Lately, I have been looking at tweets coming from the Arab world, hoping to pick up some news from Yemen, Libya or Egypt. When you are in Brooklyn, these are all a part of your neighbourhood. My family is connected by marriage to Iraq and Yemen, so these are not distant places on the map.
I found one tweet that recommended a video by a musician, composer and poet from Lebanon named Nadim Mohsen. Some of his songs were simply love songs, but one video was clearly focused on the political situation between Israel and Lebanon. It showed buildings being demolished and flashed back and forth between corralled sheep and men being daubed with paint markings, presumably comparing them to sheep bound for slaughter. It is clear that musical entertainment in Lebanon has reserved an important place for the struggle to wipe Israel off the map. Even without speaking Arabic, it is interesting to see how images are manipulated in music videos. Clearly, though military battles may be geographically confined, the struggle for hearts and minds is being waged in every living room in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world.
To be brutally candid, in the days before Google Translate, I used to ask my Jewish friends who speak Arabic, “Before I permit myself to like this song, are they singing about destroying Jews and Israel?” I did not always like the answer. Now with Google Translate, I can get a rough idea of which music incites hatred.
Despite the tension between Muslims and Jews today, there were centuries when Jews lived in Muslim countries. The series of expulsions of Jews from Arab countries has ended that coexistence, but it has not sundered the cultural ties that impact on language, cuisine and music. It would be nice to say that all was peaceful in the centuries preceding the existence of the State of Israel, but why lie?
Listening to the breathtakingly beautiful music of Nadim Mohsen does not change my political opinions or make the chasm of difference between Muslims and Jews disappear. But it does make me look at that divide with no small measure of sadness.
