What changes in
your marriage
when you have kids
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2016
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Traditional Christmas goat is unveiled in Gavle, Sweden, Sunday. — AP
Big birthday, but no candles S
for Sweden's Christmas goat
weden's Christmas Goat - a giant decorative goat
made of straw and wood - is celebrating its 50th
birthday, but revelers are being asked to keep the
candles away. Every Christmas season since 1966, the city
of Gavle in central Sweden builds a giant version of the
straw goat - an ancient Scandinavian Yuletide character
that precedes Santa Claus as a bringer of gifts.
Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar (right) performs on-stage during a festival in the northern Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin. — AFP photos
Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar poses for a picture with two female audience members after a performance.
But it also attracts arsonists and seldom survives the
season without someone trying to burn it down. To
improve its odds this year, the goat set up on Sunday
was equipped with closed-circuit TV. After the Gavle
goat was torched last year, police arrested a drunken
suspect wearing clothes covered in soot and reeking of
lighter fluid. — AP
Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar performs on-stage.
Like hero Tupac, Israeli Arab rapper's music provokes
I
Audience members cheer as Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar performs
on-stage.
Arab-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar poses on-stage for a picture with audience members after performing.
sraeli Arab rapper Tamer Nafar's politically-charged lyrics
have sparked the same kind of controversy that may
have made his hero Tupac Shakur proud. Nafar, from the
pioneering political rap group DAM, has touched a nerve
with songs like "Who's the Terrorist?" skewering what he
and others say is discrimination against Arabs in Israel. He
has become a star among Israel's Arab population and
Palestinians, but Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev, a former
military censor with a combative style, is not a fan. She has
singled him out for criticism, accused him of incitement and
sought to have one of his recent performances cancelled,
helping make him a target of rightwing protesters.
Speaking to AFP in a recent interview, the 37-year-old,
who wears a hoody, baggy pants and simple gold chain, dismissed her remarks, saying: "Regev is nothing but a government mouthpiece spreading racist poison." Speaking after a
concert in the Arab-Israeli city of Sakhnin attended by about
1,000 people, many of them teenagers, he pledged to continue with his strident lyrics matched with infective beats.
Regev accuses Nafar of taking it too far, reportedly saying he
"chooses at every opportunity and before every possible
audience to come out against the idea of the state of Israel
and its existence as the state of the Jewish people." She
charges that some of his lyrics justify "terrorism."
'Country of my ancestors'
Arab Israelis like Nafar are descendants of Palestinians
who remained after Israel was created in 1948, and they currently make up around 18 percent of the country's population. They tend to sympathize with the Palestinian cause
and Nafar refers to himself as Palestinian. Growing up in the
1990s in Lod, a mixed Israeli city southeast of Tel Aviv, Nafar
listened to Tupac, the provocative American hip-hop star
murdered in 1996. Nafar said he saw similarities between
the African-American struggle for equality and the IsraeliArab experience. "The imagery in Shakur's videos was similar to our reality in Lod-how the police were chasing them in
the streets," he said. "I found out we had something in common. I didn't speak English and I used to search for the lyrics
in English, print them and sit in school with a dictionary
translating them." DAM-an acronym for Da Arabian MCs but
which also means "blood" in Hebrew and "lasting" in Arabicperforms songs that are explicitly political.
'Go to Gaza, terrorist!'
In his song "Who's the Terrorist?" Nafar says: "They call
me a terrorist but I live in the country of my ancestors." In
another, he rails against so-called honor killings in Arab
communities. Israeli media said Regev, whose spokesman
did not respond to a request for comment, took particular
objection lyrics saying: "Democracy? Why? It reminds me of
the Nazis. You've raped the Arab soul, and it became pregnant, giving birth to a child called 'terror attack'. And then
you call us terrorists."
The controversy peaked last month when Nafar was to
perform at a government-funded festival in the northern
Israeli port city of Haifa. Regev called on Haifa's mayor to
withdraw his invitation. Despite the pressure, the gig went
ahead, although the atmosphere was charged with
rightwing activists wrapped in Israeli flags blocked by police
from approaching the stage. Nafar said he was "scared" by
dozens of protesters outside. "They were yelling 'terrorist',
'go to Gaza' and 'son of a bitch.'" "It is not normal to go to a
concert surrounded by 15 security guards for my own protection," he added.
"There is Tamer the artist who gets on stage and raps,
challenging rightwingers and fascists, but there is also
Tamer the father and husband who loves his wife and chil-
dren and worries about himself and them, and takes fascist
threats seriously." He says he has Arab and Jewish friends
who helped him through the concert. A spokeswoman for
the Haifa municipality said the event reflected the city's
diverse culture.
'From that ghetto'
Nafar is not the only artist or entertainer to be targeted
by Israel's culture minister in recent months. Regev, who
belongs to what is seen as Israel's most rightwing government ever, has taken on Israel's largely leftwing Jewish cultural elite. They have accused her of seeking to muzzle
them, including by promoting a bill to cut subsidies to cultural institutions deemed not "loyal" to the state. She was
booed on arrival at a recent cultural conference, and hit
back from the podium. "As the famous Chinese philosopher
Sun Tzu once said: 'Cut the bullshit,'" she said. In September,
she walked out of a film award ceremony as Nafar and a
Jewish performer read out a poem by Mahmoud Darwish,
considered the Palestinian national poet.
"Everything I have done came from the reality in the
streets of Lod, from that ghetto," Nafar said of the part of the
city where he grew up. "My job is to document my generation and I am not ashamed of using some Hebrew words in
my songs." He recently finished a film, "Junction 48," which
he co-wrote and starred in under direction by IsraeliAmerican Udi Aloni. It tells the story of an Arab-Israeli rapper, his lover and their feelings of desolation inside Israel.
The film was to have been shown earlier this month at a
youth club in the northern city of Karmiel, but the screening
was cancelled by the local municipality. — AFP