Sounds of the Enemy, Sounds of Home: Music as Public Discourse during Operation Tsuk Eitan (2014)

During Operation Tsuk Eitan in the summer of 2014, popular music made the Israeli headlines in dramatically contrasting ways. Shlomi Shabbat recorded a fast-paced and emotional cover of the Golani Brigade`s anthem `Golani Sheli` (My Golani) following the loss of thirteen Golani soldiers in a single day; the TV news followed popular singers who visited injured soldiers and sang at their hospital bedsides; and meanwhile, a Hebrew-language song released by Hamas, featuring spectacularly violent language, egregious language mistakes and a catchy tune, became a surprise hit, quickly inspiring dozens of parodies uploaded to YouTube by Israelis.

In this paper, I examine, through these examples and others, how sounds associated with musiqa mizrahit, a genre usually considered distant from declarative politics, became co-opted as a space for public discourse in Israel during the 2014 summer war, frequently serving as a conduit for the inclusion of public emotion--sentimentality or black humour--in an otherwise bleak mediascape, and even ironically reconfiguring voices of the enemy as sounds of `home`.