Aug. 25, 2006 14:46 | Updated Aug. 25, 2006 15:38 Pro-Nasrallah song popular in W. Bank By ASSOCIATED PRESS

They were struggling in a boy band, working the West Bank wedding circuit and dreaming of stardom.

Now the five singers who make up the Northern Band have come a little closer to their goal, with help from an unwitting ally - Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

At the height of the Israel-Hizbullah war, the band wrote new lyrics, in praise of Nasrallah, for an old tune. The "Hawk of Lebanon" song tapped into Nasrallah's huge popularity among Palestinians and became an instant hit.

The song is being played on Arab TV networks, used as a ring tone for cell phones, passed around on e-mail and distributed on pirate CDs and tapes. Music stores have trouble keeping up with demand, in part because IDF soldiers have confiscated some Nasrallah tapes and CDs at checkpoints.

Basking in its newfound success, the band has doubled its fee per performance to NIS 1,000 (US$230). At a recent wedding in the town of Ramallah, the band was asked to play the Nasrallah song six times.

Lead singer and manager Alaa Abu al-Haija, 28, said he gives the audiences what they want to hear. "I see people turning toward Islam, so I have to sing to that," said Alaa, sitting in the living room of his family's two-story house in the northern West Bank village of Yamoun.

The lyrics consist of constant repetition of a few simple rhymes: "Hey, you, hawk of Lebanon. Hey, you, Nasrallah. Your men are from Hizbullah and victory is yours with God's help."

America goes to war to defeat two safe havens for terrorist and at the same time America in spite of the evidence of what Gaza has become with out the IDF keeping the lid on the place, still seeks to create a new terror base.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525943871&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull