Sameach
song performed by PingPong
"Sameyakh" or "Sameach" (Hebrew script: שמייח; meaning "happy") is a song by the techno / pop band PingPong, a quartet consisting of Guy Asif, Roy Arad, Yifat Giladi, and Ahal Eden. The song represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2000.
Themes
The song describes an Israeli woman on a kibbutz who appears to be depressed, having a torrid affair with a Damascus man, who appears in the video in a traditional headdress, or keffiyeh. It makes references to wars and natural disasters such as floods, and when the reference to the cucumber is made, the singers sing into cucumbers. It also used the suggestive line "I want to do it with him all day long".
Eurovision
The group had originally entered the contest as a joke. At the end of the performance the group waved small flags of both Israel and Syria; the waving of the Flag of Syria led to the performance being disendorsed by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority after the group had refused to withdraw the use of the flag for the final. The performance also garnered controversy when the group, at the last minute, decided to sing the song's English title ("Be Happy") in place of the Hebrew title, after previously having stated that they would sing the song entirely in Hebrew.
The song qualified for the Eurovision Song Contest after defeating 83 other acts earlier in the year, without incident. However, upon brandishing the new dance and flag routine at the dress rehearsal, which coincided with Independence Day of Israel, Israeli talkbalk radio and newspapers were inundated with complaints at a period when Israel had withdrawn from southern Lebanon due to guerrilla attacks by the Hezbollah militia, which was supported by a Syrian government which did not recognise Israel's sovereignty.
“Sameach” enters the record as song performed by PingPong. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sameach, song and performed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Sameach” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sameach, song and performed provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7409225. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Sameach” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.