Salaam, it’s me, the elephant in the room. My name is Tamer Nafar and I’m an artist, a Palestinian Arab, I was born and raised in Lod, an Israeli citizen. When I work on a new song, the first step is the draft, it’s called a demo. We record ideas and then return home for self-reflection and decide where the song is going. While watching the demonstrations against the judicial coup from afar, the name “demo-cracy” came to mind. You definitely scored a win – Bibi folded. But that’s not the end of the matter, it was nothing more than the demo. The question is how and to where it will develop.
Israel is always stuck at the intersection between two words that contradict each other, democratic and Jewish, a paradox that occasionally explodes and reaches a junction where you either choose democratic all the way or Jewish all the way, and then the center comes and either flees from the junction or makes a U-turn. This time the collision is at full volume. I wonder how many decibels it will reach the next time.
It is a kind of popular struggle, but not all the way. The Palestinians hold popular demonstrations, the kind that sometimes end with deaths. The most powerful organizations in the economy don’t mobilize to protect us or give us days off work so we can protest, and in the end even the High Court of Justice, the symbol of your democracy, rationalizes the killing.
You think it’s likely that Ben-Gurion International Airport would cancel flights to stop the demolition of a home in Lod?
I pretty much know how I feel about the demonstrations. Every image or post or caption colored my mood, everything led to the same place. At the end of the day, there is no democracy without equality – I even heard that this used to be a regular slogan at demonstrations. So I searched for the equality. Some of the institutions that fought for justice and democracy now are the same ones that fired Arabs because they expressed an opinion or published some post that rubbed the consensus the wrong way. Justice is on our side, but we are not privileged. I won’t say the protesters are blind to justice. I will say that there is color-blindness, blindness to struggles. To refuse to go into the army because of the legislation and the next day to mobilize on behalf of the same High Court that robs us of our land is pretty selective. It’s to decide when we are democratic and when we are Jewish.
So mazal tov on the demo. Here are a few ideas on how to gird your courage and follow through to the end. No matter what you decide, whether it’s a Jewish solo song or a duet with Palestinians, in any event what’s missing in the demo you made is harmony. The harmony of struggles.
I never believed in the word coexistence as a work plan. There can only be coexistence as a result of the process of co-resistance. I do want to see the pilots refuse to bomb a neighborhood in Gaza City, and take part in a march against the Judaization of East Jerusalem. I do want to see teachers marching for egalitarian education, for Blacks, Mizrahim, LGBTQ people and even for recognition of the Nakba. But if it’s only for equality among Jews, then understand that this is Jewish supremacy which subconsciously believes in everything Itamar Ben-Gvir believes in; the only difference is that he’s more vocal.
Ask yourselves, what is it that bothers you: that he thinks the way he does, or that he says what everyone thinks? It’s food for thought, don’t answer right away, as my therapist says. Sleep on it, talk it over with yourself with the utmost courage and honesty, don’t repress it because it will grow from a molehill into a volcano, from 62 Knesset members to all 120 of them “Be optimistic, change is no picnic,” the psychologist said. I see a glimmer of light in a small part of the Jewish protesters. I said small because it is small and maybe because I have number blindness.
In one of the recording sessions of DAM, the hip-hop group I founded and lead, the producer Itamar Ziegler and I talked about the demonstrations; we all understand why the Palestinians do not feel that they’re part of it. Ziegler went around there with a group protesting against the occupation and for equality for everyone from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and he says, “If the reason that caused everyone to come is the reform, then I’m entering through that door but I’m bringing into the demonstration and the conversation the occupation and the Nakba and the prices that the Palestinians pay every day, even today.”
Israeli Arab rapper Tamer NafarCredit: Moti Milrod
There is a song by Leonard Cohen called “You Want It Darker.” I want to quote the verse that Cohen actually didn’t write, intentionally or because he didn’t have the time to write, but it’s the verse that I want to hear: ”You want it brighter, let’s light the flame.”