So, two directions this goes in. Firstly, the comment about how Israeli musicians ought to perform "Israeli music". A rather extraordinary degree of igniorance about the whole culture of Israel there. In fact Israeli musicians are doing an EXCELLENT job of making music relevant to the society they live in, by combining music brought from wherever in the world Jewish immigrants have come from with the whole range of music that was there before they arrived. The heterogeneity of the result is the whole POINT. It's one of the major areas of the culture where Jews (of whatever regional origin) and Palestinians (of whatever ideology) can cooperate in a serious, productive and often exhilarating way.

Excellent point, Jack. Just the one I was going to make with Wav, thanks for putting it into words so well.

My Arab coworkers all have Israeli songs on their phones, as well as Arab music. I once talked through Skype with a SYRIAN, who wanted me to translate the words of an Israeli song. The song I linked to, Jerusalem of Gold, is considered one of our folksongs, everyone knows it, but the melody is a modification of a Basque tune, brought over by Paco Ibanez. One of my favourite bands is Habrera Hativit, which combined North African and Indian music with Hasidic music too. Ehud Banai, a folk-rocker (can't think of a better term) combines Persian music with Arab, Yemenite, American, Irish and other genres. Nothing sounds more Israeli. Even our folk music is a fusion of four main genres: Eastern European, Ladino (music of the Mediteranean Jews) Yemenite, and Arab. Emanuel Zamir, in an atempt to create a new, Israeli sound which would be closer to our historic roots, seriously studied Bedouin music. When as chief-of-staff, Rafael Eitan reformed the army bands into choirs, he was asked what sort of songs they should sing. Traditional Israeli songs. When pressed for details, he replied: Russian songs, of course.