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Israeli Settler Version of Miley Cyrus Sets Humanity Back

‘We Can’t Stop’ gets an abrasive West Bank makeover

by
Adam Chandler
December 16, 2013
(YouTube)
(YouTube)

One good way to secure internet notoriety is to do something badly, offensively, and to attach it to something popular. Exhibit A: a video quickly going viral by an Israeli caterwauler and apparent novelist named Orit Arfa. In it, she covers the erstwhile Miley Cyrus hit “We Can’t Stop.”

The only problem (well, there are many, many problems here) is that the song has been rewritten to be some kind of settler anthem. It looks bad, it sounds bad, and while isolating one video on YouTube is a losing proposition, this one deserves to be shamed.

Over the weekend, the lyrics from the song (it’s called “Jews Don’t Stop”) including the clunker “We build things, they don’t build we/don’t take nothing from John Kerry” bounced their way across the internet giving fuel to a YouTube commentariat that was never exceedingly fond of Jews or Israel to begin with.

The video itself is an homage to the Miley original replete with bizarre Miley iconography and incorporative of some provocative Miley moves (not the anti-Semitic comments though). But instead of jumping into a swimming pool, twerking, or lying on a bed, Arfa and her friends poledance on a settlement sign and dangle seductively from a bulldozer. The only thing that would have been worse than this is if Arfa had parodied “Wrecking Ball.”

On a related note from the region, as Israelis dig themselves out of the snow…well…some West Bank settlers are giving stubbornness a new name.

Per @JoshBreiner: and @vhadshomron residents of Yitzhar outpost refuse entry to snow plow vehicle because driver is an Arab. Maniacs



— Amir Mizroch (@Amirmizroch) December 16, 2013

Here’s the video: Click if you dare.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.