“Mixtape” Part IV – War, Peace and Bumper Stickers

When it first came out, in the middle of the War of Attrition, Shir La’Shalom was an anti-war hymn sung, paradoxically, by a military band. Meant to be an Israeli version of Hair’s ‘Let the Sunshine In,’ it was quickly banned by generals and labeled as both defeatist and demoralizing. But a quarter-of-a-century later, it resurfaced in what would turn out to be one of the most fateful nights the country has ever known. Hannah Barg tells the story of a song, a dream, and a musical reincarnation. This piece was written, recorded and produced together with Maya Kosover and Yochai Maital.

On the day after Rabin’s assassination, author David Grossman was driving up to Jerusalem. On the side of the road he saw a religious settler standing next to his Volvo, peeling off bumper stickers with particularly provocative right-wing slogans. In his mind, David could trace a direct line, or chain, starting with inflammatory statements made by irresponsible politicians, continuing in the offices of creative copywriters who fashioned them into catchy phrases, on to drivers who adorned their cars with the stickers, and ending with a man with a revolver in his hand shooting the prime minister. His eight-year-long attempt to decode that chain led to one of Israel’s most popular rap songs of all time. Mishy Harman shows how bumper stickers can, in reality, stand in for the DNA of a nation.