Slingshot Hiphop: The Palestinian Lyrical Front
June 24, 2005
Last night, a group of us ended up at the Bethlehem Peace Center to hear DAM perform, a Palestinian hiphop rap group (some video I took is here). Apparently, there are a lot of Palestinian rap groups in the states (one of them being Iron Sheik). It was pretty good stuff. I was also told about this trailer for a documentary entitled Slingshot Hiphop. You can view the trailer here. The documentary looks like it will be pretty intense and definitely something worth checking out. The description for it says:
“SlingShot Hip Hop is a documentary film that focuses on the daily life of Palestinian rappers living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel. It aims SlingShot Hip Hop is a documentary film that focuses on the daily life of Palestinian rappers living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel. It aims to spotlight alternative voices of resistance within the Palestinian struggle and explore the role their music plays within their social, political and personal lives.to spotlight alternative voices of resistance within the Palestinian struggle and explore the role their music plays within their social, political and personal lives.
Watch the trailer - it’s powerful. I know that hiphop has been an expression of music that has been used as a way of getting out the word of a variety of political messages - and this is one that I fully support now, especially after having been living here for just a week.
Tomorrow we are off to Hebron. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to write about that experience.
Tags: Hip Hop, Middle East, Palestine, Rap, Slingshot Hiphop
Posted in 
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
June 25th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
“…and this is one that I fully support now, especially after having been living here for just a week.”
Adam, I think it’s good that you’re seeing this conflict firsthand, and I think that you’re going to be able to get a perspective on Israel-Palestine than very few Americans are able to have. But I wonder if you’ve already made up your mind which side is right and which side is wrong in this conflict, and I wonder if that picking sides “after having been living here for just a week” is blinding you to seeing some things that you should be seeings and saying some things that you should be saying.
For example, take this story from this week: a 21 year-old Palestinian woman was invited by Israel to receive treatment in an Israeli hospital for burns that she had received in a kitchen accident. And yet, when she was crossing through the checkpoint in Israel, she was found to be wearing over 20 pounds of explosives–which she intended to detonate INSIDE the hospital.
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“A would-be female suicide bomber who planned to blow up at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on Monday, the same hospital where she received treatment for burns this past year, was caught at the Erez crossing wearing explosives stitched to her underwear. She said she wanted to kill up to 40 or 50 people, including as many youngsters as possible.
Security forces were alerted when the biometric screener located at the terminal crossing revealed that Wafa Samir Ibrahim Bas, a 21-year-old student at Al-Quds Open University, and resident of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, was wearing explosives.”
Link: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1119234009872&apage=1
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You can see pictures and video of her at the checkpoint at this site:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=16369_The_Moment_of_Realization&only
The pictures show her anguish because she can’t get her bombs to work at the checkpoint like she wanted to. The video shows her at the checkpoint being discovered with the explosives, and it later shows the explosives being detonated by an Israeli bomb squad. Imagine if that had gone off in a hospital? With children?
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Who would have suspected that a young woman like her–a college student coming over to receive treatment for her burns–would have been a suicide bomber? Yet, she never would have been discovered–and people would have died–if not for that cursed wall, and if not for those checkpoints, and if not for the fact that Israelis screen carefully and closely–sometimes to the point of harrassment–everyone who crosses into their country. But can you blame them? How else do you prevent things like this from happening? Is this kind of violence against innocents ever justified, wall or no wall?
Maybe the wall isn’t just to grab Palestinian land. Maybe the Israelis don’t harrass Palestianians just out of hatred and racism. Maybe there are good reasons for the things that they do, the walls that they build, and the security measures that are in place. What if these reasons have as much truth and validity to them and to the reality as the idea that Israel is just trying to steal land, harrass Muslims, and oppress innocent victims?
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My point: I’m not saying Israel is completely right, or that they don’t commit wrongs against the Palestanians. That most definitely do. But this is a two-way road, and not all of the good people and good arguments are on one side. What does it mean when you say you “fully support” a cause that has people within it who engage in terrorism against innocents? How can you be for peace and justice and compassion for the Palestianians–which is certainly a worthy cause–without in the SAME sentence also condeming the violence that the Palestinians terrorist groups commit against the Israelis?
Again, I think what you’re doing is worthy. And I think the abuses that you’re pointing out are worth mentioning, and they should be called out. But if you have decided to “fully support” a cause that that engaged in this kind of behavior, then it seems that your words about compassions, peace, and understanding ring kind of hollow.
Just how I see it. Peace.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Jeff,
I would like to say i agree with you on this subject and you have alot of valad points. I can’t wait to hear what Adams reply will be to this.
Great post!!
June 27th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
Jeff, thank you for taking the time to leave your comment. Let me quickly see if I can address some of your questions/thoughts.
To some degree, yes, Jeff, I had already been pretty persuaded about what I was going to think about all of this before I came. I am one who believes that the Gospel is about liberation (in a variety of ways) but one of the ways that it manifests itself is through the liberation of oppressed humanity - and I believe the Palestinians are being oppressed.
Jeff, you write the following: “How can you be for peace and justice and compassion for the Palestianians–which is certainly a worthy cause–without in the SAME sentence also condeming the violence that the Palestinians terrorist groups commit against the Israelis?” This is ridiculous - how can I be for Palestinians while there are some Palestinian terrorist groups? I’m confused. If I was Irish, would there be a problem with me, because there are Irish terrorist groups? If I was American, is there something wrong with me because there are some bad Americans?
The Palestinians who I’ve been meeting have a serious problem with Palestinian suicide bombers - they know that is not helping the cause to any degree whatsoever. To lump Palestinian terrorist groups with all Palestinians…that’s not fair.
I’m sorry, but I do fully support a cause that sides with the oppressed…a cause that sides with justice and peace and a desire for all to be treated with respect.
June 27th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
I wonder though what life is like for Israelis. Not the government and not the military, but the everyday citizens. I wonder if they are oppressed as well (either by their own government or other forces) or if they live in fear or if they negotiate the same hardships as the Palestinians in their lives.
June 27th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
Adam, I’m sorry you thought my question was ridiculous. I tried to be as articulate as I could and ask what was an honest question as clearly as I could. I think you either misunderstood it or somehow misrepresented it.
My question wasn’t, “how can I be for Palestinians while there are some Palestinian terrorist groups?” as you rephrased it. That avoids the central issue which I was trying to raise. My question was, “How can you be for peace and justice and compassion for the Palestianians…without in the SAME sentence also condeming the violence that the Palestinians terrorist groups commit against the Israelis?”
To put it another way: how can you say that you’re for peace and justice and compassion when you’re only condemning SOME of the violence and not all of it? If you’re REALLY for peace, then you’ll equally critique the evil being done on both sides and try to see where both sides are coming from, because in reality, horrible wrongs are being committed on both sides of this struggle (as shown by the links from my last comment). The main critique being leveled at you is not, “How can you support the Palestianians when they have terrorists among them?”. It is: how can you say that you’re for peace when you’re not fighting against the violence committed against the Israelis by the Palestianians just as hard as you are fighting against the violence committed against the Palestianians by the Israelis?
It seems to me that a person really interested in “peace” would have to be doing both, and that would require that you have empathy for both sides. As of yet, I haven’t seen any empathy or understand of the Jewish side: they seem to be land-grabbing, tree killing, children hating, old men harrassing, racist, violent, monsters with M-16s who needlessly oppress innocents just for the hell of it. They’re like some bad Nazi characters out of some movie: everything they do, to read your accounts, seems to be rooted in motives that cast them in the most negative possible light. So, the wall, the checkpoints, the patrols–they are done for evil reasons and for evil motivations. But the violence committed against them by suicide bombers is responded to with a question, “Well, what would you do if you were a Palestianian?” Palestianian acts of violence are given the benefit of the doubt–a chance for some sort of understanding and sympathy–even if you don’t ultimately support that violence. Why does it not go the other way around? I think one could look at the 18 year old Israeli soldiers–boys, really, who have lived their whole lives with the threat of suicide bombs and with the reality that thousands of Muslim schools are training a generation of young people to hate Jews–and have some empathy and understanding of why they act the way they do, even if you can’t fully support it in the end.
I’m not saying that you’re supporting terrorists or suicide bombers or anything like that. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem that you’re really for peace. Instead, it seems that you’re for the Palestianians. I don’t think you can fully be for peace AND the Palestianians without fighting against, pointing out, and condemning Palestianian acts of violence just as strongly as you condemn the evils of Israel. It may be hard to condemn those acts because then it would become easier to understand why Israel does at least some of what it does, isn’t completely evil, and is not populated by Muslim and Christian hating monsters–and I’m not sure you’re willing to go there, for whatever reason. It’s easier for it to be black and white. I just think it’s probably gray.
June 27th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
Just a note: I’m not trying to slam you or anything, Adam. I don’t know you, but I have no doubt you’re sincere and honest and genuine in what you’re doing over there. I’m asking hard questions–but my intention is that they’re constructive questions with good intentions.
I respect the fact that you left your comfort zone (and a girl, apparently) to go over there and see things first-hand. Most people don’t have the courage to do that. You do, and it is something to be admired.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:22 am
Jeff, I do appreciate your comments…I did kind of misrepresent your question, and I apologize for that. But, I don’t think that I have ever “supported” Palestinian violence here on this blog. In the recent post, I did say that I did not condone suicide bombers, but I wonder what it would be like for them…that’s all.
Palestinians here are against these types of violence…they are not supportive of these types of ways of dealing with the conflict…
However, I still believe that people hear more about the Palestinian acts of violence in our Western media, than they do hear about acts of violence by the Israeli government or by settlers, etc. I feel like it is important for those things to be reported, and that is something that I’m doing a lot with this blog this summer.