Moving from unofficial parody to official sponsorship, DJ Noy Alooshe recently composed a techno mash-up of a speech by President Shimon Peres in support of the Israeli leader's
Facebook page.
The clip features the president inviting the viewer in English to "be my friend, for peace" to a pulsing techno beat. Peres can then be seen standing with a number of international leaders and celebrities, from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to comedian Jerry Seinfeld and the Pope, as he beckons "we need peace, among people."
The 88-year-old president can also be seen fingering a tablet computer in the video, scrolling through his own Facebook page.
The flashy video, showcasing more technical prowess than the DJ's earlier and notably lower budget clips, ends with Peres's invitation to join his Facebook page, for peace.
Speaking with Israel Radio on Wednesday, a President's Office spokesperson said the clip, and Peres's Facebook page, were part of a wider campaign to appeal to "largest possible audience," noting that both had received hits in Arab countries.
Peres
launched the international Facebook page together with Facebook brainchild Mark Zuckerberg during their meeting in California's Silicon Valley on Tuesday. During the event, Peres told Zuckerberg he wanted to reach audiences in Syria, Iran and the Arab world.
"Neither the Iranians nor Syrians are enemies of ours, but rather the extremist leadership of these peoples,” the president told Zuckerberg.
The YouTube clip was directed by Noam Vardi and produced by Megaphone Digital Ron Shely and Golan Bar Shalom, and was uploaded to YouTube by Peres's own YouTube channel.
Alooshe, a member of the techno group Chovevei Tzion, was propelled to international success after his parody last year of former Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, which included excerpts from one of his speeches during the early stages of the Libyan civil war.
That video attracted attention across the Middle East, where mass protests had erupted in a number of Arab countries at the start of 2011, and have resulted in a dramatically different political landscape since.
Peres is not the first leader the 31-year-old musician has tackled on YouTube: he made a parody of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's address to Congress in 2011, set to the backdrop of Yolanda Be Cool & Dcup's "We Speak No Americano," called (in Hebrew), "Bibi Pro-Americano."
He also took on Kadima leader Tzipi Livni in a 2008 video called "Livni Boy," a take on a US clip for then US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama entitled "Obama Girl." In that clip, Alooshe teamed up with actor
Liran Avisar, who is seen sporting a "Livni Boy" t-shirt while professing his love to the opposition leader while dancing throughout Tel Aviv.
Addressing his new clip centered around Peres, Alooshe told Israel Radio Wednesday it was "quite an experience to work with the president," adding that the video "was easier than anything I had done in the past."
"I was relieved by the expectation that they wanted this clip to be young and hip," Alooshe said.
As for his next endeavor, the DJ said he may have run the gamut with political figures.
"I'm not sure I can work anymore with politicians," he said.
In a related but slightly more daffy development, another clip was posted on Tuesday targeting Netanyahu's recent speech to American-Israel lobby group AIPAC in Washington DC.
The video captured a moment in Netanyahu's speech where the prime minister used an avian metaphor to evoke the Iranian nuclear dilemma.
"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it?" Netanyahu asked. "That’s right, it's a duck. But this duck is a nuclear duck!"
Gil Hoffman contributed to this report