The Eurovision annual song contest usually features lots of peace-love-harmony tunes, with the occasional bizarre Eurodisco atrocity, but this year the group that will represent Israel in the contest is The Teapacks, with a very different type of song.

Asked to pick a song for this year’s Eurovision song contest, Israelis paid little heed to the eternal Eurovision themes of peace, love and harmony and settled instead for a number about the threat of terrorism and Armageddon called Push the Button. The track, sung by the Teapacks in English, French and Hebrew, is a peculiar but confident amalgam of eastern sounds, rock and rap. It was chosen this week as the country’s preferred song in a phone-in television show and now the band will go forward to the Eurovision finals in Helsinki in May.

“The world is full of terror, if someone makes an error, he’s gonna blow us up to kingdom come,” sings Kobi Oz, leader of the Teapacks. “There are some crazy rulers, they hide and try to fool us, with demonic, technological willingness to harm. They’re gonna push the button, push the button.”

The Teapacks, who like to say they make music with a message, have sung in the past about social ills, crime, poverty, foreign workers and sometimes about love too. Of his current song, Oz said: “It has the right vibe and it’s multicultural.”

This song is very, very weird. I like it a lot.

Here’s the band’s page at MySpace: Teapacks.

UPDATE at 3/1/07 10:58:50 am:

Right on cue, the European organizers of the contest are talking about banning the song: Eurovision may ban Israeli entry due to ‘inappropriate message’.

HELSINKI, Finland - Eurovision Song Contest organizers said Thursday they might ban this year’s Israeli entry, Teapacks’ Push the Button, because of what they termed its inappropriate political message.

The song, to be performed at the contest in Helsinki in May, overwhelmingly won Israel’s competition Wednesday. It is sung in English, French and Hebrew and seemingly refers indirectly to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its hard-line leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“It’s absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition,” said Kjell Ekholm, an organizer of the contest. “We’ll have all the delegation leaders here in Helsinki next week, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this case within the EBU [European Broadcasting Union] group.”