The Idea of Israel Read Online Free Page B

at the very rallies at which they have vented anti-Arab rhetoric. Even the West Bank settlers’ Gush Emunim radio station, Arutz 7 (Channel 7), energetically broadcasts a somewhat Hebraicised version of Arabic music. Despite all these caveats, in the 1990s, music was one of the many means by which Ashkenazi cultural hegemony was challenged.
    Mizrachi music, minus any Arabic language, became a salient feature of the post-Zionist musical revolution that took place in the 1990s. It became a genre by itself – Hebrew lyrics set to Arabic-style music. Today, Israel’s national airline, El Al, offers an audio channel designated ‘Mizrachi music’, a category that also appears in music shops and on radio and TV channels. Back in the 1990s, even Arabic music itself – that is, the music emanating from the Arab world – became popular, whether classics such as Umm Kulthum or the new genre of North African Ra’i .
    The optimistic mood of the 1990s meant that Mizrachi scholars regarded the growing popularity of such music as an indication that Israel was slowly integrating into the Arab world around it. They saw the musicians – especially the early ones who, since they did not have the money or connections to employ established studios, had to produce music on illegal audio cassettes – not only as subversive activists against the law or challengers to hegemonic Western music, but also as harbingers of a new age in Israel. Their cassettes were even compared with those used by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, since cassettes were the medium through which his revolutionary words were spread (other political Islamic movements, too, have relied on cassette tapes).
    Post-Zionist music tended to be more Arabic in style and dotted with lyrics that conveyed some sort of challenge to basic Zionist truths. But in the domain of mainstream music, few of Israel’s pop singers who imitated Western models were willing to risk their relationship with the wider public by being ‘political’. One interesting exception was the pop star Aviv Geffen, at least until 2000, when he, like many others, winced under the ideological pressue. His lyrics included sharp, though simplistic, criticisms of Israeli militarism, and he himself refused to serve in the army. It was, however, his Michael Jacksonesque performance and histrionics, rather than his message, that made him popular. Nevertheless, his continuing appeal did signify an increased local tolerance for nonconformist lyrics that could perhaps have heralded a wider acceptance of less nationalistic ideas among the youth. Alas, it failed to do so. 5
    A New Written Word?
    While music appealed to all walks of life, in the 1990s the more educated élite were exposed as never before to the possibility of narrating the idea of Israel through literature and poetry in ways that could be confrontational and, occasionally, even subversive.
    It is somewhat difficult to ascertain whether there really was a post-Zionist literature. Reading was an important pastime in Israelisociety, which was always endowed with excellent writers in the Hebrew language. When it came to post-Zionist ideas, there were clear differences between fiction and poetry in Israel. Very few prose writers crossed the consensual lines or were willing even to acknowledge that they worked within the constraints of an ideological orientation imposed by Zionism. Poets, on the other hand, found it easier to experiment with alternative viewpoints. The First Lebanon War of 1982 led some highly regarded poets to write pacifist or at least anti-war poetry, and the tendency to decry the evils of the Israeli occupation through the medium of poetry continued throughout the First Intifada. These poems were never collected in an accessible form; in any case, poetry was and is not widely read in Israel. One trend worth noting, however, was the growing body of Hebrew translations of Iraqi, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian poetry, a trend that had