Loading ...Palestinian American rapper uses music to Protest Trump’s Muslim ban and Israeli occupation
By Ramsey Aburdene
Note from the Author: Two months ago, I travelled to Palestine with three artists and fellow members of Washington, D.C. music collective FHTMG (Jefe, PacMan Slim, and Nine Five) to visit the country and record songs and film music videos while we were there. FHTMG previously released the first every rap music video filmed in North Korea in 2014 and we have since released music videos from various artists filmed in Cuba, Mexico, Lebanon, and Mongolia, among other places (check out YouTube.com/FHTMG for more). We also received a shout out in the Washington Post for including “Free Gaza” graffiti in our 2015 song Trap Out The Starbucks. As a Palestinian-American (my father immigrated to the US from Palestine as a child and my mother is German) I have been eager to visit Palestine and record some music videos there for a long time so I was thrilled to finally plan a trip with some friends and fellow artists in December 2016 (we spent 9 nights in the West Bank).
The song was created by Jefe on our first night in Palestine after he was interrogated for about an hour upon his arrival at Ben Gurion. Jefe, who arrived on his own flight later than the rest of us, is an American citizen who was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and has previously worked on Wall Street. This did not stop the authorities at Ben Gurion from profiling him (presumably due to the fact that he was a young Latino man travelling by himself) and singling him out for an interrogation. I won’t speak for his experience but he was treated in a way that made him feel very unwelcome in Israel, which shouldn’t be how American citizens are treated by our so-called best friend and closest ally. PacMan and I were also pulled to the side waiting area at Ben Gurion which all Arabs (and other “suspicious” types) who have travelled through that airport know about. We were also held for about an hour and I was asked several questions (but not taken to a back room like Jefe). Compared to the four other times I’ve entered Palestine/Israel, however, it was my easiest experience.
After finally making it through security, we found an Israeli taxi driver who said he could take us to the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem for 400 ILS. I forgot that Israelis generally never enter the Palestinian territories so I just took him at his word. As we got closer to Bethlehem, he started to get lost and I had to call a cousin who speaks Hebrew to guide him to the Jerusalem-Bethlehem checkpoint (the Palestinian territories are kind of like outer space for Israelis even though its just a few minutes to drive there). He then dropped us at the checkpoint and asked for 400 ILS. We had made very clear that we were going to the Church of Nativity before we entered the taxi so we felt cheated being dropped at the checkpoint to lug our baggage through a lengthy security process and said we would pay him 350 ILS. He quickly became irate and went over to a soldier manning the checkpoint and claimed we were trying to skip out on our taxi fare. The soldiers soon called the head of security at the checkpoint who escorted all of us inside the checkpoint. After about 30 minutes of back and forth, we agreed to pay him the 400 ILS and the officers noted the incident and let us all go.
We finally made it to Bethlehem and were hanging out at a friend’s house listening to music when Jefe came up with the chorus for the song. Over the next 9 days I wrote my verses and we finalized the song and we filmed the video on our last night there (it was the 7th music video we filmed after a 3 week trip that included stops in Istanbul, London, and Frankfurt). During our trip we also visited Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Qalqilyah, where we visited the SkateQilya skate ramp and skateboarded with local skaters (I was a camp counselor at the SkateQilya camp this past summer, they have an amazing program and I recommend everyone check it out/get involved). PacMan and I made a song and filmed a video while in Qalqilyah and that one will be released in the coming weeks/months.
We all got selected for the standard Ben Gurion additional screening on the way out (we were standing directly behind the Archbishop of Jerusalem Atallah Hanna in the security line and it was Larry David-esque to watch him go through the metal detector about ten as he slowly stripped himself out of full religious garb) but things were smooth all things considered.
Jefe, PacMan, Nine Five and I are all back home in Washington, D.C. now and in the three days since we released “Search My Bag,” we have already heard from several people who have had similar experiences (and far worse) at Ben Gurion who really love the song and video – which makes all the trouble of crossing the world to film a music video in the cold rain worth it J.
