Did the UAE's Most Famous Singer Really Compose a Song for an Israeli Band?

Despite the normalization between the UAE and Israel becoming official two weeks ago, after officials of the two countries joined the US President for a signing ceremony at the White House, Arab online commentators still feel surprised at the cooperation between Israeli and Emirati professionals in different sectors. Most recently, the Emirati musician and singer Hussain Al Jassmi has sparked a lot of criticism after his name was featured as the composer for a song played by an Israeli band.

However, the song is one Al Jassmi's most famous tracks which was remixed by the Israeli band Firqat Alnoor, a band that introduced itself as "an Israeli orchestra for Arabic and middle eastern classical music."

The song was played by the band in what they have called "a gesture to celebrate the peace agreement" between the two countries but unlike the assumption that enraged social media users, it wasn't composed by Al Jassmi for the Israeli band.

On the other hand, the song rearranged by Firqat Alnoor was celebrated by the UAE's  Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development Noura Al Kaabi, as she posted it on her official Twitter account calling it a "beautiful one."

Translation: "My only issue here is that Hussain Al Jassmi composed it. Why did he do this?"

Over the last few weeks, normalization between the UAE and Israel have resulted in several business deals between companies in both countries, in addition to the first air flight between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi, which carried several US and Israeli officials to the UAE a few days before the signing of the Abraham Accords on the 15th of September in Washington, DC.