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How an Israeli TikToker’s little-known song became the soundtrack to emotional wartime reunions
(JTA) — An Israeli reservist on leave from the war in Gaza sneaks back into his house in the middle of the night to surprise his wife and sons. Another opens the door of his daughter’s preschool classroom and steps inside. Another stands behind his mother’s desk at work, waiting for her to turn and see him.
In each video, and hundreds of others just like them, a Hebrew song with the lyrics “Good days will come…” builds to its crescendo as the soldier’s family falls upon him.
The song seems tailor-made as an anthem for the emotional reunions that are providing Israelis a rare spark of hope at a grim time. “Even in the darkest hours of the night, there will always be a small star that will shine for you, for yourself and the way home,” the singer croons. “It’s always darkest before the sunrise.”
Yet the singer, Yagel Oshri, didn’t write the song for the war that the soldiers have been called to fight, which began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds of hostages. “Two years ago I wrote the first version — not even from my personal perspective,” says Oshri, 23. His friend was depressed because her boyfriend dumped her, so he was trying to tell her, “Just smile, it’s all OK.”
היה געגוע
Few people heard the song since, even as Oshri became one of Israel’s rising stars on TikTok. As the driving force behind the Oshri Family account, Oshri accumulated followers with his made-for-social-media humor, often involving his two younger brothers and mother in videos made in the family home in Moshav Elikhin in central Israel. But behind the scenes, he was struggling in a way that changed the way he thought about his song.
“When I went through a depression, I realized you can’t just smile and get over it,” he said. So six months ago, he went to hit-making musician Offir Cohen’s studio and played him the first four lines of the revised song: “The family, friends, maybe going out/deep profound conversations late at night/dealing with change, old habits/the soul is at war with karma…”
Cohen told him to drop everything and the two went to the studio with a guitar and within “seven minutes” finished the song — lyrics, melody and all. “It flowed like a river,” Oshri recalls. They released the song on Aug. 15.
Galgalatz, the premier pop radio station in Israel, rejected it for their weekly playlist. “Maybe they just didn’t get it, they didn’t understand the heaviness,” Oshri says, with no bitterness. He uploaded the song to Apple Music, Spotify and, of course, TikTok instead.
There, “Getting over Depression” gained a small following. In late August, a clip Oshri posted on TikTok of himself playing on a keyboard with his brother at his side garnered dozens of supportive comments. By the end of September, he posted a duet in tribute to what he said was being tagged 1,000 times on the platform.
But nothing could have prepared him for what happened after Oct. 7. Like so many other Israelis, he was personally affected by the attack when his brother’s partner, 22-year-old Kim Dukarker, was killed along with hundreds of others at the Nova music festival. And like so many others, he sprang into action, giving back however he could — by performing for families evacuated from danger zones and soldiers called up as part of the biggest mobilization in Israel’s history.
Between the live shows and the ability of users on Instagram and TikTok to add favorite songs as soundtracks to their clips, “Getting over Depression” soon became ubiquitous — particularly when soldiers used it as a soundtrack to their surprise visits home.
Now, Israelis can’t get away from the song. It’s looping endlessly on the radio, including on Galgalatz — “I’m happy they get it now,” Oshri said — and in countless social media videos. Entire army units have sung along to the song. There’s even a spoof of a reservist trying to escape it, and TikTok videos of American Jewish musicians, like Orthodox singer Aryeh Kuntzler, performing it.
מקדישים לכם את השיר בתוך לב עזה! צה״ל חזק #צהל #עזה #israel
The song has streamed more than 3.5 million times on Spotify, making Oshri the second-most listened-to Israeli artist, and has been used on 17,000 TikTok videos, mostly of reunions. A prominent TV presenter shared the music set against clips of just-freed hostages, including 9-year-old Ohad Munder running through a hospital corridor to hug his family. That video got over 1 million views.
“I feel like God gave me a mission, to make people happy with this song,” Oshri says. “It’s a happy song. I think that Israel, in its DNA, is a happy nation. We like to say ‘Am Yisrael Chai,’” or the Jewish people live, a traditional phrase that itself has been renewed in a wartime song released Oct. 19, by Eyal Golan. “We like to say, ‘There will be good days to come.’”
Oshri’s song joins in a long tradition of Israeli songs giving hope at tenuous moments, including the classic “Yihiye Tov,” or “Things Will Get Better,” which a 22-year-old David Broza wrote with poet Yonatan Geffen in 1977 on the eve of peace negotiations with Egypt.
With every war, a few songs capture the public’s imagination. In 1967, “We Shall Pass,” by Yehiel Mohar and Moshe Wilensky, was written to raise the morale of the country. Even more iconic was Naomi Shemer’s “Jerusalem of Gold,” written only three weeks before the war — and to which she added a new verse when Israel took control of East Jerusalem.
Sometimes singers become synonymous with wars. Yehoram Gaon, who sang “The Last War” in 1973 for the troops during the Yom Kippur War (“I promise you little girl, this will be the last war…”) is now back with a new version of his 1984 patriotic battle cry, “You Won’t Beat Us,” whose video features flag-waving soldiers and rumbling tanks.
“Music can produce shared allegiances and feelings of unity. In times of extreme crisis, people turn to the music that they most need as an attempt to stabilize their emotions [so they can] continue and persist,” says Murray Forman, professor of Media & Screen Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. After 9/11 he wrote the analysis “Soundtrack to a Crisis: Music Context, Discourse,” in the journal Television and New Media.
“Music has acquired new significance in relation to the atrocities of the terrorist actions,” he wrote then. But what he didn’t consider 20 years ago was that “along with the music of peace and healing and mourning and patriotically infused anger and nationalistic chauvinism (which each proliferated in the U.S. after 9-11 and probably does in other such circumstances), there might also be music of fear and dread and even celebration, depending on what communities we’re talking about,” he said.
Yagel Oshri meets and sings with the family of Raz Ben Ami, bottom right, who was released the day before as part of deal between Hamas and Israel. Her husband Husband Ohad remains captive in Gaza. (Courtesy Yagel Oshri)
“Maybe one thing is for all sides to try to listen closely to the music each other is creating and listening to.”
A number of English-language songs have also been adopted to epitomize the war. Skylar Grey’s “I’m Coming Home,” which has been used as a soundtrack for many American soldiers’ homecomings, was recently adapted in honor of the hostages still held in Gaza. Shiri Maimon sings it in a video featuring a display in Jerusalem of 240 beams of light, each representing a hostage. On Nov. 6, hundreds of the hostages’ family members gathered at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre to record a version of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” in an event produced by Ben Yefet, who conducts Israel’s popular Koolulam singalongs.
Yet for many American Jews, Israeli anthems are a way for them to connect to the country. Yael Weinman, a lawyer from Washington, D.C., started creating shareable Spotify playlists that she called “Do Not Despair” when the war started. It included pop songs like “Out of the Depths” by Idan Reichl, “Chai” by Ofra Haza and “Hurts but Less” by Yehuda Poliker.
“For me, being in America and being so far away physically from Israel right now, it’s a way to feel closer to Israel at a time when being so disconnected is so painful,” said Weinman. She said it’s hard for many people like her not to be there. “Listening to the music is a way to feel more connected,” she says. “It’s comforting for me to listen to songs in Hebrew — it’s a way to feel comforted and not to despair.”
Oshri has been busy since the war pushed his song into the spotlight. In addition to working on new music that he hopes will bring comfort to his nation at war, he has played over 90 performances since the war started — at army bases, for wounded soldiers, for evacuated families, at funerals.
“I just sang for a kidnapped woman that was released,” Oshri says in the car from Israel, referring to Raz Ben Ami, who was released by Hamas on Nov. 29. Her husband Ohad remains captive in Gaza.
On Sunday, Oshri announced that he would begin selling jewelry with lines from his now-iconic song etched in his handwriting, with the proceeds to benefit the Israeli army.
Oshroi told JTA that every time he sings the song, in his heart he dedicates it to Dukarker. But he says he knows “Getting Over Depression” doesn’t belong to him any more. “It’s Israel’s song,” he said. “It’s the song our nation has chosen to listen to.”
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The post How an Israeli TikToker’s little-known song became the soundtrack to emotional wartime reunions appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New MIT Accuser Comes Forward With Harrowing Antisemitism Allegations
Illustrative” A pro-Hamas encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 6, 2024. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being accused by another alleged victim of refusing, as de-facto policy, to quell antisemitic discrimination which violated rights guaranteed by Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act.
The complainant, a male researcher, came forward to join a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed in June, which required its being amended to include him. According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, he endured psychological torment, having been swarmed by “masked” pro-Hamas activists clamoring for the destruction of Israel and students who “interrogated” his Jewish identity, pelting him with slurs and threatening to “prevent” his reproducing to bring “more Jewish children” into the world.
While administrators received formal complaints describing in harrowing detail the severity of the bullying being perpetrated against the student, they allegedly took no action. Left to stand alone, the student resorted to concealing his Jewishness on a campus which purports to be one of the most inclusive in the country.
“Antisemitism continues to persist at MIT, ultimately allowing the abuse to escalate until a promising Israeli researcher was forced from his lab. This not only deeply impacts this individual, but an entire campus and the communities this researcher, and other like them, could help through their work over the course of their careers,” Brandeis center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “MIT has had countless opportunities to stop this harassment and protect their Israeli and Jewish students and faculty. Instead, antisemitism has only worsened at MIT — an outcome made possible by the administration’s continued negligence.”
As previously reported, the other plaintiffs, Lior Alon and William Sussman, allege that MIT became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “resistance is justified when people are colonized.”
The suit added that Alon — who lived through both intifadas, or periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels, as a citizen of Israel and lost his childhood friend to the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre — has personally been victimized by campus antisemites. During anti-Israel encampment protests in spring term 2024, Alon was prohibited from entering the Kresge Lawn section of campus, through which he needed to pass to access his office. The edict allegedly came down from pro-Hamas activists and was enforced by an MIT police officer, who became an accessory to the group’s usurpation of school property.
Later, Alon was allegedly harassed by Michel DeGraff, a tenured linguistics professor. According to the suit, DeGraff posted videos of Alon on social media, replete with his “personal information, including details of his Israeli military services,” as well as spurious accounts of his life which portrayed him as sinister. The productions inspired misfits to approach him in the streets, as they showed up at “the grocery store and his child’s daycare.”
All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, MIT has allegedly ignored dozens of complaints of antisemitic discrimination. Discrimination there has been described in harrowing testimony provided by students at hearings called by the US Congress, in social media posts, and in comments to this publication. Only last year, MIT student Talia Khan told members of Congress that attending the institution “traumatized” her, charging that it has “become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus.”
Khan went on to recount MIT’s efforts to suppress expressions of solidarity with Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, which included ordering Jewish students to remove Israeli flags from public display while allowing Palestinian flags to fly across campus. She described the double standard as a “scandal” alienating Jewish students, staff, and faculty, many of whom resigned from an allegedly farcical committee on antisemitism. Staff were ignored, Khan said, after expressing fear that their lives were at risk, following an incident in which a mob of anti-Zionists amassed in front of the MIT Israel Internship office and attempted to infiltrate it, banging on its doors while “screaming” that Jews are committing genocide.
“These incidents demonstrate what happens when antisemitism is allowed to flourish in the absence of leadership and accountability,” Jonathan Polkes, global co-chair of legal practice White & Case, the law firm partnering with the Brandeis Center to litigate the suit, said on Wednesday. “Through its inaction, MIT allowed a tenured professor to use his position of power to persecute Jews without consequence — breaking both federal and university laws in the process. Our clients are taking a courageous stand against injustice, and we are proud to represent them.”
Commenting on the lawsuit, MIT has previously said, “MIT will defend itself in court regarding the allegations raised in the lawsuit. To be clear, MIT rejects antisemitism. As President Kornbluth has said, ‘Antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.’”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Charlie Kirk’s Producer Debunks Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories Pushed by Lawmaker, Podcasters, Pro-Iran Propagandist
US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) talks with reporters after a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club, Washington, DC, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA) via Reuters Connect
Last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has animated a wave of anti-Israel conspiracy theories, inspiring voices on both the far right and far left to join together in promoting an assortment of unsubstantiated claims inflected with conventional antisemitic tropes.
On Monday, Kirk’s producer and a billionaire supporter of Israel both rejected the allegations fueled by Max Blumenthal, a fiercely anti-Israel journalist promoted by Iranian state media who carries a long record of smearing the Jewish state.
Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone website, published claims from anonymous sources that Kirk had been pressured at a Hamptons gathering hosted by billionaire Bill Ackman weeks before his death. Kirk was reportedly “hammered” over his views on Israel by Ackman and other pro-Israel advocates, leaving him to feel blackmailed.
The report named Natasha Hausdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel as among those who berated Kirk. Hausdorff confirmed to the New York Post that she attended the meeting but called the accusation “categorically untrue” and added that whoever said it “is absolutely lying.” Ackman also denied the charge, calling the claim “totally false.”
Blumenthal has long written articles sympathetic to Hezbollah, the former Assad regime in Syria, and Hamas. In 2013, he notably published Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which Eric Alterman, media columnist for the leftist flagship magazine The Nation, described as “a propaganda tract” that could “have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed).”
The Grayzone report has since influenced Candace Owens, the podcaster who has been widely accused of antisemitism, and US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), among others, demonstrating a convergence between far-left and far-right figures in promoting antisemitic narratives and anti-Israel conspiracies.
Owens — who previously worked with Kirk before her shift to open, unapologetic opposition to Israel and promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, which resulted in her termination from her job as podcaster at The Daily Wire in March 2024 — claimed during a Monday monologue that pro-Israel forces staged an “intervention” with Kirk involving Ackman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She alleged Kirk, an outspoken supporter of Israel who often called out the dangers of antisemitism, was changing his views and offered “a ton of money” to remain pro-Israel, comparing the meeting to a “re-education camp.” Owens said Kirk refused the offers, warning her followers to be “very wary and suspicious of the people who are already telling us to stop asking questions about the Charlie Kirk assassination.”
The podcaster later clarified that she was not directly accusing Israel of orchestrating the murder but argued Kirk had faced “extreme pressure” over his views. Owens also shared social media posts criticizing Netanyahu, captioning one with “All will be revealed.”
Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, responded on X, saying Owens had “slandered” him by accusing him of staging an intervention and suggesting that he blackmailed Kirk. He denied ever offering Kirk or Turning Point USA, the political advocacy organization he started, any money, pressuring him on Israel, or threatening him. “In short, this was not an ‘intervention’ to ‘blackmail’ Charlie Kirk into adopting certain views on Israel,” Ackman wrote in his statement. He described his interactions with Kirk as cordial and said he admired him.
Ackman said he and Kirk first connected on Zoom in June, then worked together to organize a conference of conservative influencers in Bridgehampton in August. He said about 35 influencers attended, collectively reaching more than 100 million followers, and that discussions included a range of issues such as economics, dating, immigration, and Israel. He added that participants expressed varied views on Israel and US support for the country.
Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” corroborated Ackman’s account. In a statement, Kolvet said he had spoken with three Turning Point staffers who were present at the gathering in question and that “Bill never yelled at Charlie, never pressed him on Bibi [Netanyahu], never gave him a list of Charlie’s offenses against Israel.” Kolvet added that Kirk himself had told him he had a “cordial relationship” with Ackman and that the event was “productive.”
Despite those denials, the conspiracy theories gained further traction on the far right. Greene wrote on X that supporters should “believe Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson” over “Bibi Netanyahu (a foreign country’s leader),” before warning: “Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA.” She described Kirk as a “Christian martyr” and suggested Jewish influence threatened his movement.
On July 28, Greene accused Israel of engaging in a genocide in Gaza.
The New York Post reported that Owens’ comments relied in part on Blumenthal’s Grayzone article. In addition, Owens suggested law enforcement had intentionally allowed Kirk’s killer to evade capture, though police have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah with the shooting.
Authorities have not presented any evidence linking Israel or pro-Israel figures to the crime. Rather, the alleged shooter’s animosity toward Kirk’s positions on LGBTQ issues appears to have inspired the attack, according to prosecutors.
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Rising Antisemitism on European Campuses: Italian Professor Assaulted, French Students Excluded From Online Groups
Youths take part in the occupation of a street in front of the building of the Sciences Po University in support of Palestinians in Gaza, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Paris, France, April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
Violence and intimidation against Jewish and Israeli students as well as faculty are on the rise across European campuses, as an Italian professor was assaulted at the University of Pisa and students in France were excluded from online groups over their Jewish identities.
On Tuesday, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed a classroom at the University of Pisa in Tuscany, Italy, and assaulted an Italian professor who has opposed cutting ties with Israeli universities.
According to local reports, protesters burst into the classroom waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slurs, targeting the professor over his opposition to the university’s recent decision to sever ties with two Israeli universities.
A student who tried to intervene was attacked by protesters. When the professor stepped in to protect him, he too was assaulted and later hospitalized with injuries to his head and arms.
A questi soggetti, non frega nulla dei bambini di Gaza: è soltanto una scusa per diffondere la solita violenza rossa.
Università di Pisa, un professore è stato aggredito e preso a calci da un gruppo di studenti dei collettivi universitari di sinistra. pic.twitter.com/jvqh2uWB9C
— Francesca Totolo (@fratotolo2) September 16, 2025
On the same day, anti-Israel protesters disrupted a lecture by a visiting Israeli speaker at the Polytechnic University of Turin in northern Italy, shouting antisemitic slogans as they stormed the classroom.
Shortly after the incident, the university announced it was cutting ties with the speaker because he had defended the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the confrontation with the protesters.
Un gruppo di studenti di Cambiare Rotta ha interrotto una lezione al Politecnico di Torino tenuta da Pini Zorea, docente dell’università israeliana di Braude, per protestare contro l’uso delle tecnologie di riconoscimento facciale a fini di sorveglianza. “Non metteremo le nostre… pic.twitter.com/AhXmBsguzY
— Repubblica (@repubblica) September 16, 2025
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Israel activity on campuses has intensified, with Jewish and Israeli students facing frequent targeting and isolation in an increasingly hostile environment.
On Monday, a group of first-year economics students at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris created a group chat on Instagram that excluded several students, accusing them of being Zionists based on their Jewish-sounding names or surnames, French media reported.
“If there are any other Zionists in this group besides those I’ve already kicked out, leave now — we don’t want you here,” wrote one of the students who created the group, placing a Palestinian flag in the middle.
This latest antisemitic incident follows a similar episode last month, when a student created a poll in a WhatsApp group chat titled, “For or Against Jews?”
Yossef Murciano, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), denounced the rising wave of anti-Jewish incidents, noting that the group had posted notices across multiple campuses to highlight the latest antisemitic episodes.
“We reported the incident to the university, but so far nothing has been done. We were told that measures would be taken, but we don’t know when or how,” Murciano said.
In a press release, the university strongly condemned such “unacceptable behavior,” expressing its full support for those students affected by the recent antisemitic incidents.
The university also announced that it had submitted “all available evidence to the public prosecutor” regarding these two incidents and plans to initiate “disciplinary proceedings” against each of the perpetrators.
“These two acts, whose antisemitic nature seems clear, deserve a punishment commensurate with their severity,” the statement read.
French Minister of Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste strongly condemned the latest incidents, demanding a zero-tolerance approach.
“I stand with these young people, victims of antisemitism that must be opposed everywhere, including, sadly, in our universities. There is only one possible response: zero tolerance!” Baptiste wrote in a post on X.
A l’université Paris 1, des étudiants juifs exclus d’un groupe Whatsapp d’élèves sur la base de leurs noms ! J’apporte tout mon soutien à ces jeunes, victimes de l’antisémitisme que nous devons combattre partout, y compris, malheureusement, dans nos universités. Une seule ligne…
— Philippe Baptiste (@PhBaptiste) September 15, 2025
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), also spoke out against the incident, calling it a disturbing example of rising antisemitism on campuses.
“This is not a pro-Palestinian campaign, it is a campaign of antisemitic intimidation,” Arfi said in a post on X.
“Si d’autres sionistes comme ceux que j’ai déjà retirés sont présents, vous pouvez quitter. On ne veut pas de vous ici
”
A Paris 1 les noms juifs ont été exclus de groupes WhatsApp d’étudiants…
Ce n’est pas être propalestinien, c’est une campagne d’intimidation antisémite. https://t.co/dZz5LqPz2n
— Yonathan Arfi (@Yonathan_Arfi) September 15, 2025
The incidents occurred weeks after two international Jewish groups and a German watchdog published a report showing that antisemitism on European university campuses following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has fostered a “climate of fear” for Jewish students.
Then earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) released their own report which found that the vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism.