Best Arabic Songs of 2015, as picked by Nitzan Engelberg & Yaniv Jurkevitch -- and including a great track by Jowan Safadi

As found on Mixcloud, courtesy Columbus Music Magazine, an Israeli outfit that seems to live exclusively on Mixcloud. I've no idea who the pair are that chose the songs, except that they are Israeli. And based on the choices they've made, we can presume that (a) they listen to a lot of Arab music (b) they have quite good taste and (c) they are not afraid of progressive political music.

Most of the tracks are what one might call "alternative" Arab music, with roots in rock, but there is also some hip-hop. "Arabic" for Engelberg and Jurkevitch seems to mean "Eastern" or "Mashreqi," as there are no tracks from any Arab country east of Egypt. Nonetheless it's a quite good set, and it introduced me to a lot of material I did not know. Of the artists I am familiar with, there are quite good tracks from Mashrou' Leila (Lebanon), Ramy Essam (Egypt, though now based in Sweden), Maryam Saleh & Zeid Hamdan (Egypt/Lebanon), DAM (Palestinian citizens of Israel), Zeid and the Wings (Lebanon), Massar Egbari (Egypt), and Youssra El Hawary & Salam Yousry (Egypt).

I was most impressed by the track by Jowan Safadi, called "To Be An Arab." It surprised me when I listened for the first time, because the vocals are in Hebrew, not Arabic, and the song is not rock or rap but sounds very much like standard Israeli Mizrahi pop. (There is, however, a spoken bit in Arabic.) I did a bit of googling and learned from an article on Mondoweiss that Safadi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel (don't you dare call someone like him an "Israeli Arab"), and that the lyrics are quite amazing. The YouTube video (below) is terrific, and it is aimed at/addressed to Israeli Jews of Arab heritage, known in Israel as Mizrahim (or alternatively, to use an earlier terminology, Sephardim). The video provides a translation of the Hebrew (and Arabic) into English, which Mondoweiss has helpfully transcribed. Here's a few sample lines. I urge you to watch the vid and read the article.

Hardcore homophobes 
Are the most gay on the inside 
Mizrachi Arabophobes 
Are Arabs themselves 
Who are just afraid 
And prefer to stay in the closet 
Because they know, they know the best 
That to be an Arab is not that great 

Interesting, no, to compare Mizrahis who hate Arabs to homophobes?

The song represents a quite remarkable reaching out, on the part of a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel, to the Mizrahi Jewish minority, who are of Arab heritage. When it comes to a one-on-one "talk," the address is in Arabic, presuming the ability of the Mizrahi addressee to understand the language of heritage -- which in fact many young Mizrahim would not. It expresses a great deal of sympathy for the Mizrahi position, but ends on a tough note: dude, you are in Palestine.

Hey you imported Arab
Take it from a local Arab

You were dragged here

To take my place

It’s hard to be an Arab

It’s really hard, ask me

It’s hard to be an Arab

How much can one be black

Under the rule of the rich and white

In the land of Palestine

Hey you imported Arab,
Take it from a local Arab
You were dragged here
To take my place

It’s hard to be an Arab
It’s really hard, ask me
It’s hard to be an Arab
How much can one be black
Under the rule of the rich and white
In the land of Palestine

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/radical-talent-safadis#sthash.dVU4a8Vc.dpuf

Hardcore homophobes Are the most gay on the inside Mizrachi Arabophobes Are Arabs themselves Who are just afraid And prefer to stay in the closet Because they know, they know the best That to be an Arab is not that great - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/radical-talent-safadis#sthash.dVU4a8Vc.dpuf

Hardcore homophobes Are the most gay on the inside Mizrachi Arabophobes Are Arabs themselves Who are just afraid And prefer to stay in the closet Because they know, they know the best That to be an Arab is not that great - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/radical-talent-safadis#sthash.dVU4a8Vc.dpuf

Excellent introduction to Mizrahi music

By Leeor Ohayon, published by Stamp the Wax. It's here.

If you've read Amy Horowitz's excellent book, Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic, you will probably know much of this story. But Horowitz's book only takes us up to the early 90s, prior to the mainstreaming of Mizrahi music, the success of artists like Eyal Golan. And it mentions more recent developments, like the Jaffa bar Anna Loulou, and the fabulous singer Neta Elkayam. The article mentions one artist I was not familiar with, a pioneer figure in the movement, Ahuva Ozeri. Check out her song ‘Haikhan ha-Khayal?’ (Where is my soldier?) here.

 Anna-Lulu resident DJ Khen Ohana Elmaleh (photo Leeor Ohayon)

(the photo hanging on the right is of Salim Halali)

I particularly liked Ohayon's summary of what happened to the Jews from the Arab countries who ended up in Israel after 1948:

Mizrahi is the subsequent result of Egyptian Jews befriending Moroccan Jews who married other eastern Jewish communities from Algeria to Dagestan within the ghettos of peripheral Israel, creating the Israeli ‘ethnic other’. Mizrahi is the result of side-lined communities, uprooted, destitute and further victimised in a state that told them not to be ‘too Arab’. A state built on Ashkenazic foundations, under a Eurocentric educative system that sought to pressurise Mizrahi Jewry into leaving their Middle Eastern cultures at the border and adopting a new Ashkenazi-Israeli identity. All this subsequently resulted in a dichotomy that only served to create a form of identity-based schizophrenia amongst Mizrahi Jewry.

Jewish North African musicians and the 1989 Toledo conference

1. A very nice tribute to Jewish North African musicians by the Israeli writer Ophir Toubul was published on October 9, 2014 by +972. Toubul discusses, among other artists, Reinette L'Oranaise, Maurice El Medioni, Al Gusto Orchestra, Salim Halali and Haim Botbol (please check out the clip of Haim singing in Essaouira, Morocco in 2013).

Touboul provides a sound cloud link to a singer I had never heard of: "Braham Swiri, who put out records in his youth yet lived the rest of his life in anonymity and sold his recordings outside the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda Market."

The track is terrific, and I'm keen to hear more. 

Touboul mentions as well the Israeli Mizrahi pop star Kobi Peretz, and links to his recent cover of Sami Elmaghribi classic song “Omri Ma Nansak Ya Mama.” Very nice, modernized, sounds more Egyptian in style than Moroccan to my ears, and the video is bathed in nostalgia.

I was most moved by the vid Toubul posted of Israeli Moroccan singer Neta Elkayam, performing at  Tel Aviv’s Barby Club just last week. 

It's a track made famous by the Algerian Jewish singer Line Monty called "Ana Loulia." I love Neta Elkayam, but what I found particularly compelling about this concert vid is that she is backed on keyboards by legendary Algerian Jewish musician Maurice El Medioni, who moved from Marseille to Israel over the last year or so, after suffering a stroke. I was recently told by a friend who talks to Maurice regularly that his health is not so good, and that one side of his face is, at least partially paralyzed, so it was great to see him performing. (I mention Maurice in my previous post, on Blaoui El Houari. I met Maurice in Essaouira, Morocco in November 2007, when he performed at the Festival des Andalousies Atlantiques, as you can see here.) Saha, ya Maurice!

Here is Line Monty's version of "Ana Loulia." According to Chris Silver (Jewish Morocco), Messaoud El Medioni, better known as Saoud l'Oranais, recorded the song as early as 1932. Saoud was the uncle of Maurice El Medioni, and the teacher of Reinette L'Oranaise. He moved from Oran to Marseille before the Second World War, and met his end at Sobibor concentration camp (Poland) in March 1943.

Finally here's a bit more of the fabulous Neta Elkayam, doing Haim Botbol's "Alash Klam el Aar," live in Krakow. Oh, man.

2. Ella Shohat published an important piece in Jadaliyya (September 30) on the historic meeting, twenty five years ago, of Palestinians (including PLO officials) and "Jews of the Orient," in 1989. It provides an important compliment to the Touboul piece, dealing with the wider political and historical context. Please read it; I find it impossible to summarize. But I liked this bit:

"One beautiful evening that left a mark on us, embodying what is usually dismissed as “nostalgia” and “sentimental clichés,” was when the Jewish-Moroccan-French singer and composer Sapho graciously delighted us with her singing. I would reflect back on that moment a few years later when Sapho performed Umm Kulthum's legendary song “al-Atlal,” and when she released her album “Jardin Andalou” that fused rock, Arabic, and Andalusian elements. While a long-time supporter of Palestinian rights, Sapho, after that visit to Toledo, began to engage the music of the Judeo-Arab world in which she was raised. To stand up for justice in Palestine was all the more momentous when drawing on the complex memories of Sephardi/Arab-Jews."

I am familiar with Sapho's music, but had not known she was known as a supporter of Palestinian rights. Here's her version of "al-Atlal."

Mizrahis and the Holocaust

Batya Shimony recently published an article called "Being a Mizrahi Jew, an Israeli and touching the Holocaust" at 972 (May 10, 2014). A lot of fascinating stuff here. Just a couple excerpts:

Living in Israel as a Mizrahi means growing up in a society that sanctifies the memory of the Holocaust and turns it into symbolic capital that is passed on from father to son. At the same time, it means belonging to an excluded group that is devoid of status, whose history and chronicles are of no interest except to the extent that they pertain to a colorful folklore or affirm the Zionist rescue narrative...

And this, which really made me want to read Yossi Sucary:

Lea Aini in Rose of Lebanon (2009) and Yossi Sucary in Benghazi-Bergen-Belsen (2013) claim their own family and community’s part in the established historical memory of the Holocaust. In both cases the survivors’ experience of the Holocaust had not been acknowledged by the establishment, and despite having undergone such terrible suffering they received no recognition whatsoever from the Israeli public and memorial institutions.

Aini describes her father, an Auschwitz survivor: “[h]e sits there on the eve of the Holocaust Memorial Day, scrunched under his robe, already perched across from the TV that repeatedly broadcasts the appropriate programs and films, which offer no mention of the Jews of Greece – thus, Father continued sacrificing himself, and us, on the altar of Survival, as if none of it had ever ended” (228). The terrible rage that built up inside him was violently directed at his family members.

Rage is where Sucary’s novel begins, telling the story of a group of Libyan Jews that were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The many reviews written about the novel highlighted the historical importance of the issue that had finally been brought into public awareness. However, Sucary was not only seeking to present the common fate shared by Libyan and European Jews. His main aim was to show the hatred of Jews directed at their own brethren, and how the European Jews themselves abused the Libyan Jews. The last part of the novel describes the horrors of the concentration camp through the eyes of Silvana, the central protagonist.

From her first encounter with the Ashkenazi prisoners in the camp, she is marked out as a “darkie,” as someone who is “not one of our own.” Her “inferior” status, owing to her ethnicity, enables one of the prisoners to harass her, verbally abuse her and sexually assault her. Finally, he sets up a trap for her, seducing her to a remote spot where she is degraded and raped by three Dutch kapos.

The descriptions of the brutality shown towards Silvana by the European Jews seem far more extreme than those of the Germans. When dealing with the Germans, Silvana is resourceful and manages to find solutions, while in her encounters with the Ashkenazi Jews she is humiliated in the most extreme and vulgar way. As she’s being raped, a thought crosses her mind: “who could save her? Her own white Jewish brethren, who treated her as though she were a human animal that weaseled her way into their group?” (299).

These descriptions illustrate the novel’s underlying agenda, which is not merely to depict the experience of the Libyan Jews in the Holocaust, but also, and perhaps mainly, to protest against the condescending and hurtful attitude the Ashkenazi Jews had towards them. This was the same attitude the Libyan Jews were shown later on, upon their arrival in Israel.

Sucary's Benghazi-Bergen-Belsen was published in Hebrew. The only translation of his work available is, apparently, Emilia et le sel de la terre -- but in French. It sounds like a great read.

Documentary on the "absorption of immigrants"

This is an eye-popping 2011 account from Israel's channel 2 of a 1951 documentary found in the Israeli army archives, about Israel's "absorption of immigrants." It is as racist and Orientalist and patronizing as can be, all about how Ashkenazi Jews are bringing the dark and savage Oriental Jews (from Yemen) into civilization and the light. Biting commentary by Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University, an Iraqi Jew.

A note on the youtube post provides this information, from Jacob Gross, about Saadia, the Yemeni "star":

Zacharia Shalom, son of Hasan and Nur (who played Saadia) was born on April 5th, 1937 in the city of Al Bida, Yemen. Died on the second day of the six-day war, June 6th, 1967, Leaving behind wife, daughter and son.

Maya Casabianca

I recently ran across an article in Haaretz by Daphna Lewy, published on September 13, 2001, about the Moroccan Jewish (and Israeli citizen) singer Maya Casabianca. Maya is interesting for several reasons. First, she was something of a star in France during the 1960s. Second, she carried on a love affair with Farid Al-Atrash (the singer-'udist-actor, born in Syria but whose career was made in Egypt, brother of Asmahan) during the last four years of his life (he died in 1974).

Maya was born Margalit Azran in Casablanca in 1945 (I believe) and emigrated to Israel with her aunt and uncle in 1948, while her parents went to Paris. Her aunt and uncle, it seems, weren't able to adapt to life in Israel, so when she was 11 (1956) the family moved to Paris and she was reunited with her parents. She was discovered by a neighbor who worked for the Philips recording company, and she was signed by Philips under the name Maya Casabianca and was a sensation in France by the late fifties. (The name evokes Casablanca without actually being Moroccan. No doubt in order to lend her a bit of Mediterranean exotica but at the same to disguise her Arabness.) Philips aimed to groom her as a teen successor or even rival to Dalida, and they were at least in part successful. Her total record sales, according to the Haaretz article, were 38 million. Like Dalida, and like so many of France's pop stars of the era who were "Mediterranean," she sang in French and Spanish. But she certainly is not remembered today anywhere near as reverentially as is Dalida. 
 

I don't know what her big hits were in France, but I note that she did a version of "Zoubisou Bisou," originally made popular in France by Gillian Hills and of course famously revived when Megan performed it for Don in Mad Men. Maya's is perfectly decent, as you can hear here.

She also covered Little Anthony and the Imperials' 1959 hit, "Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop," as 
"Cherie Cherie Je Reviens." Check it out here.

But I think this song, "El Matador," is more representative of what she became famous for, and the video gives us a chance to see her performing on television.

Casabianca reportedly met Farid Al-Atrash at the first party that Philips put on in her honor, and he pursued her, sending a limo to pick her up on her first trip to Beirut to sing in concert, and it took her to his luxurious palace. They were friends for several years and eventually, for four years, lovers, splitting up shortly before he died. (I am told by someone who is connected that his family denies the story.)

 Maya and Farid

Farid al-Atrash reportedly encouraged her to record Sephardic songs (but I haven't found any) and also to adapt some of his songs. The best known of these is her version of his famous "Ya Gamil, Ya Gamil," which you can listen to here.

Here's Farid's original.

Eventually (and I'm not sure when -- in the late 70s?) Maya returned to Israel and mostly lived off the royalties of her hits. But she did record an album of Farid al-Atrash songs, including "Ya Gamil, Ya Gamil." Here's the cassette jacket.

Maya also wrote a book, published in 2001, about her career and her time with Farid, under the Hebrew title Ani Vehu ("He and I"), and it also appeared in Arabic, issued by the Arabic culture department of the Israeli Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport.

If you understand Hebrew (and I don't), here's a report on her from Israeli TV.

Tomi Lapid (father of Yair) on Mizrahi music

Jacky Levi, Israeli columnist and radio and t.v. host, interviewed by Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, in her Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 63.

I remember driving one day and listening to a radio talk show, they put on a great song by Amir Benayun and then interviewed Tomi Lapid [an Ashkenazi media icon and a Knesset member]. When he was asked what he thought about the song, he said 'it was disgusting and repulsive, they say that we occupy the Arabs, but they really occupy us.' I was so shocked I almost got into an accident. This was not just a private person making a stupid comment. This was an influential key media figure. I think only then I started to understand what other Mizrahim, like Avihu Medina, are talking about, (Interview, summer 2008)

Tomi Lapid's son Yair is head of the "centrist" Yesh Atid party, which won 19 Knesset seats in the January 2013 elections.

Amir Benayun, from Beersheva, is the son of an Algerian Jew. He put out an album in 2011 called Zini, a collection of songs sung in Arabic and based on the book of Ecclesiastes. Benayum is affiliated with the right-wing of the Zionist religious camp and with Chabad.

Here's are a couple good tracks from Benayun.

Avihu Medina, of Yemeni background, is one of the giants of Mizrahi music or more properly, "Israeli Mediterranean Music." Amy Horowitz discusses him at length in her Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic (Wayne State University Press, 2010).

Statement from the Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews

Statement from the Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews, 14 September, 2012 / 27 Elul, 5772 

A) We most sincerely thank the Israeli government for confirming our status as refugees following a rapid, 62-year-long evaluation of our documents.

B) We request that Ashkenazi Jews are also recognized as refugees so that they won't consider sending to our homes the courteous officers of the Oz immigration enforcement unit.

C) We are seeking to demand compensation for our lost property and assets from the Iraqi government - NOT from the Palestinian Authority - and we will not agree with the option that compensation for our property be offset by compensation for the lost property of others (meaning, Palestinian refugees) or that said compensation be transferred to bodies that do not represent us (meaning, the Israeli government).

D) We demand the establishment of an investigative committee to examine: 1) if and by what means negotiations were carried out in 1950 between Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, and if Ben-Gurion informed as-Said that he is authorized to take possession of the property and assets of Iraqi Jewry if he agreed to send them to Israel; 2) who ordered the bombing of the Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in Baghdad, and if the Israeli Mossad and/or its operatives were involved. If it is determined that Ben-Gurion did, in fact, carry out negotiations over the fate of Iraqi Jewish property and assets in 1950, and directed the Mossad to bomb the community's synagogue in order to hasten our flight from Iraq, we will file a suit in an international court demanding half of the sum total of compensation for our refugee status from the Iraqi government and half from the Israeli government.

E) Blessings for a happy new year, a year of peace and prosperity, a year of tranquility and fertility.

 ~ The Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews

(As originally posted by Almog Behar on FB. I got it via Racheli.)

"Maxi Pries wears the Israeli Keffiyeh" --- wha???

Check out this, er, surprising vid, featuring respected British reggae artist Maxi Priest.



The kufiya he is wearing is the record label Shemspeed. It describes its products thus: Israeli Keffiyeh, with its intricate Star of David pattern in the left piece, and words AM ISRAEL CHAI (Jewish People Live) in Hebrew weaved into its fabric in a variety of colors. Check them out here. Colors include blue-and-white, purple, "Army (IDF)" and "Rasta Tiedye."

But there is more to this product than simple appropriation -- though I think it is certainly susceptible to such a claim. Shemspeed also offers the Peace Keffiyeh, which it describes thus:

Peace is something everyone wants, every language in the world has a version of this world in their vocabulary. One of the long standing feuds have been between Jewish & Muslim people, which is the inspiration behind the peace, shalom, salaam Keffiyeh. Though peace talks have been taking place for years now and the divide has grown even wider with harsh actions & rhetoric on both sides, yet it seems there is a consensus that both sides want peace, the problem is that each side wants it on their terms. 

We are launching a grass rout campaign to try to focus on the similarities on these Semitic people rather than on our differences. At the end of the day the roots are quite similar in nature since both faiths originate with Abraham and with a shared culture (before the Jews settled around the world) history and now the land. The only sustainable option is coming in terms with a peaceful resolution to this long standing divide. Here is our contribution to this effect. 

The peace "kef" comes in both black-and-white and red-and-white.

I do, honestly, appreciate the sentiment. And the fact that the patterns of the "peace kef" include both Stars of David and the traditional kufiya pattern, and that peace is written on the "kef" in both Hebrew and Arabic. This all comes from the orientation of DJ/producer Erez Safar, who is the founder of Shemspeed, also the founder of the Sephardic Music Festival, and is of Yemeni background. This "Israeli keffiyeh" then should not be read simply as an attempt at Zionist colonial appropriation but as an effort on the part of an Israeli Jew of "Oriental" background, i.e., a Mizrahi, to stress the cultural commonalities between Arabs and Jews. 

Before passing even cursory judgment on Safar's and Shemspeed's projects, I'd need to become more familiar with the Sephardi Music Festival and with the artists on Shemspeed's label. I am somewhat familiar with Pharaohs Daughter, who I like, though not wildly, and the Hasid reggae artist Matisyahu, whose music I sometimes like but whose politics, when it comes to Israel, I'm suspicious of.

I'm can't imagine that Erez Safar and Shemspeed will be warmly welcomed by many Palestinians or Palestine activists when they call try to reclaim the kufiya as Israeli, or when they infuse it with Star of David patterns. Or when they marked "IDF" kufiyas. Nor are they on very convincing political ground when they act as if both "sides" are equivalent in their "harshness" of their actions and rhetoric. One "side" is an occupying and colonizing force, with enormous military and economic assets. The other is an occupied people resisting. There is no equivalence.

And yet...I welcome Shemspeed's efforts to push the Sephardi, Eastern, Mizrahi side of Jewishness, to challenge Ashkenazi identity. Even at times, to "Arabize" it. Check out, for instance, the Moroccan-Israeli singer Smadar's "Ghali Ya Bouy." Very hot. And she is from Sderot...

Oh, and if you are interested, Shemspeed has other "kef" products (I really don't like this hip abbreviation, sorry), like the Kabbalah Kef and the Kef Shawl and various Kef Skinny Ties. 

Notes on Dana International

1. Dana is going back to the Eurovision Song Contest. After winning as Israel's representative in 1998, she is returning in 2011 (May 10, 12, 14), to represent Israel with the song "Ding Dong."

Here's her 1998 winning performance of the song "Diva."

And here is "Ding Dong."

I vastly prefer "Diva," but that doesn't mean that "Ding Dong" can't win.

2. Here's a youtube video of Dana's performance of one of her earliest songs, "Sa'ida Sultana." If the date is correct (1993), then Dana has just had or will soon have sex change (MTF) surgery. Note how she simulates bellydancing early on, when Ofer Nissim is playing a kind of 'Oriental' riff on the keyboards.

The song is a "version" of Whitney Houston's 1990 hit "My Name Is Not Susan," sung entirely in Arabic, except for the last verse, sung in English, and drawn from Whitney's original. (Watch the vid here.)

You can and should check out the lyrics, which are quite clever, here (scroll down a bit).

3. Dana was rather inactive from 2002-2006, but returned with a new album in 2007. One of the most interesting of its tracks was "Seret Hodi," a Bollywoodish number, done with Idan Yaniv. Dana's early releases (1993-96) featured a number of tracks in Arabic. Since then it's primarily Hebrew and some English. Does "Seret Hodi" represent a kind of "return" to her Eastern roots, or is it just an attempt to ride the Bollywood wave? Or both? In any case, here's the video:

4. You can read an article I published about Dana in 2000 here.

Tarbushes and kufiyas (but no Arabs) in "Kazablan"

Someone who follows this blog wrote to me awhile back and said to look for kufiyas in the Israeli film Kazablan (sometimes spelled, Casablan). Thanks! (I can't find your email...so no personalized message.) Kazablan (1974, dir. Menahem Golan) is an example of a "bourekas" film, a genre that was dominant in the Israeli film industry from 1967-1977. The bourekas feature Mizrahi Jews, Jews of "Eastern," primarily Arab background, who in an earlier era, were usually called Sephardim. Today "Mizrahim" is favored.

The classic study of bourekas is Chapter 3 of Ella Shohat's highly respected and invaluable Israeli Cinema: East West and the Politics of Representation (University of Texas, 1989). Shohat shows how these films, while they represented a massive new presence of Mizrahim on the screen, nonetheless continued a tradition of stereotyping "Eastern" Jews. Bourekas tend to present the Mizrahim in folkloric and colorful fashion, and hence, as ultimately different from and ultimately inferior to Ashkenazim, European Jews. Most bourekas are (like Kazablan) directed by Ashkenazi Jews, thereby continuing the long-standing practice in Israel whereby Mizrahim and Arabs are denied self-representation: they must be represented. The typical plot of the bourekas is one in which unity of the (Israeli) Jewish community is achieved, and affirmed, between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, usually by means of a "mixed" marriage. Some of the problems and grievances of the (mostly poor and working-class) Mizrahim are staged, usually in quite muted form, but these are always "overcome" by an ending that brings everyone together. It is significant that the era of the bourekas' popularity coincided with heightened Mizrahi political militancy, exemplified in particular by the emergence of the Israeli Black Panthers. 

 

Kazablan, then, is a typical bourekas product. What I want to focus on here is how, by paying attention to how of signs of "Arabness" surface in Kazablan, we can see how these are on the one hand, used to contribute to the "exotic" nature of the Mizrahim, and on the other, how their actual Arab character is systematically effaced.

 

Kazablan is the nickname of the protagonist of the film (played by Yehoram Gaon). The name, of course, comes from Casablanca, where the character was born. Kazablan, and his "gang," are clearly marked as Jews of Arab origin. This is accomplished several ways. Among these are the fact that some characters put on a tarbush (fez) to sell goods in the exotic market where they live, in a declining neighborhood of Tel Aviv (that happens to be formerly-Palestinian Arab Jaffa, most of whose population was expelled/fled in 1948). Due to its colorful nature, and its cheap prices, the open-air market is patronized by more well-to-do Ashkenazim from surrounding neighborhoods. Here a Mizrahi character tries to sell a very "ethnic" clay pot to an Ashkenazi shopper, who is clearly marked, and distinguished from the Mizrahi peddler, by his distinctive, kibbutnik, headgear. 

 

 

Here the Mizrahi characters are ethnically marked by the fact that they are smoking a nargila or sheesha ("hubbly-bubbly"), a traditional Middle Eastern smoking contraption. They are marked too by their stereotypical position of repose (signifying Oriental "laziness").

 

 

In this scene, the Mizrahi character, at left, smoking nargila, is exchanging insults with Yanush, the Ashkenazi character at right, the owner of a shoe store, who is presented in an entirely unsympathetic light. (The latter is Kazablan's rival in the quest for the hand of the Ashkenazi girl Rachel.)

 

The exoticness of the Mizrahim of Kazablan is also established by the neighborhood in which they live--one which is crumbling, and threatened with demolition by the municipality. It is in fact a "mixed" neighborhood of Ashkenazim and Mizrahim--not in fact very sociologically accurate--but it is the Mizrahim who seem to define its character, who seem to "belong" in a way that poorer Jews from Eastern Europe appear not to. Of course the neighborhood is old Jaffa, the historic Arab-Palestinian city just to the south of Tel Aviv, denuded of most (but not all) of its Arab inhabitants in 1948. Nowhere in the film, I'm pretty sure, is the name Jaffa (Yaffa, in Arabic), mentioned. Here's a shot of the open-air market, from above. Note the rubble (Mizrahim are of the slums), note the primitive atmosphere lent by the horse drawn carriages, near the beach, and at the bottom, at the left and the right. Note that the stone structures clearly signify "Eastern." They are typical of Arab structures throughout in cities throughout the Mediterranean from the first half of the twentieth century. As a resident of Beirut from 1964-1976, they are entirely familiar to me. 

 

Here's another view. The impressive structure on the right, with its red-tiled roof, is entirely typical of Arab cities like Jaffa, Haifa, Beirut... 

At the same time, while the architecture suggests Arabness, in the film, it is not allowed to say it. One of the most fascinating ways in which the Arabness of the Mizrahi characters is erased in the film is through the music. The film is a musical, full of staged scenes that appear (to me) rather silly and ridiculous. But what is particularly remarkable is the fact that the music is the typical popular Israeli music of the era, rooted in Eastern-European styles, with only a hint or two of Easternness. It reflects hegemonic ideas about the nature of national music, but it has almost nothing to do with the reality of what Mizrahim were into at the time. Their music was rooted in the East, in the Arab world, and the broader Mediterranean. This was a dynamic time for the development of what is variously known as Israeli Mediterranean Music or Mizrahi Music. In the film, however, the Arab musical traditions that were popular in real Mizrahi neighborhoods is nowhere present. The only time it is suggested is in the nightclub that Kazablan and his pals frequent, where Greek music (acceptable because it's "Eastern" and exotic without being Arab) is performed. I know virtually no Hebrew, but it also struck me that the Hebrew spoken by the Mizrahi characters was sprinkled with less Arabic than I would have expected. The Arabness of Jaffa, and of Israel more generally, nonetheless haunts the movie. For instance, this scene, where Kazablan and his pals are prancing around, singing a song. In the background is Jaffa, where a minaret and church steeple are visible, signs of a former presence of a now mostly vanished Arab community, that add to the picturesque atmosphere of the scene. (Kazablan is in the center, dressed in denim, with the fisherman's cap.) 

 

Now we come to the kufiya scenes. The first occurs in the course of one of Kazablan's most well-known songs, "Kulanu Yahudim" (We Are All Jews), which sums up the ideological point of this, and all other bourekas films: despite the differences between Jews of European and Eastern background, all are ultimately united as Jews, and as Israelis, in a common purpose, in the Jewish state. (You can watch the scene here. The quality is poor, but you will get the idea. And also a flavor of the music that characterizes the film.) What is amusing is that if you watch closely, a male figure in a kufiya (and 'iqal, the headband) appears at one point, dancing with a blonde, presumably Ashkenazi, Jewish woman. (Bottom right.) What are we to make of this? It would appear to signify that even Arabs in the Jewish state are "all Jews." Or is this some kind of joke on the part of the director. Whatever the case, the Palestinian Arab, citizen of Israel, certainly haunts the scene. 

 

A kufiya shows up at one other point. Rachel, the love interest of Kazablan and Yanush, is walking through the neighborhood market. If I'm not mistaken, pondering who to choose. For just a moment, just behind Rachel, we spot another person wearing a kufiya--this time, black-and-white. He is probably present so as to mark the neighborhood, once again, as exotic and colorful. But he is not offered any opportunity to assert his Arabness. Nonetheless, he, and his kufiya, is a mark of the specter that cannot, will not, be eliminated. 

Noa & Mira Awad: Israel's Entry, Eurovision 2009

Check out this video, featuring Israel's entry in the 2009 Eurovision contest. Try to figure out who is the Arab and who is the Jew?



Of course, to engage in such an exercise is to conjure with problematic racial stereotypes. Nonetheless, in this instance it's worthwhile. Noa, the Israeli singer, looks more stereotypically Arab. That's because she is of Yemeni background. Mira Awad, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, is 'whiter' and looks more European. That's because her father is a Palestinian Arab and her mother is Bulgarian.

What does it mean when Israel decides to enter a duo representing Israeli minorities, a Mizrahi and a Palestinian, to represent the Israeli nation in the Eurovision contest? Is it a clever ploy to give Israel a positive image, at a time of growing demands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, in the wake of the Gaza outrage?

Yes.

According to a recent article in The Guardian,

When the announcement of their Eurovision entry was made, Israel's military was deep into its devastating three-week war in Gaza. Suddenly, Nini and Awad found themselves facing a bout of criticism from the left. Several Arab artists – some Israeli, some Palestinian – published an open letter asking the pair to withdraw.

"The Israeli government is sending the two of you to Moscow as part of its propaganda machine that is trying to create the appearance of Jewish-Arab 'coexistence' under which it carries out the daily massacre of Palestinian civilians," the letter said. "Israeli artists, authors and intellectuals that take part in this propaganda machine, instead of working for justice, equality and the upholding of human and civil rights, not to mention international law, are partners to the crime."

On the other hand, does the choice of Noa and Mira Awad represent, in a sense, the success of struggles of Mizrahim and Palestinian citizens of Israel, to change Israel's Eurocentric, Ashkenazi, and exclusively Jewish character?

A cautious yes.

Noa, according to The Guardian, "has taken part in several joint projects with Arab artists, publicly backs a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and refuses to perform in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank."

Noa recorded a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" together with rai artist Khaled, which was released on the European version of Khaled's 1999 album Kenza. It was not included on the US release of Kenza, from Ark 21.

The Guardian goes on to say that Noa "faces occasional anti-Israel demonstrations during her tours abroad, once in London and most recently during a tour of Spain last month, and has been very critical of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, in Gaza."

As for Awad, "She works in an Arabic-Hebrew theatre in Jaffa and made a breakthrough appearance in an Israeli television sitcom, Arab Labour. She has sung with Nini for the last eight years and has previously competed to represent Israel at Eurovision, despite objections from the Arab community."

As far as I can determine, the Israeli sitcom, Arab Labor ("Avoda Aravit"), seems to be a sign of Arab inroads into mainstream Israeli culture.

So while I'm sympathetic to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, I regard the Noa/Mira Awad collaboration as a complicated matter.

But whatever you think about the politics, there is no way that this song should win the Eurovision contest. It's sappy and dreadful.

(I saw Noa perform at the Fez Festival of Sacred Music in Morocco in summer 1999, and did not care for her music at all. And the duet with Khaled, "Imagine," is awful as well.)

On the other hand, Dana International, Israel's Eurovision entry in 1998, truly deserved to win. Even if she has been shilling for Tzipi Livni of late.