Lyrics to “Dubai Dubai” by Noam Shuster-Eliassi + Translation
In January 2022, a satirical song title “Dubai Dubai” by an Israeli comedian, Noam Shuster-Eliassi, started going viral in the Arab states. Why: because it’s a song that criticises the Abraham Accords, and because it’s by an Israeli of Jewish background.
After first being performed on the comedy show “El Shusmo”, “Dubai Dubai” has been re-published on many mainstream media outlets in the Arab world. It has garnered a lot of attention.
The performer, Noam Shuster-Eliassi, is pretty outspoken about her views for equal rights for Palestinians (see her Twitter feed). She speaks Arabic (as well as Hebrew and English) and performs the song in a mixture of Arabic (of the Palestinian/Levantine variant) and Hebrew.
The song criticises the 2020 normalisation of relations between Israel and the UAE, which happened in spite of the ongoing lack of recognition of rights of people in Gaza and the West Bank, getting a lot of criticism from activists as a result.
There has been a diverse range of reactions to the song which are summarised in part in this article in Haaretz. In a nutshell, the Arab world likes that the criticism is coming from an Israeli.
(Sadly, she took her video private.)
One thing I really enjoy about the song is how it seamlessly goes between Hebrew and Arabic — in this case, the Palestinian/ Levantine form of spoken Arabic. (See here for an overview of Arabic dialects.) By moving between Arabic and Hebrew even in the middle of a single phrase, Shuster-Eliassi makes a statement about peaceful coexistence that is much more subtle than the satire of her lyrics.
Because we mostly post about language and culture with a general message of “Learn other people’s languages, see through the eyes of others, and increase global understanding”, I thought it’d be useful to post the mixed Hebrew and Arabic lyrics of Shuster-Eliassi’s song “Dubai Dubai”.
Lyrics to “Dubai Dubai”
Here are the lyrics to the song “Dubai Dubai”, broken into three parts, with English translations of the Hebrew and Arabic.
This is mostly transcribed from the videos but with a couple of minor corrections.
Both Hebrew and Arabic are right-to-left scripts, so it’s easy to put them together. But you can recognise the different languages through the different scripts.
| Arabic/Hebrew | English |
|---|---|
| في بآخر النفق ضي | There’s light at the end of the tunnel |
| لو كلّ العرب زي | If all Arabs were like |
| دبي دبي دبي دبي دبي | Dubai, Dubai, Dubai, Dubai, Dubai |
| “بيحبّوا “עם ישראל חי | They want to live in Israel |
| ما رح يرمونا بالمي | They won’t throw us in the sea |
| دبي دبي دبي دبي دبي | Dubai, Dubai, Dubai, Dubai, Dubai |
| Arabic/Hebrew | English |
|---|---|
| مفيش احلى من عرب | There’s nothing better than Arabs |
| معهم ملايين | With millions |
| ونسيوا شعب انتكب | Who forgot the people of Nakba |
| نسيوا فلسطين | Who forgot Palestine |
| قالوا تبقى הלוואי | They said they wanted to extend |
| إسرائيل من ماي لماي | Israel from sea to sea |
| دبي دبي | Dubai, Dubai |
| Arabic/Hebrew | English |
|---|---|
| دبي دبي، עוד לא הפסדנו أملنا | Dubai, Dubai, we still haven’t lost our hope |
| دبي دبي، نكوي وعي العرب كي | Dubai Dubai, burning the consciousness of Arabs |
| وزي دبي، ينسوا أنه غزة حاصرنا | And like Dubai, forget that we imprisoned Ghaza |
| כמה זה טוב لو كل العرب زي دبي | How good would it be if all Arabs were like Dubai |
| بحبسكم במחסומים | We imprison you at checkpoints |
| و باخد سلفي في מגדלים | And we take selfies in the towers |
Some of these words I didn’t know (even in the first verse, “ضي”). But they’re mostly directly from her subtitles.
(If I’ve got something wrong, please let me know — as a language learner, spotting typos in Hebrew and Arabic takes me longer.)
