From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Ben Gurion student pens song to soldiers in Gaza
A PhD student at Ben Gurion University of the Negev writes a song dedicated to the IDF soldiers who fought in the Gaza Strip this past month.
Anthony Chapman, a resident of Beersheba who immigrated to Israel from San Diego, CA, says he wrote “Sing to You” with his wife Irene.
“You are fighting in a war that you didn’t cause, and you didn’t want, and you didn’t desire at all,” he sings. “It’s hard to find the words to describe what you saw, what you experienced, its just so heavy.”
“In the middle of Operation Protective Edge we were supposed to go on vacation to the States, but I pushed off the vacation because my guitar student, who serves in the Maglan [special forces unit] was drafted to the war effort,” Chapman says in a statement published by the university. “It was difficult for me to deal with this, so I decided to push off my vacation until things calmed down.”
Chapman, a doctoral student in the archaeology and ancient Near East department at the school, says “writing songs is my way to deal with the reality, and my aspiration is that my music will touch other people and move them.”
The music video for “Sing to You” is below (English subtitles are available):
