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Two late iconic Israeli singers have been resurrected via AI for a duet. Not everyone is happy about it.
(JTA) — Two popular Israeli singers — one the “Madonna of the East,” the other the “king” of Mizrahi music as well as a convicted rapist — have teamed up on a new song in honor of their country’s 75th birthday.
The twist: Both Ofra Haza and Zohar Argov have been dead for decades.
Their collaboration, “Here Forever,” wasn’t unearthed in a dusty archive. Instead, the song and its accompanying video are essentially deepfakes, created using artificial intelligence that mined recordings from when they were alive to fabricate a lifelike performance of a song composed long after their deaths.
Their families signed off on the song, a soulful duet about Israel’s bygone past that has caught on among Israeli listeners. But some in the country are asking why Argov, who died in prison while facing another rape charge, should be a centerpiece of Israel’s Independence Day celebrations.
Meanwhile, others who were close to the artists, including Haza’s longtime manager Bezalel Aloni, have panned the song.
“The song does not resemble the tone of her divine voice,” Aloni told Israeli news outlet N12. “She broke through thanks to her artistry, and none of that is reflected in this piece. ֿI want to cry for her.”
An Argov impersonator who was part of the team that created the song also slammed it in the press, calling it “shameful” for not accurately reproducing Argov’s voice.
The song is part of a growing trend of using AI to create new tracks with pop stars’ voices. Fresh, but fake, songs or covers have been published using the vocals of artists like Drake and Rihanna, raising ethical questions as to who owns an artist’s voice or likeness.
The new song’s popularity — the video has racked up 200,000 views since launching last week, and the song is the 16th-most-requested in Israel on Shazam, a music app — also suggests that Israelis are embracing nostalgia for a shared Israeli past at a time when the country is occupied with social strife and political upheaval.
“Not to be too cliched, but with everything that’s been happening in the last three months, that offered a lot of inspiration,” Oudi Antebi, CEO and co-founder of Session 42, the Israeli music production company spearheading the AI music project, told the Times of Israel.
The video for “Here Forever” uses archival footage of the singers to make them look like they’re singing the song, combined with grainy scenes from Israel during earlier eras of its history.
Both Haza and Argov played a role in shaping that history through their music, which earned them distinctive nicknames. Haza, who died in 2000, was dubbed the “Madonna” of Israel, and is perhaps best known to American audiences for her singing on the soundtrack of the 1998 animated musical film “The Prince of Egypt.” Her musical style blended Mizrahi influences and pop.
Argov was called, simply, the “king” of Mizrahi music, and he helped mainstream the genre that is rooted in the songs and poetry of Jews from across the Middle East and North Africa. But his life and legacy have been tainted by a conviction for rape as well as other criminal charges. He died by suicide in a prison cell in 1987 while facing his second rape charge, nearly 10 years after the conviction. Even so, in the decades since his death, his music has become ever more popular. He is one of the most-played artists on Israeli radio, even after growing awareness of sexual abuse in the years since the beginning of the #MeToo movement.
“I had hoped, but it’s hard to say I expected” that attitudes toward Argov would change, Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, told the Times of Israel last year in an article exploring Argov’s legacy. “Until there is societal shaming, sexual violence will continue all over the place,” she said. “There have to be people pushing for it … the only way to make change is through activism.”
In a column last week, Israeli music journalist Avi Sasson suggested that Argov’s rape conviction should have been grounds for excluding him from “Here Forever.”
“What about this pairing?” Sasson wrote in the Israeli publication Ynet. “After all, Ofra Haza and Zohar Argov worked in parallel in the ’70s and ’80s, and when they could have collaborated, they chose not to. Moreover, did anyone stop to think about the fact that, had Ofra Haza been alive today, in the #MeToo era, perhaps she wouldn’t have opted to record a duet with Argov, a person who was convicted of rape and later ended his life in a jail cell?”
For his part, Aloni said that Haza “vehemently refused to collaborate with Zohar Argov,” but the manager did not attribute that refusal to Argov’s rape conviction. Rather, although Haza is widely described as a Mizrahi singer and was of Yemeni Jewish descent, Aloni said Haza did not consider her musical genre to be Mizrahi.
Antebi said that after conducting a poll to see which artists best represented Israel, the vast majority voted for Haza and Argov.
Antebi told the Times of Israel that the track is “a love song for the nation.” Its chorus seems to allude not only to Israeli resilience but also to the technological innovation that made the song possible — and that has placed new words in Argov and Haza’s mouths long after their passing.
“I’ll stay here always, I’ve missed you,” the lyrics read. “Even if you can’t see it, we are here forever.”
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Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America
(JTA) — The FBI accused an 18-year-old man of buying an AK-47 assault rifle with plans to commit a mass shooting in support of ISIS at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the largest indoor shopping mall in North America.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, Minnesota, was charged on Wednesday with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism, according to a federal complaint filed on Wednesday.
Mohamud’s attorney did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Mohamud wanted to attack the Mall of America because he believed its owners to be Jewish, the FBI said in a statement. He planned to kill between 30 and 60 people, according to messages he exchanged with a confidential source, according to the complaint.
Mall of America is owned and operated by Triple Five Group, controlled by the Ghermezian family, a Canadian family of Iranian Jewish origin.
Messages sent in September 2026 included a video in which Mohamud pledged allegiance to ISIS, the complaint said. He planned his attack for Oct. 24 because he expected a crowd at the Hmong Arts Celebration scheduled for that day.
The complaint said an undercover FBI agent sold an AK-47 rendered inoperable, four 30-round magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition to Mohamud for $600 on Oct. 6. During the sale, Mohamud confirmed his plans to commit a mass shooting. Mohamud was arrested shortly after the sale.
The complaint said Mohamud wanted to commit an attack similar to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in which 49 victims were killed; the Bondi Beach mass-shooting in Sydney last December, during which 15 victims were killed during a Hanukkah celebration; and a New Orleans truck-ramming attack that killed 14 victims in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025.
The investigation into Mohamud began around December 2024, when he messaged the confidential source on multiple social media platforms, according to the complaint, detailing his desire to travel to Somalia to join a group that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. If travel was not possible due to financial constraints, he said would move forward with an attack in Minnesota.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Minnesota man charged with ISIS-inspired plot on Jewish-owned Mall of America appeared first on The Forward.
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Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say
(JTA) — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was asked multiple times by a debate moderator on Thursday which country he considers a bigger threat to the U.S.: Iran or Israel.
Each time, he parried.
“That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” said El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
“I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight,” he added, describing both as “kind of dangerous.” Another attempt yielded a similar response, with El-Sayed denouncing “one at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
El-Sayed, a former county health official, was responding to a question repeatedly posed by WOOD TV8 political reporter Rick Albin, in a debate against his Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. The two candidates hurled insults at each other during the hourlong discussion, often returning to issues related to Israel and the Middle East.
After making criticism of Israel a top issue in his primary campaign, El-Sayed eked out a victory against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in that early August race. Although he has earned the support of many democratic socialists, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed has stated that he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Rogers, on the other hand, has the official endorsement of President Donald Trump. However, the candidate has been distancing himself from the president, including by criticizing the trade war with Canada.
Results of a CBS News poll published earlier this week showed El-Sayed leading Rogers, by 45.6% to 41.4%, with a 3.8% margin of error. A Quantus Insights poll released on Wednesday, meanwhile, gave El-Sayed a slightly narrower lead, with 47.6% to Rogers’s 46.5%, and a 7.8% margin of error.
While El-Sayed has been meeting with Jewish voters and leaders, he has not budged on certain issues of concern to many Jewish voters. For example, he has indicated only a willingness to recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state if Israelis and Palestinians jointly agree to it..
Liberal Michigan rabbis last month signed a petition from the Zioness Action Fund, a progressive Zionist group, calling upon the Democratic Party to agree to “nonnegotiable” principles related to Jewish safety and Israel. A separate cohort of Michigan Jewish leaders urged community members to reject El-Sayed entirely.
Rogers and his representatives in August indicated that they would like AIPAC to refrain from spending directly on him in the general election, according to media reports. Asked about this at the Thursday debate, he said he’d welcome “anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country.”
El-Sayed condemned the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, but added that “hurt people hurt people,” which critics interpreted as justifying the attacker’s actions. He later apologized for those remarks.
Rogers has repeatedly slammed his opponent for taking funds from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Unity & Justice Fund super PAC and other groups and individuals.
El-Sayed, on the other hand, accused Rogers on Thursday of accepting corporate PAC money and labeled him the “guy who’s going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp.”
The two candidates criticized each other’s policies and interrupted each other so often that Albin, the moderator, needed to step in.
“We’ve got dozens of questions we want to get to,” Albin said. “You can’t litigate all of these with 14 different rebuttals.”
Even prior to a pause for ads, Albin announced that the station is going “to take a break from this pleasant conversation.” When they returned, he declared that “in 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial, but it did.”
The candidates continued to clash over Iran, with El-Sayed accusing the U.S. government of teaching “the Iranian regime that they had a choke [hold] on the Strait of Hormuz.”
“That’s the kind of policy you’re going to get from a guy who wants to be a sock puppet for the Trump administration,” El-Sayed added.
Rogers, meanwhile, claimed that the U.S. had set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least 20 years, adding that “this would be the time to wrap it up.”
As for Israel, Rogers said he supports “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.” The only way Israel could lose his support, Rogers stated, would be if the country talked about using nuclear weapons.
Israel is widely assessed to possess an arsenal of approximately 90 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.
Albin then turned to El-Sayed, noting the politician’s opposition to direct U.S. military funding for Israel. He asked, however, whether that position could change “if Israel were attacked tomorrow by Iran or another state actor.”
“I want our tax dollars spent here,” El-Sayed responded. “Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran, and of course, my colleague, who thinks there’s a war for everything, went right along with it.”
When Albin pushed again for a yes or no answer, El-Sayed replied that he doesn’t want the U.S. “buying weapons for other countries.”
Toward the end of the discussion related to the Middle East, Rogers recognized the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. He blasted his opponent for failing “to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders.”
To this accusation, El-Sayed responded, “I’ve condemned that. I didn’t turn it into theater like you did.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Is Israel or Iran a bigger threat to the U.S.? Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed won’t say appeared first on The Forward.
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Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts
(JTA) — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger Rep. Mike Collins clashed over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, U.S. weapons sales to Israel and the war in Iran during Thursday’s debate in Georgia’s closely watched Senate race.
The race could help determine control of the Senate, with implications for U.S. policy toward Israel.
The incumbent Ossoff, who is Jewish, has long supported Israel’s security, but over the last two years he has criticized its conduct in the Gaza war and voted to block some U.S. arms sales to the country.
A day after the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, Ossoff was asked whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, whether he was concerned about growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party and whether he would support a proposed $2.8 billion U.S. weapons package for Israel.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff responded. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family.
“I also care about innocent Palestinian life,” Ossoff continued, “and make no apology for my votes.”
Collins accused Ossoff of having aligned himself with anti-Israel figures including Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Imagine being a U.S. senator, and out there recruiting, endorsing, and supporting these people that want to see Israel wiped off the map,” Collins said. “They would rather be for Iran than for Israel — now that’s who Jon Ossoff is supporting.”
Piker had previously called Ossoff a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He subsequently disavowed Ossoff after the senator condemned antisemitic comments, Jewish Insider reported in August.
During the hourlong debate, Ossoff repeatedly condemned the U.S. war in Iran while highlighting Collins’ support for it. At least three times Ossoff called the war in Iran a “disaster” or “disastrous,” and he blamed the war for rising gas prices in the state of Georgia.
Collins, on the other hand, said he supported the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “The president had every right to go in there and make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” Collins said. “The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], they had already sounded the bells, the alarms that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon. And the thing is, Iran doesn’t only want to decimate and kill Israel, they want us as well.”
The evening was not without its personal attacks. Collins described Ossoff as “a radical” and a “trust-fund kid who has never had a job in his life,” while Ossoff repeatedly spotlighted the alleged ties between Collins and white nationalists. A recent report alleged that Collins’ former aides were involved with antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.
Ossoff leads Collins by about nine percentage points in FiftyPlusOne’s polling average as of Oct. 9.
The candidates are scheduled for a second debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club on Oct. 13.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ossoff says IDF violated law of armed conflict in Gaza, but genocide is an issue for international courts appeared first on The Forward.
