Monday, September 22, 2008

Why the Beatles were banned from Israel 42 years ago...

Forty-two years after Israel banned John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr from playing to the nation, the truth about its Beatlephobia has finally been revealed.

Still reeling from the sight of Israeli teenagers swooning to the tunes of Cliff Richard in 1963, Israel's publicly appointed guardians of good taste and morality, the interdepartmental committee for authorising the importation of foreign artists, refused their entry.

Determined to prevent another outbreak of mass hysteria, the 13 member committee of politicians and civil servants whose job it was to assess the artistic merit of foreign acts resolved to be "vigilant".

(...)

At the conclusion of its inquiry, the committee wrote, in resolution 709, that it would refuse entry because "the band has no artistic merit" and its performances "cause hysteria and mass disorder among young people". Full story...

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