Dec 14th 2000
THERE is no escaping the intifada this Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Arab popular culture is carrying the 11-week-old Palestinian uprising far from the scarred streets of Gaza. While pop songs and poetry mourn its martyrs, salesmen exploit the drama to push their wares, and mouse-pad warriors raid enemy camps on the World Wide Web.
Fruit vendors in Cairo have named a strong-tasting new variety of date—the traditional food for breaking the daily fast—the Intifada. Beirut rug merchants are flogging Star-of-David doormats. Their proud owners will be able to stomp on the enemy symbol when they feel the urge. And buyers of traditional Ramadan lanterns may now choose Chinese-made models shaped like the Dome of the Rock. Push a switch and the gadget emits a few soulful bars from the classic song of Fairouz, a Lebanese diva, lamenting Israel’s capture of Jerusalem in 1967.
The singing lanterns compete with a gush of new releases on the same theme. These range from “Ya Quds” (O Jerusalem), sung by an Iraqi heart-throb, Kazem al-Saher, to “Ala Bab al Quds” (At the Doors of Jerusalem), crooned by Egypt’s Hani Shaker, to a hit single by two Egyptian starlets who berate Arabs for failing to match words of support for the intifada with deeds. To underline the message, the proceeds of their song are being donated to the Palestine Red Crescent, and its accompanying video features varied Israeli acts of nastiness.
Such images have grown increasingly familiar. A favourite is the painfully graphic sequence, captured by a French cameraman in Gaza during the first days of the intifada, of the death of 12-year-old Muhammad Dura under a hail of Israeli gunfire. His tragedy graces everything from billboards in Damascus, where an advertising agency displays its solidarity, to the cover of a hastily assembled album of Lebanese “resistance” songs titled “The Scream of a Stone”.
It also forms the subject of a singing offensive by a medley of 25 Egyptian stars, with the chorus, “Even if millions of us die, Jerusalem will again be ours.” Less bombastic versifiers have taken up the theme, notably Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinians’ revered poet laureate, whose poem carries echoes of Goethe: “Muhammad nestles by his father’s breast, a bird afraid of the infernal sky. Father protect me from the upward flight! My wing is weak...the light is black.”
Words of sympathy have not satisfied some armchair intifadists. In a new twist to the conflict, computer hackers have been waging war directly. Since the outbreak of the intifada, over 100 Middle Eastern websites have been defaced or knocked out of action by spamming—being jammed with thousands of hostile messages. So far the score is fairly even.
Israeli hackers managed to take over the Hizbullah website, planting an Israeli flag on the Lebanese guerrilla group’s home page. Then the Lebanese army found its Internet pages were Israeli-occupied territory. Pro-Palestinian cyber-warriors have successfully attacked sites such as those of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and central bank. In the biggest victory to date, a hacker penetrated the website of AIPAC, Israel’s powerful lobby in America. He extracted credit-card information on 700 donors and published their financial details on the web. An Israeli site devoted to “soldiers of the Internet” now posts a list of Arab “sites to kill”. In response, Palestinian hackers are distributing a range of viruses and other Internet weaponry.
THERE is no escaping the intifada this Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Arab popular culture is carrying the 11-week-old Palestinian uprising far from the scarred streets of Gaza. While pop songs and poetry mourn its martyrs, salesmen exploit the drama to push their wares, and mouse-pad warriors raid enemy camps on the World Wide Web.
Fruit vendors in Cairo have named a strong-tasting new variety of date—the traditional food for breaking the daily fast—the Intifada. Beirut rug merchants are flogging Star-of-David doormats. Their proud owners will be able to stomp on the enemy symbol when they feel the urge. And buyers of traditional Ramadan lanterns may now choose Chinese-made models shaped like the Dome of the Rock. Push a switch and the gadget emits a few soulful bars from the classic song of Fairouz, a Lebanese diva, lamenting Israel’s capture of Jerusalem in 1967.
The singing lanterns compete with a gush of new releases on the same theme. These range from “Ya Quds” (O Jerusalem), sung by an Iraqi heart-throb, Kazem al-Saher, to “Ala Bab al Quds” (At the Doors of Jerusalem), crooned by Egypt’s Hani Shaker, to a hit single by two Egyptian starlets who berate Arabs for failing to match words of support for the intifada with deeds. To underline the message, the proceeds of their song are being donated to the Palestine Red Crescent, and its accompanying video features varied Israeli acts of nastiness.
Such images have grown increasingly familiar. A favourite is the painfully graphic sequence, captured by a French cameraman in Gaza during the first days of the intifada, of the death of 12-year-old Muhammad Dura under a hail of Israeli gunfire. His tragedy graces everything from billboards in Damascus, where an advertising agency displays its solidarity, to the cover of a hastily assembled album of Lebanese “resistance” songs titled “The Scream of a Stone”.
It also forms the subject of a singing offensive by a medley of 25 Egyptian stars, with the chorus, “Even if millions of us die, Jerusalem will again be ours.” Less bombastic versifiers have taken up the theme, notably Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinians’ revered poet laureate, whose poem carries echoes of Goethe: “Muhammad nestles by his father’s breast, a bird afraid of the infernal sky. Father protect me from the upward flight! My wing is weak...the light is black.”
Words of sympathy have not satisfied some armchair intifadists. In a new twist to the conflict, computer hackers have been waging war directly. Since the outbreak of the intifada, over 100 Middle Eastern websites have been defaced or knocked out of action by spamming—being jammed with thousands of hostile messages. So far the score is fairly even.
Israeli hackers managed to take over the Hizbullah website, planting an Israeli flag on the Lebanese guerrilla group’s home page. Then the Lebanese army found its Internet pages were Israeli-occupied territory. Pro-Palestinian cyber-warriors have successfully attacked sites such as those of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and central bank. In the biggest victory to date, a hacker penetrated the website of AIPAC, Israel’s powerful lobby in America. He extracted credit-card information on 700 donors and published their financial details on the web. An Israeli site devoted to “soldiers of the Internet” now posts a list of Arab “sites to kill”. In response, Palestinian hackers are distributing a range of viruses and other Internet weaponry.
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