Born and raised in war-torn Lebanon in the middle of the country’s 15-year civil War (1975-1990), Lebanese-American singer Carine Bassili spent her traumatic childhood just trying to remain alive along with her family.
Her great-grandfather, who lived in Southern Lebanon where her family is from originally, was the first Lebanese to be killed by a missile – which she said was Palestinian – during the fighting between Israel and the PLO in 1978 during Operation Litani.
“Growing up in Lebanon was very challenging for me,” said Bassili, 35, in a phone conversation from the US where she now lives. “It was very traumatic for everyone, but we were just trying to stay alive. I grew up with that trauma and carried that trauma with me. I saw dead people after battles…I couldn’t sleep without my mom next to me till the age of 14. I hated winter because of the thunder. We always had Israeli jets coming over head breaking the sound barrier. We saw Syria doing bad things to Lebanon, Palestinians doing bad things to Lebanon.”
Bassili came to the US with her fiancé to marry in 2005 following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, and that is when she was able to begin her personal healing process from the war traumas she had suffered, she said.
So Bassili does not take lightly the fact that a duet she performed and released in Arabic in January, 2021 with Israeli singer Yair Levi – who as a captain in Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 commando unit is supposedly her enemy – became an international plea for healing during an especially difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the last few years she started feeling a call to raise her voice and her music for peace between Lebanon and Israel, despite the wars and tensions between the two countries, she said.
“The 2006 war in Lebanon was really hard and my family still there was affected, but something inside me didn’t let me have hate. We Lebanese are aware of everything…We are not stupid. We see things. We have seen even worse things taking place against the Lebanese people,” she said. “My parents didn’t teach us to hate. If you sow hate, you will reap hate and that is what we are seeing right now.”
Bassili was raised a Maronite and now considers herself a non-denominational Christian. She began her own ministry called Pure Love Ministries which has particular focus on the needs of people in Lebanon and the Middle East, providing humanitarian relief ranging from disaster relief and food, to support for women and children and educational programs for Syrian refugees.
As the COVID-19 pandemic closed the world in on itself with so many deaths and tragedies, Bassili said she felt in her heart that God was telling her now was the time to connect to the Jewish people and she began searching on Instagram for Jewish people who sang from the Bible. She came across Yair Levi’s recording of Refa Na, based on an ancient prayer of healing from the Old Testament which has inspired many versions in addition to the traditional liturgy.
But there was something in Levi’s musical arrangement which touched Bassili deeply.
“When I first heard the music it was definitely very powerful. I started crying. I don’t know what happened in my heart. I felt God in my heart calling me to bring healing…between Israel and Lebanon,” she said.
And though she does not regret the step she took it has not been easy, she said.
“Many times I felt like I didn’t want to do it. I knew it would cost me because I would not be able to go to Lebanon again. I love my people. I want to stand with my people,” she said. “But at same time I knew from God I had to do this. If I wanted to love my people I have to go with what is right. I had to do it; I couldn’t deny it. The music plus the words from scripture which were very short sentences were very powerful. The music Yair put in it was for healing for nations.”
Finally, in August 2020, when an ammonium nitrate storage facility exploded at Beirut’s port killing over 200 people in the midst of the pandemic, Bassili felt she had to act in some way to be a part of speaking out for the healing of her country. Many have blamed Hezbollah for dangerously storing the explosive material at the facility.
“I just looked at what was going on in Lebanon,” she said. “It is not right that the Lebanese people are suffering so much. That for years and years even the leaders are not taking care of them. They stole money and were not taking care of the country. The explosion put me in a place where I said, ‘Enough, enough, enough.’ We are always doing the same things over and over again and nothing is changing.”
She added: “I really felt hopefully taking a step like this would encourage people to stand up and realize that hate never took us anywhere. Peace will not come unless we take a stance for peace and let our hearts go for love and wash out the hate and see each other’s humanity as God created them. God created Jew and Arab and everyone else.”
So Bassili reached out to Levi and asked him what he thought about releasing his song in Arabic, as a blessing for Lebanon.
“I had never connected to Jews in my life, not even in the USA. I saw them in the streets but never connected to anyone,” she said. “I think he was shocked to hear that I wanted to perform the song in Arabic.”
Meanwhile, in his home in Jaffa, Israel, Levi had been at a very low point in his life. More than 50 of his scheduled concerts and lectures had been canceled because of the pandemic and his grandmother, Ziona Levi, was battling cancer.
“I was in the lowest place in my mind and I said to myself I have to pray for (my grandmother.) That is all I had,” said Levi, 31. “It was the first lockdown and I began searching and I saw the verse from Beha’alotecha Torah portion (Numbers 12:10-13) where Moses asks God to heal his sister Miriam. It was so musical I took my guitar and composed this song.”
All the musicians were holed up in their homes--the guitar player actually recorded his track from his bed with a blanket over his head for better audio, said Levi.
“It was really important for me to record this for my grandmother and we released it,” he said.
His grandmother was able to hear the song he had written for her after its April 2020 release, but passed away seven months later.
“It became a huge hit and there were thousands of cover versions, it was crazy I didn’t know what was going on with me. It became a song of healing for (people) all over the world,” Levi said, noting that many people were seeking hope and prayers of healing during the pandemic. “It became so big and I was performing on zoom all over the world. But for me it will forever be the song for my grandmother.”
Levi received hundreds of Instagram messages from around the world, and people performed covers of his arrangement in countries from the US, Venezuela and Haiti to Ukraine, Croatia and the Philippines; versions were sung in Spanish, German, Hindi, and Chinese.
And then he received the message from Bassili, asking to sing a version of the song in Arabic.
To understand how unexpected this was for him Levi emphasized that as a performer he sings at Remembrance Day ceremonies; he fought in Operation of Pillar Defense in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014 in Gaza and sings a lot about his army service; he has written a song about a soldier who was killed by Hezbollah on the Lebanon border and most recently in June released “Leah’s Prayer” for the mother of Hadar Goldin, an IDF soldier who was shot, kidnapped and killed by Hamas during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and whose body is still being held by Hamas in Gaza.
“At first I was shocked,” Levi said of receiving Bassili’s message. “I am a former IDF captain who served in an elite unit for eight years. I learned a lot about Lebanon from a military aspect, so it was kind of a shock for me to talk to someone from Lebanon. I didn’t know what to do. At first I asked myself if this was the right thing to do, to collaborate with someone from Lebanon; to give her this song.”
Finally, pushing aside concerns about what people would say about this sort of contact, he decided he wanted to get to know Bassili and the two began to talk through Zoom.
“I understood that she has no hate in her heart and we could agree on a lot of things. Neither wants to forget our past,” he said. “I really love my country and I don’t want to…(have to) apologize. I just wanted to build a relationship between two people who love their countries.”
He listened as Bassili told him of her love of Lebanon, and how she grew up hearing the bombs, all within the background of his military service. Bassili described their first conversations as being like going to the moon and wanting to step out for the first time.
“Our conversations got very interesting and neither expected the other to say bad things about their country,” said Levi. “I don’t expect her to say good things about Israel or bad things about Lebanon and vice versa; we just want to build a conversation. We understood neither of us wanted to forget our pasts but we just wanted to build this song and build this relationship. Our mission as singers was to sing together. When she respected my past and I respected her past, it was much easier. Singing together (with someone from Lebanon) is not a crime in Israel. But for her (as a Lebanese) it is a crime.”
She has received death threats and many Lebanese and people from other Arab countries have condemned her for singing together with Levi, but she has also received many messages of support and appreciation from them as well, Bassili said.
“If I go back right now I would be risking my life because I found out (after making the recording) …that doing anything with Israel is against the law, you face jail for the rest of your life. Maybe if I had known about it before I wouldn’t have done the song, but it is what it is,” said Bassili. “The Lord said for us to be wise. I have to be wise. I know I will go back to Lebanon but I don’t know what the timing will be. Right now I have to fight hate. I have to bring truth through different ways, bringing it through music.”
The hateful backlash she has received from some has not been easy, she admitted, and she is not used to that form of aggression and intensity, but she said with “the grace of God” she is handling it and trying not to take it personally.
Through her desire to work for reconciliation between the two peoples she has also created a virtual dialogue group made up of Lebanese in Lebanon and abroad and Israelis who are learning from each other, she said. She uses various methods to protect the safety of those in Lebanon, she said.
“They ask each other questions and are supporting each other. It is beautiful to watch. They know the weaknesses of each other. Even though they know they do not agree, they are never fighting over anything. This brings me so much hope. I really hope we will have this one day,” she said. “I am not denying the Palestinian’s rights but I am coming from a realization that we can’t deny the existence of any group. I learned this. Nobody taught me this. We have to fight for peace. We have to do things with love peace and forgiveness. We have to come to the realization that we have to forgive.”
After her conversations with Levi, Bassili went one step further than she had planned and invited him to sing the Arabic version as a duet with her.
“That was my second shock. I never thought I would sing with someone from Lebanon,” said Levi. “If you get the whole picture of who I am you can understand that this is a very strange thing for me, but I think that for me it completes the whole picture of who I am. As an Israeli I don’t believe we fight just for the sake of fighting. We fight for peace. We just want to defend our country. This is my belief. Anytime someone tells us they want peace I will be the first one to come and make peace.”
As a child he had practiced Arabic with his grandmother Ziona, who was from Yemen, but now she was sick and he spent much time on Zoom sessions with Bassili who coached him on the pronunciation of the words in Arabic. It was, he said, in a sense a good closure for him to sing the song he had written for his grandmother in her native Arabic.
“Hebrew and Arabic are really close…some words are the same with a little bit of a change so it is beautiful to see. It gave me a lot of hope to see this,” he said. Though his accent may not be perfect, he said, people are able to understand and that is the most important thing. “And something amazing is that just with this collaboration we are working on other things.”
Complimenting Levi’s efforts, Bassili said he did “pretty good” for a non-Arabic speaker but the main thing was that he tried his best with all his heart.
For Bassili it was also a revelation to learn how many similarities their languages had, she said.
“It was very amazing for me to discover we have a kind of similar dialect in words. I started wondering that if we speak the same language…surely these people belong in the land. Hearing the language and knowing they always spoke this language and a lot of words are like ours – how can you deny them? It was like we are all from the same father. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Arabs and Jews have the same father. It was all making more sense to me.”
Their song went viral all over Israel, the Middle East, reaching Mexico and US. Through social media Iraqis, Egyptians, and Iranians have also contacted him after hearing the song, marveled Levi. Bassili said they are avoiding politics and are keeping it at the human level.
Interviewed in May during the Gaza fighting and the outbreak of violence in Israeli mixed cities, Levi said he was not ignoring the daily reality of the conflict, but for him the only way to build something together is “to face the truth and to say yes, I disagree with you but we are both living here in the same neighborhood. I don’t need to change my past and you don’t need to change your past but we are both here and we both have to live here.”
The two have appeared in various live broadcasts on news reports as well as on social media, one during the May fighting on a live Instagram when someone from Syria joined in with them, and more recently on July 12 when they discussed their work together and what is happening in Lebanon on a live YouTube broadcast.
Though peace may be a long way away, when she hears their song, Bassili said she has peace.
“I believe there is healing in song and there is peace. Whatever we were trying to send, they are receiving this in Arabic-speaking countries and Lebanon,” she said.■