Posted Jan 14, 2023, 10:30 AM
TikTok is generally not a reference in terms of emancipation through culture, and we tend to be sorry to see the younger generations spending so much time there. But this time, the social network seems to be at the origin of a small miracle: to bring Israeli youth and Arab youth closer together. According to the daily “Haaretz”, more and more young Israelis are indeed listening to Arabic music and posting films of themselves, as it should be on TikTok, dancing and singing to this music.
soldiers in uniform
Among these videos, young Israeli women wearing military uniforms, and sometimes their service weapons, sway their hips to the hit “Baby” by Lebanese singer Sara Al Zakaria, who has conquered the local TikTok in recent months. In some videos, older women, in traditional attire and with their hair covered, are even seen joining in the entertainment. A paradox at a time when the new Israeli government, very right, is trying to erase all Arab culture on the territory of Israel: Arab artists have thus been deprogrammed from certain festivals or broadcasts.
Other singers, Libyan or Egyptian, are also having great success via TikTok with young Israelis. For media expert Ronit Kampf, unlike other social networks like Instagram – where the user’s feed is shaped by personal preferences – TikTok is influenced more by geography. Thus, Israelis find themselves exposed to more content from the Middle East, notes the newspaper “Haaretz”.
No politics
This is pop music, pure entertainment, whose instrumental quality is not always there, but which resonates with the concerns of today’s youth: forbidden love, the gap with the next generation… There is never any question of politics and even less of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are thus very far from the traditional Arabic music known to the parents and grandparents of this generation, in particular with the Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum or the Lebanese singer Fayrouz, who celebrated Al-Aqsa and the liberation of Palestine.
As “Haaretz” notes, Lebanese singer Sara Al Zakaria “represents Arabs who do not pose a security threat or take a strong political stance. They are ordinary people coping with everyday life.” We are therefore far from seeing the gap between Jews and Arabs closing, but it may already be a start.
