How an Israeli Firm Scams Arab Artists

There are about two million Palestinians living inside Israel. Like their Arab peers all over the world, those people enjoy Arabic music and play it at their weddings, parties and functions. So when an Israeli court orders wedding hall operators to pay a intellectual fee for playing Arabic music so that Arab artists can make some money.

The thing is, Arab artists get none of the fees, but rather an Israeli company "Akoom" and a French one Saysim are the plaintiff and want to collect those money from the wedding hall operators. Those two companies claim to be representative of Arab entertainers, lyricists and musicians. some of the artists their names have been used to collected fees are late Egyptian composer Balegh Hamdi, anti Zionism Palestinian/Lebanese composer Ziad Butrus. You know Ziad would not want to give Israel a dime.

Weird? Arab entertainers have no idea what is going on and do not know what would an Israeli company collects fees in their behalf even though they have no interest in working with Israeli companies--there is no normalization. It seems that many are unaware of those practices and might have been duped by singing into some membership agreements.

to read more in Arabic (here)