Tag Archives: Israel

Lebanese Lina Makhoul Wins The Voice Israel

Lina Makhoul The Voice Israel

The myth goes that Lina Makhoul is a 19 year old Israeli-Palestinian Christian from Acre.

She participated in the second season of Israel’s version of The Voice. I had blogged about her before (here) when she performed one of Fairuz’s songs and gained the judges’ approval.

The reality, at least according to several readers who messaged me privately regarding the matter, some of whom are are related to her, is that Lina Makhoul is not Palestinian. She is Lebanese from one of South Lebanon’s many Christian towns.

Well, Lina Makhoul – a Lebanese (or at least of Lebanese origins) – has won the Israeli version of The Voice after beating out two other contestants in the finale.

As her last performance of the night, Makhoul sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

She said that she was the victim of racism on the show. I’m not sure where that racism came from – be it from other Lebanese or Arab Israelis who may not have wanted her to participate in such things or from Israelis who are not too keen on her heritage or from the show’s producers and staff. But at least she managed to win.

Either way, now we know at least one person who isn’t included in the current debate in Lebanon, which has obviously taken a backseat now, about the possibility of return of the Lebanese who flew to Israel around the time of the South’s liberation.

Lebanon is not allowed to access The Voice Israel’s Youtube page so I have yet to find a version of her performance of “Hallelujah” but I have found this dating back to 2011:

You can watch Makhoul’s initial audition here in which she also sings a Fairuz song. The Israeli judges refer to Fairuz as the queen and one of them had apparently worked with her before many years earlier:

Update: I’m getting reports that she may be Palestinian as her mother is apparently as such from the town of Al Bokay’a.

Update: check out her winning performance of Hallelujah:

A Blast From The Distant Lebanese Past

We have locusts! At least that’s what news agencies are saying because I haven’t seen any nor do I want to see any.

For the first time in a long time Lebanon is being hit by “el jarad” being brought up our way from the Southern neighbor we love to hate. Cue in the theories of this being a zionist agenda.

And with that, memories of a not-as-distant past popped in my head again. In case you didn’t pick up on it yet, those memories are from 9th and 12th grade when we were taught the exact same history of our country, three years apart.

Locust Lebanon JaradAll we need to recreate a WWI scenario in 2013 is the following:

  1. Outbreaks of typhoid and malaria,
  2. The Turks invading Syria,
  3. Englishmen arriving to our shores,
  4. Locusts eradicating our crops,
  5. A third of the Lebanese population dying.

That’s a little difficult to do seeing as those pesky insects are invading areas which have more buildings than crops and Englishmen are busy drinking tea. Locusts are in for one major disappointment this time around.

But students who have their official exams this year are lucky. For the first time ever, the history they are being taught is, at least partially, witnessing some practical applications in our daily lives. Shame on any of them who doesn’t get 27/30 on their exams.

Fairuz on The Voice Israel

Lina Makhoul is a candidate on the Israeli version of The Voice who sang Fairuz’s song “Les Feuilles Mortes” and got the judges’ approval in return. You can check out her performance here:

Judging by her last name, odds are Lina Makhoul is an Arab Israeli. She could also be of Lebanese origins. Her pronunciation is odd at times but otherwise I think this isn’t bad at all. At least she knows the song exists and went on a limb and sang it to an audience which most probably doesn’t understand a word being sung.

I won’t go into the cliche rhetoric how music transcends war boundaries. I really hope that some BDS activists don’t panic because of this and simply take it as it is: a nice performance of a song we all like on a TV show we can’t even watch on YouTube as its videos are not made available in our country.

I wonder though if Fairuz and the Rahbani family would approve of this. Honestly, I highly doubt.

 

What Was Hezbollah Thinking?

Did you hear? According to a top notch Bulgarian investigative panel, we are now resisting Israel -all the way in Bulgaria.
It doesn’t make sense to you? No worries, it’s not supposed to. It’s only supposed to make sense to Hezbollah and apparently it does.

Long gone are the days when we await Israeli confrontation in order for our men to bravely fight for our land and lose their lives in the process. Long gone are the days when resisting Israel happens from our own land, the South, which pays heavily every single time we resist.

Today, the only question I can ask is: what the hell was Hezbollah thinking?

Whenever my country enters into a war with Israel, I will stand by my people and my land no matter what. Whether they are right or wrong, whether they started it or not – for the entire duration of the war, I will stand by them. When the war is over though, another story unfolds.

I cannot, however, as a Lebanese support the blowing up of the Bulgaria bus incident no matter what possible explanation is provided for the operation .

Where does Hezbollah want to take the country with this action?
Do they really think the country can handle have one of the main parties in the government to be labeled as a terrorist organization by the European Union?
What repercussions will that have on our fragile political balance, on our economy? How does it reflect on the government that Hezbollah did the operation while in power without anyone else in the government knowing about it, similarly to the 2006 war?

7 years have not taught us anything.

Why did Hezbollah want to kill a bunch of Israeli tourists? Is us resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine now contingent upon us killing as many civilians as possible? What’s the fault of a tourist for being the citizen of a country we don’t approve of? How does us killing civilians differ us from all those terrorist groups whose goal in life is to cause as many innocent casualties as possible?

I don’t think Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. I do not agree with many of their practices but when it matters the most, I cannot but be grateful for defending my country.
But our support as Lebanese for reckless practices should not be unconditional especially when the repercussions of such actions do not reflect on Hezbollah alone but on the entire country as well.

Imagine the following scenario: Lebanese friends from different sects and regions decide to hop on a plane to Paris. While touring the city in a bus, the bus blows up and they all die. The Mossad is to blame.
Far-fetched, perhaps. But do we really want to take the war with Israel to people whose only fault is being a national of one side of the conflict?

What the hell was Hezbollah thinking? I, for one, can’t come up with convincing answers because I really can’t think how this is any good for them in any way. And if they can actually reach other countries and act this powerfully, which I can’t really wrap my head around, why don’t they do things that are more “useful?”

What I hope for though is for the party to come up with proof that the entire investigation was a politicized fabrication especially with the very fast condemnations from Israelis and Americans. Unlikely and foolish, perhaps, but I’m hopeful that one of my country’s main parties is not that short-sighted to land themselves as a terrorist group all around the world.

What’s The Legal Limit of Cyber Lebanese-Israeli Contact?

In the age of the internet, we, as a Lebanese, are bound to stumble on Israelis who are just like us – browsing around – and many of them actually reading the blogs we write, the pages we share, possibly even following us on twitter and others befriending us on Facebook.

For example, in the past few months, I’ve gotten over 3000 users from Israel to read this blog. And I cannot not allow it. And frankly, I don’t mind them reading.

I don’t have Israeli Facebook friends – I felt like this had to be put out there to prevent any sensitive folk from starting to hurl treason charges from the get-go.

My question is simple: when does our internet interaction with Israelis become illegal? Is replying to a comment by an Israeli on this blog considered illegal? What if I didn’t know he was Israeli? Am I supposed to track every user’s IP to know their country of origin? Can I not reply to emails by readers who happen to be Israeli and who are telling me that they enjoy what they have to say?

I’m not advocating normalization. In the case of war, I – Elie Fares – would be the first to support whoever wants to defend my country because they are, at the end of the day, my people. But don’t you think that worrying about an email or blog reply to another person who might as well be just like us is taking it too far?

This reminds me of a day when I was searching for an article to read about Lebanon’s oil reserves. One of those articles was on Haaretz, which required you to register in order to be able to read the article. And I couldn’t register because I didn’t know if that would be considered illegal as well. Is that normal? Is that how things are supposed to be?

I recently received an email from an Israeli whose name I won’t mention – and the email was touching. People advised me not to reply. So I didn’t. But I really, really wanted to. Not because I “approve” of the state of Israel. Not because I want to leak out information which I don’t have. Not because I want to feel a rebel in doing so. But because the following email really does warrant a reply as decent as the email itself:

LebanoN israel emailSo here it goes.

Dear SD,

Thank you for your email. I’m sorry I couldn’t reply earlier and I believe this isn’t quite the reply you were expecting. But it’ll have to do for now. I was told not to reply via email. Others told me of a workaround that couldn’t be tracked but that would have been way too fishy. So I figured I’d do it here, out in the open, because I really have nothing to hide. This is, after all, a simple reply to an email.

I sent this Hala’s way. She didn’t have too many kind things to say which is understandable if you ask me because she’s the one who was hurt due to repeated wars not me. So I will never fully understand what she has gone through. But she has said this with which I agree: “We know that human beings do not enjoy killing each others unless they’re sick people, your soldiers follow orders, they fear orders, they are taught to be obedient for their “cause.”

I am not as young as you think I am – voting age in Lebanon is 21 and I’m already beyond that point. And thank you for always reading – even if it’s about the road state in my country.

I’m afraid your wish will never happen in our lifetimes. It’s the way things are. But I know many Lebanese would love to visit our enemy to the South.

Best,

Elie

So what is our legal limit as Lebanese when it comes to internet contact which is becoming frequent lately with Israelis? Where is that line that we don’t really want to cross?