Songs of Arab heroism reverberate in Mideast

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Arab singers are serenading the Palestinian Intifada uprising with songs of heroism that are sweeping the Middle East.

Their videos broadcast on Arab satellite television channels depict the Palestinians battling heavily-armed Israeli soldiers with stones and bullets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as heroes.

Many of the songs are about Mohammed al-Durra, a 12-year-old boy shot dead in his father's arms early in the uprising as they tried to shelter from a Gaza gun battle.

Durra, whose death the Israeli army said it may have caused, has become a symbol of the "al-Aqsa Intifada," or uprising, named for Islam's holiest Jerusalem mosque.

Many of the singers of the new songs are Egyptians, although they hail also from Lebanon, Tunisia and the Gulf states. Their songs play on car radios, at open markets and at shops and cafes along the streets where the fighting takes place.

Egypt's Hani Shaker, one of the Arab world's most popular entertainers, dedicated his latest song "At the Door of Jerusalem" to al-Durra:

"It was the voice of right

"Embodied in a child's cry

"In the bosom of death.

"A father's sigh in a last look

"And a last sound."

The songs aim largely at a youthful audience.

Nearly all of the close to 190 people killed in six weeks of violence have been Palestinians, and Palestinian medical officials say some 30 percent of the dead have been children and teenagers.

The latest youth killed, an 18-year-old boy, was shot during a clash with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Palestinians said this week they hoped to minimize losses by keeping schoolchildren under 16 out of the street battles.

In another song Lebanese pop singer Walid Tawfiq urges Arab nations to win back Palestine, lauding historical heroes like Saladin who ousted the Crusaders from the Holy Land in the 12th century.

"(Al-Durra's) blood flies in the air calling...Saladin.

"Calling on Arabs to help Palestine.

"They (Jews) killed us in Deir Yassin...and Qana," Tawfiq's latest song goes, referring to Israeli massacres of Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon in 1948 and 1996.

Palestinian poet Samih al-Qassim attributes the popularity of the songs in the Arab world to a feeling of solidarity with Palestinians under occupation, and the disappointment of the Arab masses in their own undemocratic regimes.

"It is an Arab national conscience explosion from the (Indian) Ocean to the Gulf because of the accumulation of Israeli oppression and suppression on the Arab nation since the beginnings of the 20th century," Qassim told Reuters.

The songs have become more widely popular than the nationalist melodies of the first 1987-94 Intifada, thanks to an increasing number of Arab satellite channels reporting round-the-clock news on the clashes.

A theme of many songs is a longing for Arab East Jerusalem, home to al-Aqsa on the site Jews revere as the biblical Temple Mount. The Intifada erupted after a visit to the site by leading Israeli hawk Ariel Sharon on September 28.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not internationally recognized, but Palestinians want East Jerusalem for the capital of a future state.

"For the sake of God, life is cheap.

"Either Jerusalem is returned or we die," goes Shaker's song.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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