Rabbi Meir Kahane was right: Do you really expect the Arabs to sing a national anthem about Jewish yearnings?
Rabbi Meir Kahane used to warn that one day the Arabs would rise up and refuse to sing Israel's national anthem since they have no use for the yearning of a Jewish soul. That day has already come. So instead of facing up to that reality, our Leftists are trying to change it.The Leftist 'Jewish' Daily Forward commissioned Neshama Carlebach (who reads this blog, if I'm not mistaken, and in whom I am deeply disappointed) to make up a politically correct version of HaTikva, our national anthem. Basically, the politically correct version removes all Jewish content except for the word Zion at the end (and the fact that Jerusalem is not referred to as al-Quds at the end). It's an Israeli anthem - not a Jewish one.
For those who don't want to hear a woman singing even on tape, you can just watch the English subtitles - the changes are highlighted and obvious.
Let's go to the videotape.
Are we a Jewish country or are we a 'country of all its citizens'? If this anthem is adopted, we take a symbolic step toward the latter.
What could go wrong?
Martin Sherman adds:
The current focus of [post-Zionist] attack is the wording of the national anthem, “Hatikva,” which Haaretz tells us, “ignore[s] the existence of an Arab minority in the State of Israel – a minority for whom this land is also their land.”Unfortunately, Sherman has it right.
According to the paper, “No Arab citizen who had any self-respect, political awareness or national consciousness could sing these words without committing the sins of hypocrisy and falsehood.”
Elsewhere, we are told why this is so: “Independence Day is not a holiday for Israeli Arabs. Sixty-four years ago, they lost their land and their national honor.”
I am trying to get my head around this. Is one of the nation’s major newspapers really calling on the public not only to understand the sorrow the Arab minority feels that the genocidal attempt of its ethnic-kinfolk to obliterate the Jewish population failed, but to take far-reaching steps to accommodate this sadness?
Really?
How are we to assuage their melancholy at having “lost their land and national honor” in their failed Judeocidal effort? Are Jews really expected to forgo the victory and to suppress the expression of their national identity to alleviate the discomfort of the defeated? One cannot but wonder what the consequences would have been had the fortunes of war been reversed? And how are we to restore their “national honor” (much less their ‘land”) – or to compensate them for their loss – without de-Judaizing Israel and deconstructing the Zionist ethos.
But that is what the post-Zionists are really aiming at. However, to achieve this goal of dismantling the status of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, they first have to achieve an intermediate goal: to decouple Israel from its Jewishness, to denude, and then break, the bond of kinship between the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
Hence the assault on the Jewish emblems – first the anthem, next the flag, then the Law of Return. After all, why should the Jewish Diaspora have unfettered access to the country and not the Palestinian diaspora?
This is a question the post-Zionists – and Haaretz – will doubtless be raising soon in editorials.
Labels: Hatikva, Israel is a Jewish state, Zionism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:04 PM
3 Comments:
I saw an early draft of the new inclusive anthem:
Oh Zionist Entity
Land of Plurality
Of thee I sing
Land of the Olive Tree
And Uri Avnery
For every LGBT
Let freedom ring
In every glade and bower
Land that speaks truth to power
Thee I extol
Restored** felafel balls
O grand Al-Buraq wall
Whenever Gideon Levy calls
Exult, my soul
**Restored to their true Arab inventors--justice for felafel!
Maybe I'm wrong, but all I hear and see with this is an artist (and a very talented one) personalizing Hatikva. I do not see any leftist agenda here at all. Am I missing something? Changing "Eretz Tzion" at one point to "Eretz Avosainu" could even be considered more Jewish since she is clearly singing about Jews, Israel, and the inextricable connection between them. She even uses "Eretz Tzion" at the end. Neshama, whom I do not know, is clearly a VERY connected Jewess and deeply in love with Eretz Yisrael and her people. Shlomo was an incredible neshama, and he inspired, and continues to inspire, generations. But he did fall prey to some of the pitfalls of being a yachid in an insane world and suffered a touch of bitterness at not being embraced by the mainstream yeshiva world during his too short lifetime. I can't imagine that that, and her very special father's wonderlust, did not affect her. Shlomo, whom I did know, saw the neshama of every Jew and I hope I'm not being too presumptuous in saying that that was probably the reason why he named his beautiful, little, baby girl Neshama. I think her rendition of Hatikva is stirring, soulful, and masterfully performed.
Well this new version is fine by me.
Im no leftist and vote for Lieberman.
Dont forget hat besides Arabs there are lots of otehr minorities here, and most important we should consider the feeling of the minorities that actually Join the army, like the Druze or the Christians.
Personally I would have a more militaristic anthem, something that will make Israelis proud and others scared.
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