Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Remixed In New Video

By Yanir Dekel

Over the past few years, Israeli journalist Noy Alooshe has become well known for turning heavy current affairs issues into ringtones. So it’s no surprise that he’s transformed a recent interview of Benjamin Netanyahu into a major club hit that has been exploding in Israel and now, again, is making headlines internationally.

Alooshe’s rise to fame as a jack of all trades started back in 2006 when he formed “Hovevey Zion” with his high school friend, DJ and Producer Dor Dekel and released a song called “I Want Girls” (“Rotze Banot”), which later became one of the biggest hits of 2007. The duo worked together for a few more years, producing and remixing songs for other Israeli artists, as well as releasing original material of their own.

Earlier this year, Alooshe gained brief international notoriety when he turned one of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s speeches into a song entitled “Zenga Zenga”, which became a hit in the Arab world, especially in Syria – an enemy of Israel – where people didn’t care that the song was made by an Israeli.

A few weeks ago, as thousands of Israelis started demonstrating against the rising cost of living and the growing gap between rich and poor, Hovevey Zion released the ‘demonstration title track’ called ‘Revolution’ (‘Mahapecha’). Now that the demonstrations have become a very significant issue in Israeli society, Alooshe is mixing excerpts from an interview with Netanyahu with images of the demonstrators. In the interview, Netanyahu claimed that unlike its neighboring countries, Israel would not see large scale demonstrations against the government.

“This remix is an attempt to give voice to the idea of the demonstrations,” Alooshe tells AbbaNibi exclusively. “I was just waiting to get something ‘good’ out of Netanyahu. The original interview, with Dana Weiss [major national news reporter], surfaced about a week ago, and I knew I’d do something with it, I just waited for the protest itself and the voices from the street, to create a kind of dialogue between Netanyahu and the protestors.”

Israeli Orchestra to Play Wagner’s Music in Germany

By The Associated Press

Israel’s Chamber Orchestra

AN ISRAELI ORCHESTRA IS SET TO PERFORM a work by Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner, in a taboo-breaking concert in Germany. The Israel Chamber Orchestra’s concert in Wagner’s hometown alongside the annual Bayreuth opera festival on Tuesday will mark the first time an Israeli orchestra has played Wagner in Germany, Nicolaus Richter, the head of Bayreuth city’s cultural affairs department, said Monday.

The orchestra started rehearsing the Wagner piece, the Siegfrid Idyll, only upon their arrival in Germany Sunday due to the sensitivities in Israel. “They didn’t rehearse it at home in order not to create any resistance,” Richter said.

The concert is set to begin with Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikva,” and will also feature music by composers banned by the Third Reich, including Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn. The orchestra will be led by Roberto Paternostro, whose mother survived the Nazi genocide. He is a friend of Katharina Wagner, a great-granddaughter of Wagner and co-director of the Bayreuth festival.

Orchestra Chief Executive Eran Hershkovitz said there is a “great pride and great excitement” ahead of the performance for him and the ensemble’s 34 musicians, many of whom are children of Holocaust survivors.

Elan Steinberg, deputy head of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, condemned the performance as a “disgraceful abandonment of solidarity with those who suffered unspeakable horrors by the purveyors of Wagner’s banner.”

However, the concert won’t be the first Wagner performance by an Israeli orchestra. In 2001, world-renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim angered many Israelis when he played some of Wagner’s music in Israel.

The Bayreuth festival is Germany’s most important festival for classical music. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and many other prominent personalities regularly visit the annual event, which was founded by Wagner himself in 1872.

Israel and West Germany established diplomatic ties in 1965, two decades after the end of World War II. Since then, Germany has become Israel’s second-largest trading partner and has paid some $40 billion in reparations to Holocaust survivors in Israel.

Mogen P.I.?

By Alex Maghen

IT WOULD SEEM THAT THERE’S A BRISK BUSINESS in private investigation within the Hassidic community in the U.S. The New York Times reported on Joe Levin who provides services for everything from high-finance business deals to the far higher-stakes category of quality assurance in prospective fiancés. Many of these Hassidic communities are extremely insular. Safe to say that the more “standard-fare” secular private investigator lurking around the mikvas and minyans would hardly go unnoticed. This is a world in which “plain-clothed” means payos and a long black coat in 90 degree weather. More than that, imagine sending Magnum PI to report back on the “Frum Level” of a potential son-in-law. No, for this kind of thing, the Hassidic community has hired from within.

No question that, within the limits of the law, any person or community has the right to “background-check” itself and its members. But in communities as large, as closed, and as strong-willed as these, the idea of what could easily develop into a shadow religious police force raises parallels with the Mormons of Utah.

Still, considering the uncomfortable percentage of Jewish names so deeply involved in the Banking catastrophe of the past few years, perhaps we should consider gathering donations for a more secular Jewish Self-Policing Fund to sniff out and expose the schvantzes amongst us.