scandalizing Egypt. "First of all my music is for the Israeli crowd and if the Arabs like it too I am very glad. I know and I knew from the start that I couldn't have success in Egypt, that I could never perform there and could never earn some money from selling these cassettes," she says. "We are neighbours, we know their mentality."

She goes on, "I think my most important asset is the gays all over the world. It's an international language, we love the same things, we have the same behaviour, and that's what gives me courage." So her eyes are firmly set westwards.
The more jovial Nissim seems less vexed. Observing coolly from the wings, he suddenly pipes up: "We have a lot of ideas, and we have also thought about Egypt," he says with innocent glee in his eyes. "We have a very good idea for a new song that will make a big scandal--but we can't tell you about it now."