March 2, 2011
Noy Alooshe

Photo by Doe Garbash

Cue the dancing girls: Noy Alooshe, a 31-year-old Tel Aviv journalist/musician, has a hit on his hands. “Zenga Zenga”, his electro hip-hop spoof of Libya’s Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s recent tirade against revolutionaries, has nearly two million viewers around the world gyrating along with the sexy “bodyguards” enhancing the video. And many of them are Arabs.

“It’s really strange that someone like Qaddafi made me a YouTube star,” Alooshe tells ISRAEL21c, noting the ongoing unrest on Libyan streets. “This is the real revolution.”

The clip had received 1.8 million hits just six days after it was uploaded from Alooshe’s home computer. The first deluge of comments – overwhelmingly positive — came in as a result of Twitter and Facebook alerts he sent to about 30 media outlets and trendsetters in the Arab world. At first, these viewers didn’t realize the creator was an Israeli Jew. But even after they did, most were still smiling.

Before long, the clip’s fame spread to Europe and beyond. “Everyone started talking about it,” says Alooshe, who describes his politics as “very liberal.”

He has been interviewed for countless radio shows, five TV stations, six websites and seven newspapers including The New York Times.

Alooshe couldn’t resist making the video when he saw Qaddafi’s February 22 speech promising to hunt down Libyan protesters “inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway.”

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