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Pro-settler video parodies Miley

American-Israeli Ariel resident Orit Arfa turns Cyrus’s ‘We can’t stop’ into ‘Jews can’t stop’

Renee Ghert-Zand is the health reporter and a feature writer for The Times of Israel.

Orit Arfa in her Miley Cyrus parody video. (Screenshot)
Orit Arfa in her Miley Cyrus parody video. (Screenshot)

Can a homemade Miley Cyrus parody video showing young women gyrating on tractors, pole dancing on street signs, writhing on hillsides and licking stones help the Israeli settler cause?

Orit Arfa, the creator and star of the video, thinks that, at the very least, it can’t hurt. Others might disagree.

Arfa, an American-Israeli writer (and Times of Israel and LA Jewish Journal blogger who labels herself a “settler against the occupation”) living in Ariel, sees a kindred spirit in the infamous pop star with a penchant for twerking and sticking out her tongue.

“In a deviant world where good is hailed as evil and evil is hailed as good, perhaps good people in this world must find the most unlikely of allies, like Miley, who probably experiences as much world censure as individual Jews whose only crime is making a peaceful, loving home in the Biblical heartland,” Arfa tells The Times of Israel in an email interview.

She says she was inspired by Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” which she turned in to “Jews Can’t Stop.” Here is a sampling of her lyrics:

“It’s our land, we do what we want.

This is our home, this is our rules.

Can’t you see it’s we who own the land, can’t you see it’s we who take a stand.

And everyone in line to make peace, trying to get a Nobel for peace. We all so fed up here,
getting fed up here, yeah, yeah. 

We build things, things don’t build we. Don’t take nothing from John Kerry.”

Arfa contends that political leaders “torpedo normalized relations between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank,” and that left alone, the two national groups would figure out how to live and prosper together.

So, would this mean that Arfa would be willing to live in a West Bank that was under Palestinian authority or even a Palestinian state?

“The governing body concerns me less than the mode of governance and if it would respect individual rights,” she says. “If by some miracle a Palestinian government emerges that would treat the Jewish minority the way that Israel overall humanely and equally treats Arab citizens, I would be fine living under it.”

But in the next breath, she clarifies that she doesn’t think that is going to happen any time soon, if ever. In the meantime, she believes Israel must retain control of the West Bank.

“As it now stands, Israel is the country that is more suited to ensure, inspire or install humane civil law throughout…The corrupt and oppressive Palestinian Authority…is not suited in its current state, as most totalitarian Arab governments in this region, to ensure stability, peace, advancement and freedom for its own people, let alone Jews.”

Arfa believes the time has come for Israeli Jews, particularly settlers, to speak their mind. “Jews are especially concerned with how they are perceived and being politically correct,” she says. “I think what many people need to get over is the fear of what other people think.”

One look at Arfa’s video and it’s obvious she has gotten over it.

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