Palestinian Authority Music Video Lauds Yasser Arafat: ‘Oh AK-47 Make Sounds of Joy’
Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog group whose sole purpose is to monitor print and broadcast media — particularly put out by the Palestinian Authority, has uncovered a new PA music video honoring the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
The lyrics glorify Fatah’s use of violence and lauds the ever-powerful rifle. According to PMW, the video has been broadcast seven times on official PA TV thus far.
The song speaks of Arafat’s life and idolizes him as a model of violence, revolution, and war. It celebrates through words and visuals the violence of the rifle: “Boom out loud, oh voice of the machine gun… Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy.”
The lyrics, in full, are as follows:
“Engrave on the rifle butt the symbol of Fatah’s Al-Asifa
My trigger makes sounds of joy to the Elder (Arafat)
while the rifle sounds aloud
Boom out loud, oh voice of the machine gun,
Yasser [Arafat] lives inside us
[Despite] the day (of his death) on Nov. 11,
the [Palestinian] cause has not died
He is present inside us as an idea and as light,
a fire burning in [our] chest
He [Arafat] taught the whole world how to revolt.
Yasser – symbol of freedom
Oh Elder, I swear by [your] uniform and your keffiya
Oh bullets of the defiant, [your] shot fights 100 [men]
He lived and died in an atmosphere of war,
he crossed the world from east to west
Mahmoud Abbas is on the same path
when it comes to [our] state and identity
We fired the rifle, we faced the storm
We responded to the cannon with a pistol
Using stones, we ignited a revolution and wrote [history], oh Fatah men
On the rifle butt, we have engraved [Fatah's] symbol
On the grip, we have engraved “Arafat”
On the top cover we have inscribed the history of the free
On the barrel – the name of the homeland
The flash-suppressor ignited and burst
Here it is, oh rifle sight
The state is only a few meters away
Oh action-spring, receive and shoot [bullets] continuously
Change the magazine – there are hundreds [of them]
Load it into the chamber
Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy and salute the Elder (Arafat)”
Yasser Arafat is, of course, perhaps best known for invoking terrorism and leading the intifadas against Israel. In fact, then-Saudi Prince Bandar once said he was a perpetrator of “crimes against the entire region” when Arafat refused the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offers to establish a two-state solution during the 2000 Camp David summit.
