Gali Atari and Korin Alel perform "I have no other country" at a demonstration against the coup, Kaplan Tel Aviv, March 4, 2023 (Stills" Reuven Castro, video: Public Relations)
Gali Atari and Korin Alel sang together last night the classic "I have no other country", written by the late Ehud Menor and composed by Alel, on stage on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv at the huge demonstration against the legal revolution.
According to an estimate, about a quarter of a million protested last night in 95 centers in Israel.
Watch an excerpt from the song (above).
As I recall, Gali Atari is the original performer of the song.
A day before Atari's appearance at the protest, an interview with the singer was broadcast on the program "Culture Agent" presented by Kobi Midan in Kan 11.
Midan pointed out to her that the song is sung in demonstrations against the legal revolution, and Atari said: "I think this song speaks to every citizen who lives here. Ask anyone, what? 'I don't have another country'! This song raises its head every time something happens. It is every Time is relevant. All kinds of events, difficulties we experienced, and even now, when there is a very, very big crisis."
Atari added in reference to the legal revolution: "For me, this polarization sometimes leads me to the point that I don't understand. I was born a few years after the War of Independence, I was born on the values of the Declaration of Independence of equality and democracy. I don't want them to take it away from me. Where do we go from here? What With what we committed to future generations? What with this? Don't take it from me."
Atari said of the demonstrations: "There are religious people there, there are right-wing people there," and added that they are not political, "just as the polarization I am talking about is not political. The polarization I am talking about is a value one. Wait, the fact that I will appoint the judge who will judge me. Something here Wrong, you understand? It doesn't make sense. I don't see it as politics at all."
Gali Atari and Korin Alel perform "I have no other country" at a demonstration against the coup, March 4, 2023 (Photo: Reuven Castro)
The song "I have no other country" is one of the most important Israeli classics and one of the two songs written on Manor's tombstone.
He was born as a left-wing poet, according to popular opinion and also according to Ofra Fox, Ehud Manor's widow.
It was created as a belated response to the death of his brother Yehuda in the War of Attrition, and Manor said in the past that he wanted to use it to criticize the incompetence and the lack of reference to the unnecessary deaths of many soldiers during the war.
When the song was published in the mid-1980s, it was seen as a protest song against the Lebanon war.
But later it was also adopted by the right, which used it, among other things, in secession.
"Lehud was angry and it was difficult with the fact that the song was adopted by the right," Fox previously said in an interview with Walla!
culture.
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi quoted twice from the song.
For the first time in January 2021, when she spoke in the plenary session of the US House of Representatives, a week after protesters stormed the Capitol.
A second time in June 2022 when she spoke following the American Supreme Court's ruling against women's right to abortion.
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