Jerusalem has long been the focal point of the still unsolved problem of Palestine. The first wave of Arabic language resistance music that it is, at all, relevant, to this conversation, can retrace back to the 1936 revolt in Palestine against the British. The poems of popular poets like Nuh-Habrahim, who is a disciple of Azad-in-L-Khassam, were turned into songs that survived to this very day.
Throughout the mid-20th century, as the Palestinian cause took on an increasingly pan-Arab character, songs that awakened a martial spirit were frequently sung on behalf of Palestinians, rather than by the Palestinians themselves. This was particularly true in the 1960s and the early 1960s, and at that stage there was no voice more popular in the Arab world than that of Feruz, which was maybe the most popular Arabic language artist ever to live.
The first wave of Arabic language resistance music that it is, at all, is the most popular Arabic language resistance music. Her song, the title of which translates into something like the Uncheath Sword, features the words, I will never forget you, Palestine. The words of Feruz, and it's important to mention here for a moment, they Feruz was Lebanese.
The words of Feruz were powerful, but they also did not challenge the status quo in the Arab states of the time, and so her words were broadcast by radio all over the Arab world. A much critter and less publicly accepted voice of the time was that of the blind Egyptian artist, Sheikh Imam Reza. The both Imam Reza and Feruz, the focal point of their work, are the Palestinians in exile who long to return.
In the song, Yafal Astonia, O Palestinians, Sheikh Imam Reza says, quote, O Palestinians, exile has lasted too long, that the desert is moaning from the refugees and victims, and the land remains nostalgic for its peasants who watered it. Revolution is the goal, and victory shall be your first step. Regarding that song, historian Joseph Masad writes, quote, he insisted on meeting the Sheikh, who sang it for him, end quote.
The poem was turned into a song by the Lebanese artist Ahmed Qabour, and it has turned into what is probably the most popular Palestinian resistance song ever made. The poem was turned into what is probably the most popular Palestinian resistance song ever made. The lyrics of this song are powerful, and they are broad enough that Palestinians inside Gaza, the West Bank, inside 1948, and in the diaspora could all relate to its words.
The artist says, quote, quote, I carried my blood in my hands, and I did not make the headlines, and yet I keep the grass green over the graves of my ancestors. In the late 1960s, as the PLO gained official recognition within the Arab world as the representatives of the Palestinian people, they set up a radio station on Lebanon and a few other countries called Sulta Thaura, the sound of revolution.
Armed with its own channel, the PLO began producing dozens of revolutionary songs, and it's probably as a result of that radio station that nearly every Palestinian will know the band Al-Hashirin. And honestly, there was no way that I could do an episode about resistance music and resistance ink without mentioning Al-Hashirin, who in 1977 became famous for taking Palestinian folk and resistance poems and songs, and putting a contemporary spin on those folk songs and poems.
My favorite song of Al-Hashirin is a rendition of a poem written by Nuh-Habrahim, who I mentioned earlier, the disciple of Azadil Qassam. And it tells a story of three men who were executed by the British for their participation in the 1929 riots known as the Burak uprising.
And this will teach you all howcusion will insgesamt advise you to have such emotional workout in Aleppo for many years wa jazee ala ya shb i jazee Bandhu tallbassam yurab ang uhuhu Sijimi atatu tannali sayazim Han的話 t�� bıصل Mah that meant alexazim Sayaz baseball Ya shb i zazim Bandhu jazim off The chorus says, from acre prison emerged a funeral. Muhammad jameshum and fu'adah jazi, that is two out of the three, the third being atazir.
Asmr my people avenge against the high commissioner and his whole gang, end quote. Their rendition of these songs were so impactful that I frequently find myself in debates with Palestinians as I try to explain to them that the ashiqin version of the song is not in fact the original. With all of that in mind, Hezbollah's own production shouldn't be thought of then as something distinct from the broader tradition of resistance music.
Rather it was more of an evolution within an industry that was already in full swing. One of the things that made Hezbollah's resistance music different was that it was being pumped through its own satellite network. I mean sure the Palestinians had their own radio network back in the 60s and 70s. But that was a network whose continued existence was contingent upon the approval of the states in which it was operating.
Al Manar was operating on home turf, which made it more like a state enterprise. Another thing that made Hezbollah's contribution to the music industry significant is the quality of the sound. If you look most of al-Ashqin's songs, even today, the version you will hear was originally performed live with varying levels of quality. In many countries in the Arab world, resistance music was enjoyed via cassette tapes that were sometimes basically smuggled.
I mean oftentimes the various regimes of the region didn't look too fondly on the troubles that came with Palestinian aspirations. But Hezbollah's songs were performed in its very own studios, played on its network, and were produced at an album-ready level of quality with corresponding music videos.
Hezbollah's resistance music became an important but definitely still subaltern part of a larger genre of music with varying degrees of mainstream acceptance and state approval around the Arab world. And it really hit its stride right as the Arab states and their acceptance of mainstream resistance music was reaching its lowest point.
By the late 90s through to the early 2000s, a dozen or so mainstream artists in the Arab world, I guess maybe hoping to carry on the spirit of Faerus or something, they began singing songs about the Intifada and Palestinian aspirations. And the most famous song of that time was produced in 1998 and it was called the Hellman Arab, the Arab Dream. And the most famous song of that time was the Hellman Arab Dream. And the most famous song of that time was the Hellman Arab Dream.
It expressed the popular demand for unity and face of oppression. And I have a love-hate relationship with this song. It holds some nostalgic value to me on a personal level but as far as resistance music is concerned, the song is vanilla ice cream served in a paper cup. It has no bite. It is very, very tame and quite dull.
So to make of that what you will, and yet even this super safe call for Arab unity was increasingly unwelcome in the post 9-11 era as pro-Western Arab regimes became much less comfortable with toying with the popular sentiments like pan-Arabism. The song itself was bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's wealthiest royal al-Walid bin Talal. And such a thing today would be impossible.
Today in the era of open normalization with Zionists, this kind of project would just never get mainstream backing like that. And in fact, many of the Arab world's biggest artists live in the United Arab Emirates, a country that has normalized relations with Israel, and a country that in no way would allow those artists to produce these kind of songs about what's happening in Rezze today.
And so Hasbulla's contribution to resistance music and the impact that it has on people's association with resistance itself was timely to say the least. But the story does not end here, quite the opposite in fact. Now, only did the resistance industry continue to evolve. But it continued to do so at both the grassroots level and at the mainstream level.
Now, at the grassroots level, Palestinians all over occupied Palestine began plugging into this long tradition and started to produce songs about their very localized elements of resisting Zionism. The production quality massively improved in the early 2000s. And so far as I can tell, these bangers from that time period became much more focused on the struggles and experiences of specific towns and refugee camps.
The feelings of abandonment and betrayal at the hands of the Arab regimes, at the Palestinian authority, at the Oslo process, I mean, these feelings were fresh and ripe, and these were angry songs. No town had angry or songs. But as I can come to this issue, along with this pansy sounding to understand the Now, this is by far one of the most recognizable songs from that time period.
And in one line, this unnamed artist says, quote, The voice for the call to prayer calls from above the heavens, Respond to the call and hasten to the fight. The voice is your voice, Jeanine. Death will heal that which is in our chests." End quote. These songs were often produced, written, and recorded by local artists whose names are only known to people that live in the refugee camps where these songs were produced.
And the highly localized self-portrait in these songs meant that many of the references to battles, to streets, to martyrs were so specific that they could only be fully appreciated by the people who were intimately familiar with these places and the events they expressed. But they were familiar enough to all Palestinians that the songs could still be widely enjoyed.
There's one other thing that I figure was not lost on you, the listener, but many of the songs in the second interfaulda carried more overtly Islamic characteristics than their more secular predecessors of the 60s and 70s. The second interfaulda you may recall erupted when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and hundreds of soldiers ascended up to the Al-Aqsa Mesjid.
This Islamic character, we find in these songs, will be relevant later in this episode, but for now I'm just going to leave it alone. Now at the other end of the spectrum, the resistance industry in the early 2000s also found voices that were much closer to what we would call mainstream artists. Voices that were ready to fill the void right as the most mainstream pop artists were withdrawing their participation from contributing to resistance music.
In Palestine and Jordan, an artist like Mace Shelesh was releasing entire albums dedicated to the subject of resistance back in 2005. At that time, celebrating Israel's withdrawal from settlements in the Gaza Strip, she released this. Now the song is called Gaza on the Day of Victory and in the opening line she says, leave you oppressor and never return, this is Gaza the Great. It forges rifles from its blood and you will only hear their blasts.
The song commemorates the way that Palestinians felt about the withdrawal. Namely, they felt that it was something that Israel was forced to do and because the resistance had forced them to do it. Now, I think most people my age in Jordan or in Palestine would recognize the work of Mace Shelesh or they would at the very least recognize her voice even if they don't know her name. I've heard anecdotally that her concerts in Amman will easily gather 10 to 15,000 people.
By far, the biggest name in the resistance music industry whose work stretches my entire life is Julian Potos. Julia Potos burst onto the scene in the 80s with her song When the Malayin or Where are the Millions. In that song, in the chorus, she repeatedly asks, quote, where are the millions? Where are the Arab people? Where is the Arab rage? Where is the Arab blood? Where is the Arab honor?
Now this was and continues to be a very common question among the millions of exasperated Palestinians and their supporters. Later in the song, she says, quote, we are the truth. We are the revolution and they are the companions of the elephant. The generation of truth and the generation of revolution are the birds in the sky who must shower them with stones. End quote.
Now, I mentioned this line because this is a reference to a story in the Quran where an Ethiopian king comes to destroy the Kaaba in Mecca only to be pelted with birds carrying stones who end up decimating his army. What makes this reference particularly interesting is that Julia Botros is a Christian and this is not one of those many stories that are shared across both the Muslim and Christian tradition.
But Julia Botros clearly has no reservations about making references that her predominantly Muslim audience in the Arab world will intimately understand. And that really is her audience, the entire Arab world. I can assure you, you would struggle to find an Arabic speaker who has never heard her songs. And she has been at the heart of resistance music for a very long time.
And so halfway through the 2000s, resistance ink featured local artists, semi mainstream performers like Mace Chalesh and Julia Botros and music that was more directly tied to resistance factions themselves. In the summer of 2006, Hasbullah fought in one its first war with Israel since their withdrawal from southern Lebanon six years earlier and to celebrate their success, they released this. An Arabic The song is called Victory of the Arabs and the chorus reads as follows.
Quote, Victory of the Arabs, a sword of fury. The glory of our message was written. The blood was spilled, a land of sacrifice, upon which was the death of our enemies. End quote. Now, I was an undergrad when the 2006 war broke out and one of the things that I think is often forgotten is that the war took place concurrently with the acceleration of brutal sectarian violence in Iraq. The Hasbulla's messaging through its official statements and through its music was clear.
This was a victory for the Arabs. The song makes no reference to Lebanon in general or to Hasbulla in particular. And in the original music video, there are imagined reenactments of scenes all over the Arab world, very purposefully including a family dressed in the entire of the Sunni Gulf states. Celebrating this massive victory.
Now right around the same time, Julia Buttross, in her capacity as what we can call the main stream or semi-mainstream voice of resistance, performed this in front of thousands of jubilant Lebanese fans. And It pains me how much of this is about to get lost in translation. So let me start off by saying this. If songs were weapons, this would be the equivalent of a nuke. And she opens up by saying, quote, the one who smeared my land with his blood is gone. He left like a lowly coward.
He was certain that if he remained, the stars would be knocked out of his sky. He meets others now, but only in a state of sorrow. He has been defeated. He has been defeated. And Lebanon emerges victorious. End quote. Over 1000 civilians were killed in the Israeli campaign as a result of a military doctrine which became known as the Dahi doctrine, named after the Dahi in neighborhood in southern Beirut, that bore much of the brunt of the aggression.
The war doctrine calls for inflicting the maximum amount of damage upon the civilian population that is perceived to be supporting the resistance factions. And yet despite the Dahi doctrine, despite the losses, the war is celebrated as an enormous victory and the resistance music reflects that. Now I need to tie this all together because there is something very peculiar about that 2006 war. And that is that once again, there was very little combat footage, especially by today's standards.
And though I do recall some footage of burnt out Mark of a tank and I've gone back and reviewed that footage quite recently, arguably the most enduring image from that theater was the site of Kutusha rockets piercing the skies. There is very little footage of the battles that took place and there were numerous battles. And that probably comes down to a few reasons.
I mean, for one thing, perhaps makes sense, that Hasbullah did not have cameraman embedded within its combat units and so that footage never made it to Al-Munar because it didn't exist. But another reason is that, technologically speaking, 2006 was kind of a weird year. It came right before the YouTube and Facebook era, but right at the tail end of the Morpheus and Lyme wire era, those were file sharing platforms in the early 2000s for all the Zoomers who are listening.
I wouldn't have seen a ton of independent coverage or leaked footage because the avenues to get that content out just weren't as fully formed as they are today. Well all of these lessons, the lessons of the Iraq War, the lessons of the Lebanon War, the evolution of resistance ink, all of it would be internalized by the resistance factions in Gaza, forever changing the way they roll out their information wars. And so now we turn our attention to Gaza.