From the left: Becky Memran (formerly Rouvio), with Farid al-Atrash, and her sister Léonie. Alexandria, sometime in the mid-late thirties

The current antagonism on all sides over the Israel/Palestine dilemma belies the fact that relations between individual Arabs and Jews were not always hijacked by politics. One of the most revered singers in the Arab World is Farid al-Atrash, a singer and composer who was born in Syria to a father who fought the French. The family migrated when he was young to Egypt, where they were granted citizenship. A recent article by Tamar Kaplansky includes a picture of the young Farid with her grandmother, who was Jewish, in Alexandria.

For those interested in the music of Farid al-Atrash, Youtube archives a number of clips from his movies and albums here and here and here and on many more sites.