9.8 What Songs Teach us About The Middle East.
Many Israeli songs are about their longing for peace. In the video below 3,000 Israelis sing the song One Day by Matisyahu. Matisyahu is an American Jew with a very interesting life story which you can read by clicking here.
Here is famous Israeli song about peace Shir La Shalom (Song for Peace)
Notice how there are many soldiers in the audience swaying to the song, arm and arm around each other. There is a misconception that all soldiers are for war. Israeli soldiers put on the uniform to protect their country, and to save lives because many of the surrounding Muslims want Israelis dead.
Yoni Netanyahu the leader of the heroic rescue of air line passengers hijacked to Uganda, wrote:
"I want peace very much. I don't like to live by the sword, a life of killing and trying not to be killed."
He also wrote:
"I see with sorrow how a part of our people still clings to unrealistic hopes for peace. Common sense tells them that the Arabs haven't abandoned their basic aim of destroying the state. But the self-delusion that has always plagued the Jews is at work again. They want to believe, so they believe. They want not to see so they distort [reality]."
The road to peace is through strength. Deluding oneself into believing that an enemy that wants to destroy you wants peace is the road to war.
Here is a Palestinian dance with a song that conveys what many Palestinian Arabs want.
Walid Shoebat is a Palestinian Arab who was curious about Israeli songs. He wanted to know how they compared to Palestinian Arab songs. He talks about what he found out below.
Here is a performance of the Israeli song Walid found with the word Milchama or war. The one Israeli song he found with the word was against war.
A translation of the lyrics of a song in honor of Wafa Idris, a female suicide bomber is:
My sister, Wafa, My sister, Wafa,
Oh, the heartbeat of pride,
Oh, blossom who was on the Earth and is now in heaven, (2x)
My sister, Wafa
Allah Akbar! Oh Palestine of the Arabs
Allah Akbar, Oh Wafa!
But you chose Shahada [martyrdom]
In death you have brought life to our will.
But you chose Shahada,
In death you have brought life to our will.
A song was created after car terror attacks claimed the lives of five Israelis, including three-month-old baby Chaya Zissel Braun. The lyrics are:
Run over the two-month-old babyAlthough there is violent Muslim music praising those who commit violence against Israel and America many Muslims are against music period. In Hamtramck, Michigan: Muslim parents have blocked teaching of music in local schools. Islamic texts are against music. For example in Sunan Ibn Majah 4020 it is written:
“It was narrated from Abu Malik Ash’ari that the Messenger of Allah said: ‘People among my nation will drink wine, calling it by another name, and musical instruments will be played for them and singing girls (will sing for them). Allah will cause the earth to swallow them up, and will turn them into monkeys and pigs.’”
Sayid Qutb, a member of the Muslim brotherhood was enraged that people were enjoying music and life, because the purpose of life was death through jihad.
Ayatollah Khomeini the former Islamic dictator of Iran said:
Music, corrupts the minds of our youth. There is no difference between music and opium. Both create lethargy in different ways. If you want your country to be independent, then ban music. Music is treason to our nation and to our youth.
In Pakistan music shops were ordered to close down by a radical group and those that didn't were attacked with bombs and other means. (Pakistan: Pro-Taliban strikes against music shops, freemuse.org 8/2005). The Taliban when they took over Afghanistan after Biden pulled out American troops, killed Afghan musicians.
Here you can see Hamas punishing Gazan Arabs for music: (Probably only adults should view this). This video is from April 7, 2010.
The Eurovision Song Contest, often known simply as Eurovision, is an international song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Each participating member submits an original song representing its country to be performed and broadcast by the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine a winner. Although Israel is not part of Europe it is a member of the European Broadcasting Union and so can compete in the Eurovision song contest.
Yuval Raphael is the singer Israel sent to the 2025 Eurovisian concert. She is also a survivor of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. She as attending the Nova festival which was a large dance festival. She tells her story in the video below.
The song Yuval sang at the Nova festival, A New Day Will Rise, is about love and a positive outlook and overcoming adversity which is what she did. Songs about love and hope never stopped Muslims and Israel haters who attend the competition from booing and screaming at Israeli contestants in the past. She practiced the song to boos to prepare for the booing at the concert. There were boos at the concert but there were cheers as well.
There were big anti-Israel protests outside the concert and two people tried to storm the stage but were arrested before they could do any harm to her. They splashed red paint on Israeli supporters and staff. Yuval came in second in the song competition. When asked about the winner she said "He deserved it". She also said "I've never felt so victorious in my life."
Here is her performance at Eurovision.
You can see Yuval and her team celebrate after she came in second in the video below.
An Austrian man named Johannes Pietsch (called JJ) was declared the winner of the competition even though the public vote was for Yuval. When asked about JJ winning Yuval said "he deserved it". However later JJ said that Israel should be banned from the competition in the futrue because of its war with Hamas in Gaza. Anti-Israel propaganda has brainwashed a lot of people including JJ.
Eurovision compiled a video of the top performances and left Israel out even though Israel came in second. Your ranking in the Eurovision contest depends on a public vote and a jury vote. Yuval won the public vote by a large margin but came in 15th in the Jury vote. It's strange that there is such a huge difference between the two though I suspect an anti-Israel jury.
Eurovision will not allow songs with political content so they would not have accepted a song about the Nova festival. However two Israelis created an AI tribute to Yuval with lyrics about the Nova festival which is embedded below.
There is a lot of propaganda that has convinced the Arabs who wrote the hate filled songs above and naive westerners that Israel is a country in which Jews occupy "Palestinian' land. We can learn from music about that too.
Old music books from the region debunk that propaganda. I am a big sheet music collector. One of the oldest music books in my collection is called Palestinean Folk Songs. I've uploaded the first few pages which you can look at by clicking the above link. The interesting to notice is that the songs are not Arabic songs, they're Hebrew songs. There was not a Palestinian people that was separate from the Jews. There never was a Palestinian state. The area was called Palestine because the Romans who wanted to erase Israel, named the area Palestine after they conquered it in 63 BC. It didn't matter if you were Jewish Christian or Muslim, you were considered Palestinian by the British.
The following is a letter submitted to the New York Times in 1975 which the New York Times did not see fit to print about this. (Arthur Kahn and Thomas Murray, The Palestinians: A Political Masquerade, Published by Americans For A Safe Israel)
Dear Sir:
Your newspaper frequently uses the term "Palestinian" to describe a section of the Middle East population which is Arab, to differentiate it from Israeli Jews. As the holder of a Palestinian Identity Card and a Certificate of Discharge from a Palestinian Unit of the British army, I find this practice annoying and certainly untrue... We Palestinian Jews wore the uniform of the British Army, and on our shoulder epaulettes the single word, "Palestine" in English. We tried to get permission to wear Hebrew insignia, fly the Jewish flag and be recognized as Palestinian Jews, but-no, Palestinian meant Jew and Arab, and who cared if there were fewer than 3000 Arabs as compared to 36,000 Jews in khaki? In British army nomenclature, the equivalent of a GI is BOR, meaning British Other Rank. We were formally known as POR , Palestinian Other Ranks. So we fought the war as Palestinians, set up the Jewish Brigade as Palestinians, and I'll be damned if I agree that only Arafat and his assassins are Palestinians. As a Palestinian, I was arrested by the British on suspicion of smuggling immigrants into the country. As a Palestinian, I had the honor of commanding the 329th Palestinian Companyof the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (all Jews). There were no equivalent Arab units. Once a British general said to me, "Migawd| I have so many things to dislike you for, for being a Jew, American born, a Palestinian-and you don't even know how to handle a knife and fork! So cut it out, please. Call them what you will, but not Palestinians.
Yours truly, Joe Criden
One of the Jewish newspapers at the time was called the Palestine Post. It is now called the Jerusalem Post. Here is the issue of the Palestine Post a couple of days after Israel declared its independence. Notice how the surrounding Muslim countries attacked shortly thereafter. Just like old songs, old newspapers tell you a lot about the Middle East.
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What can we learn about the Middle East conflict from a security guard in San Diego?
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