A YouTube video that’s recently gone viral shows six Israeli soldiers dancing to pop star Ke$ha’s ‘Tik Tok’ while on patrol in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Ummmmm really? You’re a soldier, isn’t there something more productive you should be doing with your time? I understand soldiers live in a certain type of environment that I cannot relate to but this is taking it too far. As a Jewish American it makes me sad that with all the controversy surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Israeli soldiers wouldn’t think of the insensitivity being conveyed before taping this.
The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz reported, ‘The clip, posted over the weekend, shows a six-man patrol from the Hod platoon of the 50th battalion positioned in Hebron, walking along a Palestinian street under [Israel Defense Forces] control in the city, in full battle gear. In the midst of the patrol, the soldiers suddenly break into a one-minute dance, to the song of American singer Kesha, ‘Tik Tok.’ The coordinated performance appears to indicate the soldiers rehearsed the dance for some time.’
So why is this such a big deal?
Besides Hebron being an important area to religious Jews as the burial place of the biblical patriarchs, it is also the only Palestinian city with a Jewish settlement at its core. The area has about 500 Jews and an additional 250 yeshiva students living amongst 160,000 Palestinian residents. About 7,000 Jews live in the settlement of Kiryat Arba which is adjacent to Hebron.
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The video can be viewed as just a group of teenage soldiers having fun because they’re not being violent or hostile, but they’re happily dancing while wearing military garb and carrying weapons in an area which has a majority Arab, non-Israeli population. It looks insensitive and disrespectful.
While that was going on, another YouTube video went viral of a Holocaust survivor dancing to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ at Concentration Camps all around Europe with his children and grandchildren. The video’s uploader said, ‘This dance is a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit and a celebration of life.’
What do you think about these videos? Let us know!
