When a bunch of Jews get together in Hollywood and produce a movie that the Arab
censors find offensive and ban it, the Jewish media everywhere moan the extreme
pain that their editors feel in the belly. Why? They ask. Why? It's only a
movie. This is the modern echo of what we used to hear in the decade of the
1960s when Rock'n Roll was the craze, some people wanted to ban it and others
exclaimed: Relax, it's only Rock.
Well, Dennis Prager brings to our attention a variation on
that theme. It is the story of a video that was produced in the Arab world
under the title: “I love Israel ”
by a group that was heretofore unknown. It had a hard time passing through the
censors in Egypt
but made it eventually and became a hit. It did not pass through the censors
because pressure was brought to bear in the way that it was in Iran with a
video that was banished there and its producers punished. No, there was no
pressure on Egypt
to pass the video. In fact, what Dennis Prager and his echo repeaters are upset
about is that it passed when their own desire was to see the video banned.
What's going on?
Well, if you don't hear the words, and you only watch the
successive images, you will deem the video to be a mild version of what we see
in videos made here in North America . You will
not call it violent by any stretch of the imagination even if some scenes
suggest reference to an ongoing war. It is only when you listen to the words
that you begin to understand this is a reference to Israel 's
repeated bombing campaigns on the unarmed people of Palestine .
Now the question: Why would an Egyptian group want to do
that? And there lies a long story. The lead singer in the group calls himself
al-Masri which in Arabic means the-Egyptian or simply Egyptian. But when you
listen carefully to his accent, you find it to be that of the Levant
even if he does a fairly good job at masking it. The chorus behind him,
however, does a lousy job at masking their accent. Moreover, what they say is a
theme which often recurs in Palestinian folklore. It is that of a people in
pain who were robbed of their land and properties, and are forced to endure a
rain of bombs that fall on them periodically – a rain against which they are
forbidden from producing or acquiring a defense.
Another thing that is noteworthy is that the lead singer
does not say he is an Egyptian man in Arabic even though the whole song is in
Arabic; he says this part of it in English. Why is that? There is one of two
possibilities. Either he gave himself or has acquired that nickname recently,
or it is his real name even though he is not Egyptian. This is not unusual in
the Arab world or anywhere else. For example, some uni-lingual English are
called French. And some uni-lingual French are called “Langlois” which is old
French for “the-English.” And you have a President of France named Hollande.
From the artistic point of view, the video is very creative,
entertaining and not too didactic in its message. In fact, it is a light,
almost comical parody of the Jews who seek total freedom to slaughter
Palestinians at will, and yet demand to be loved for it by, among others, the
Palestinian victims themselves. Hence, the theme of the video “I love Israel ” but he
wants it to disappear before it makes the Palestinians disappear.
There are two reasons why the group gave this work a heavy
Egyptian undertone, and why they released it in Egypt . First, the fact is that
despite the success of satellite television emanating from the Gulf countries, Egypt remains
the cultural center of the Arab world. When it comes to entertainment, those
who make it locally from Morocco
to Qatar and from Syria to Yemen ,
go to Cairo
because – to paraphrase an American saying – if they can make it there, they
can make it everywhere in the Arab world.
Second, Egypt
remains the only hope that the Palestinians have to regain something of what
they lost to the Jews. Their fear is that the Egyptian people are too busy
trying to improve their own situation to pressure their government to do
something for the Palestinians. And this video is a way to speak to them as
well as to the rest of the Arabs that they should not forget the Palestinians.