Can music heal wounds of war? Can music build bridges above oceans of bad blood, and bring together people from so-called enemy states? Three Israeli Jewish musicians whose work resonates across the Middle East prove that it is possible.
“During my musical career, I performed in places which Israeli passport holders cannot enter. I usually received a diplomatic visa, as ministers themselves invited me to perform,” says Ishtar (born Eti Zach), who is considered one of the most prominent Israeli singers worldwide. Ishtar first found fame in the mid-1990s while leading the group Alabina together with the gypsy music band Los Niños de Sara. The unusual combination of her Arabic singing and the Spanish flamenco rhythm lifted them beyond the world music category all the way to the hall of fame of international pop.
One place in which she yet to perform is Iran, where Ishtar has a devoted fanbase.
“When I lived in Paris, my Iranian dentist came back from a visit to Tehran with videos of Iranians dancing to my music. I was so surprised. They knew that I am Jewish,” she adds. “Now I am getting messages from Iranians who are begging for help [due to the violent oppression of protesters by the Iranian regime], and it tears my heart apart. All I can do is to post about it on social media and dedicate songs,” Ishtar sighs.
Tair Haim sings in Yemeni dialect in Hebrew and Arabic. About a decade ago, she founded, with her sisters Liron and Tagel, the band A-WA, which blended Yemeni traditional music with upbeat pop. They became a sensation in Israel and the broader Arab world; the usually hostile Qatari state-run broadcaster Al Jazeera published interviews with the Haim sisters, and at A-WA’s sold-out concerts in Europe, it was possible to find Palestinian and Yemenite students among the European hipsters. “People used to say that A-WA will bring peace,” she smiles.
Harmonic voice: Tair Haim (Credit: Yoni Cholev)[Missing Credit]
In the last war, while the Houthis bombarded Israel daily with ballistic missiles from Yemen, Haim was pleasantly surprised to receive supportive messages from her Yemeni fans. “They wrote to me saying that they are suffering from the Houthis too,” she says.
“During the war I felt like the world needs a feminine frequency, a different leadership. I thought – to which sisters shall I call first?” – and in Haim’s recently released solo album Maktub, she calls in the song Ya Banat to “sisters of Sana’a” to bring peace together. The single was released while the war was ongoing, and this time, alongside many positive comments in Arabic, it is possible to find also many negative reactions from Houthis’ supporters. Haim shrugs. “It brought traffic. The most important thing is that people aren’t indifferent to my music.”
May Weizman has become a phenomenon among Arab-Israelis. As a child, she fell in love with classical Arabic music and Arab pop, and taught herself to sing it with perfect pronunciation. A few years ago, a casual TikTok cover in Arabic went viral. Soon after, she became a welcome artist at events for Arab Israelis from all walks of life: from Christians and Druze to the strictest Muslims.
May Weizman[Missing Credit]
May Weizman[Missing Credit]
“People couldn’t believe I wasn’t a native speaker,” Weizman says. “So I taught myself to speak Arabic too.”
Even when Weizman enlisted in the IDF, the bookings didn’t dry up, despite that in her videos she appeared in IDF uniform while singing in Arabic. Very quickly these videos were discovered by the former IDF spokesperson in Arabic, Avichay Adraee, who published Weizman’s clips. These reached millions in the Arab world. “We received mixed reactions: some, like me, primarily appreciate the art and the music, while others fell into politics. But love wins in views and bookings.”
Even the October 7 attacks and the war on Hamas in Gaza didn’t hinder Weizman’s success. “October 7 was traumatic and shocking but two days later I was booked for a wedding, and the bride called to check whether I was still coming. They’d booked me a year in advance, so I came. I won’t lie – at first the atmosphere was tense. The music helped loosen it. It was awkward for all of us. By the end of the night, people came up to me and said they were hurting too, because of what happened.”
Ishtar describes October 7 as “an earthquake to my soul”. Impacted also by the death of her father around the same time, she felt “drained”. She recollects: “I didn’t want to sing in Arabic; I didn’t want to sing at all. I wanted to mourn and didn’t listen to any music for two months.” Ishtar first came back to music with her Hebrew-French song L’enfant, dedicated to Nova music festival victims.
Ishtar and Haim, who are used to performing abroad extensively, found themselves blacklisted because of their country of origin. “People abroad with whom I used to work stopped supporting me and other Israeli artists,” Haim claims. “We created wonderful things together; you were profiting from this cooperation – and suddenly you forget all that? I try to have a positive perspective, and I tell myself that though this agent deleted me and other Israelis from their websites, it is for better, it is for our protection. In the end, the trend of hating Israel will be over.”
Ishtar had four international concerts that were cancelled for similar reasons shortly after October 7. “I moved back from France to Israel in 2018. I found out that these concerts were cancelled only because they had to book my flight tickets from Israel. They all knew that I am an Israeli, but up until then they preferred to turn a blind eye. This is hypocrisy. I treated it as a divine protection – I’m glad I didn’t make evil antisemites happy,” Ishtar asserts.
This year Alabina mark 30 years since their first album, and the band will soon open their world tour across the Middle East, Europe and US.
Ishtar remembers a time when being Israeli was less of an obstacle. “Music is perfume for the soul,” Ishtar says. “I’ve always loved seeing different religions in my crowd.” After shows, she recalls, people would press gifts into her hands: a cross, a Book of Psalms, a Koran. “I felt they were trying to protect me.” But in the late 1990s, as terrorism in Israel intensified, she noticed a shift. “I always said I’m a citizen of the world and wanted to talk only about music,” she says. “But French TV hosts started pushing me, and I found myself defending Israel, explaining history.”
For all three musicians, Arabic music isn’t a political experiment; it’s a family inheritance – rooted in Mizrahi and Sephardi homes. “My mum is from Egypt and my dad from Morocco. As a teenager, I refused to sing in Arabic and was more fascinated by Western modern music. But then the universe brought me back to my roots – this music chose me,” Ishtar says.
In Paris, she signed a contract to perform at a prominent hotel in Cairo. “Suddenly I was speaking Egyptian Arabic – slang and all,” she laughs. “Then I started singing in Arabic too – dancing on tables, drawing musicians, actors and ambassadors to the shows.”
Ishtar’s surreal journey had to come to an end, as her song Alabina, which she sang in Arabic, became a worldwide hit and she returned to France.
Later, she also performed in Morocco, where she sang multiple times in front of the Moroccan royal family, who she says were “full of respect”. On one visit, her father joined her. “It was closure,” she says. “I understood my essence. It helped me understand my purpose.”
Haim grew up amid the Jewish-Yemeni culture of her grandparents. “I remember my grandfather praying in Yemenite dialect that sounded to me like music, and my grandmother singing women’s songs [traditional songs in Arabic sang only by women] while cooking,” Haim says. “I grew up with the knowledge that I came from some ancient Jewish tribe who had to hide their Judaism while clinging to tradition,” Haim says. “My dream was to bring that heritage into modern music.”
Some of those women’s songs were revived in A-WA’s first album, including their breakout hit Habib Galbi. “They were passed from woman to woman for generations,” Haim says. “Women sang them only among themselves.” She frames the revival as repair. “Women faced injustices: marriage very young, no literacy, expectations to stay inside the home. I feel like I’m mending the line – making their voices heard. When my grandmother was alive, she told us how proud she was.”
Haim is moved by Yemenite fans who write that their parents still remember the Jews of Yemen. “At the end of the day, the Jewish woman and the Muslim woman went to the same well,” she says. “People remember that, before radical Islam took over, Jews brought cultural wealth too."
Weizman, who is of Moroccan and Iraqi descent, first absorbed Arabic music through her grandfather, who once played in a band in Iraq. “He’d drive me to school and play classical Arabic songs,” she laughs.
Tair Haim on stage (Credit: Tomer Gilat)[Missing Credit]
“Nowadays he sometimes comes to my concerts, and I see how much he is moved by my journey. I also see 70 to 80-year-old Israeli Jews from different Middle Eastern countries in my crowd, enjoying my modern covers of the songs they grew up on.”
Her retro-leaning Arabic repertoire has found fans abroad, too. “An Iraqi guy wrote to me that Iraqi singers forgot the songs I sing,” she says. “I’ve had messages from Morocco and Iraq calling me ‘Sister May’ and people writing ‘Iraq is waiting for you’.”
Nowadays she works on her original music with the Syrian song writer Moataz Al Mala, who has been working with leading singers in his country. “We work on songs online. He is a professional artist, so there is no awkwardness because of our origin. We talk about the hope that one day there will be peace, and we could visit each other’s studios, record music and travel,” Weizman smiles.
As she continues to perform Weizman tries also to uplift fellow female musicians: “There are talented Arab women who want to sing and play instruments, but they are facing obstacles and stereotypes. It is very important to me to try to hire them for my band.”
Ishtar looks beyond the current wave of hatred with optimism. “Darkness is the absence of light,” she says. “So there is only light, and music is part of that inner light within us that we all share. We should express it.”
And perhaps that is the quiet proof these three women offer: in a region addicted to vindictive slogans, a melody can still slip past the barricades and remind people that they are human before they are enemies.
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