Torabyeh: Statement #3 on the theft of the song “Ghorbah”
Torabyeh: Statement #3 on the theft of the song “Ghorbah”
On the 14th of February, the Likud party and its criminal leader Benjamin Netanyahu released a propaganda video for their election campaign in which they stole and pirated the Torabyeh song “Ghorbah”, featuring it as background music for a video in which the Likud chose Da’esh (ISIS) militants as the main characters. The Likud party did not stop at stealing the song, and with the assistance of its supporters began to disseminate the video widely and rapidly. Within a few days, the views of the propaganda video outnumbered the views of the original video (which was published on YouTube several years ago) many times over. For this reason, the actions of the Likud party and Netanyahu were more than just a passing violation of our group’s intellectual property rights, and became a distortion of our mission, placing our work in a fabricated context in a way that affected our reputation and exposed us to charges of which we are innocent.
These fast developments forced Torabyeh to immediately consider our options for dealing with this matter firmly, in order to contain the consequences that were accumulating with every passing hour and every passing day. After various consultations about our options, Torabyeh decided to sue the Likud party and Netanyahu in order to put an immediate stop to the dissemination of the video and have it removed from the websites it had been published on. After receiving a legal consultation, we learned that the only judicial decisions that are immediately binding on the Likud and Netanyahu are those of the courts of the Zionist enemy and that decisions taken in other jurisdictions would only be the beginning of legal procedures that would take at least several months and would end in the submission of a request to the Zionist courts in order to implement their decisions.
Torabyeh is aware that taking legal action through the courts of the Zionist enemy is a step that carries dangerous consequences related to recognizing the legitimacy of the courts and judicial system of this colonial entity. For this reason, after consulting with boycott activists and campaigns and after considerable thought and deliberation, a decision was taken to file a petition for an injunction while taking into account the following:
- First, Torabyeh and any of its members would decline to personally appear before the judiciary of the Zionist entity or pass through its border crossings.
- Second, a petition for an injunction against the Likud and Netanyahu would be filed in a Zionist court with the help of a Palestinian lawyer from the Palestinian lands colonized in 1948. This would be done with the sole purpose of applying pressure to speed up the takedown of the aforementioned propaganda video, and without addressing any legal issues before the Zionist courts other than the takedown of the video.
- Third, the filing of the petition would be accompanied by a media campaign to increase pressure on the Likud locally and internationally in order to embarrass the party and move it to remove the video.
- Fourth, the legal procedures would be withdrawn immediately after the propaganda video was taken down on most of the outlets it had been uploaded on, and after it had been prevented from being re-published on those outlets.
- Fifth, after the video was taken down Torabyeh would consider a serious lawsuit against Netanyahu and the Likud in a legitimate court in cooperation with relevant local and international figures and institutions.
- Sixth, under all circumstances the case would be withdrawn before any judicial decision was passed on it.
Torabyeh was indeed successful in creating a media sensation around the Likud’s theft of the song. At the time of writing this statement, and under the pressure of the petition filed three days ago, the propaganda video has been removed from most – if not all – the media outlets it had been uploaded on. Thus, the legal case in the Haifa District Court was withdrawn after three days of being filed and after our strategic objective was accomplished. This was done in conformity with the standards that the Torabyeh members put in place for ourselves from the beginning.
In order to be able to accomplish our objective, Torabyeh had to abstain from clarifying the situation to our audience and fans over the past three days, as we are doing now in this statement. It is completely unacceptable to rely upon the judgements of Zionist courts for the dispensation of justice, and this is a matter which is not open to discussion. Torabyeh is committed to its principles and to the intellectual framework behind its refusal of all forms of cooperation / normalization with the colonial Zionist entity and its institutions, and recognition thereof.
We would like to state that the decision to approach a Zionist court was not easy, but it was a necessity that was imposed upon us in order to accomplish a necessary and urgent goal. It is our duty now, after having dealt with the emergency situation that we found ourselves in, to consider pursuing our case against the Likud party and Netanyahu. Thus, we have started serious consultations regarding the filing of a lawsuit in the Jordanian courts, so that justice and Jordanian law can take its course in defending the rights of its citizens and in defending the violation of Torabyeh by the Likud party and Netanyahu.
The use of our song merely because the melody and lyrics are in Arabic and the imputation that it was associated with Da’esh reveals the racism of this colonial entity, which is the other side of the same coin as Da’esh. For them, everything that is in Arabic is bloodthirsty and criminal and they only work to promote this stereotype about Arabs and Muslims in the Arab world, as well as in the rest of the world. This is done in the service of the world’s imperialist powers, which use Islamophobia to spread their poison and give legitimacy to the oppression of Arabs and Muslims everywhere and use it to continue the theft, plunder, forgery and colonization of their resources and rights.
Finally, we would like to thank all the friends and comrades who supported us through this ordeal, whose support and trust in us was our greatest armor over the past few days. We would especially like to thank the lawyer Eyad Jubran from the Palestinian lands colonized in 1948, for the efforts he made on behalf of Torabyeh and for his cooperation.
Down with Israeli colonialism. Victory to Palestine and glory to the martyrs.
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