Tamer Nafar / تامر النفار

Tamer Nafar

Tamer Nafar (Arabic: تامر النفار, Hebrew: תאמר נפאר; born June 6, 1979) is an Israeli rapper, actor, screenwriter and social activist who identifies as Palestinian. He is the leader and a founding member of DAM, the first Palestinian hip hop group.
Nafar was born to Fawzi Nafar and Nadia Awadi. He grew up in poverty in Lod, a mixed Arab-Israeli city in Israel, which was a major hub for drug smuggling and crime.
Tamer discovered hip-hop at age 17, when he began learning English by listening to Tupac and translating his lyrics to Arabic using an English-Arabic dictionary
DAM
In 2000, their friend Mahmood Jreri joined the Nafar brothers to establish DAM, the first Palestinian hip-hop group.
The trio named themselves Da Arab MCs to create the acronyms DAM, a word that means lasting or persisting in Arabic and blood in Hebrew (דם).[6] In an interview for Democracy Now (2008),[7] Tamer said that the group's name suggested “eternal blood, like we will stay here forever,” evoking a politics of resilience and survival (or دام - sumood, in Arabic).
The group members are the grandchildren of those who experienced the Nakba and the children of those who mobilized the Arab minority in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. This generation is challenging the insults to Palestinian identity and advocates Palestinian self-determination while objecting to racism and inequality.

DAM is notable for their ability to rap in English, Arabic and Hebrew. The group first rapped in English and then in Hebrew as the words flowed better this way.
DAM understood that their potential for meaningful social impact depends on their ability to express their message in Arabic, Hebrew and English, drawing upon vernacular phrases, slang, obscenities and indigenous references to each cultural frame. In this way, DAM is able to reach disparate audiences.

On September 3, 2000, Tamer's friend Booba (Hussam Abu Gazazae) was killed during a drive-by shooting, an incident that drove Tamer to record his first protest song with a political reference, despite the fact that his friend had been killed by an Arab. A cover of Abd al Majeed Abdalla's song "Ya Tayeb al Galb", the song was called "Booba" and featured Ibrahim Sakallah on the hook.

In the outbreak of the Second Intifada in October 2000, Tamer and Mahmood decided to write their first direct political song "Posheem Hapim me Peshaa" (Innocent Criminals). It was recorded over an instrumental of "Hail Mary" by Tupac and featured inciting lines such as "when Jews protest, the cops use clubs / when Arabs protest, the cops take their souls" and "if it is a democracy how come I'm not mentioned in your anthem" followed by the chorus "before you judge me, before you understand me, walk in my shoes, and you will hurt your feet, because we are criminals, innocent criminals."

The song created controversy in the Israeli media and put DAM in conflict with some of their fellow Israeli rappers such as Subliminal. Much of the subsequent fall-out was recorded in the documentary Channels of Rage. Despite the controversy, the song was later remixed by Israeli rock musician Aviv Geffen and American-Israeli director Udi Aloni made a music video for the song in 2003.