http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/05/bob-dylans-nightmare-israel-june-20th.html

 Thursday, 26 May 2011
 Bob Dylan’s Nightmare – Israel June
20th<http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/05/bob-dylans-nightmare-israel-june-20th.html>

<http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I_Pby1nddIQ/Td26nwTyhzI/AAAAAAAAGjA/8Q9zHo4dhNo/s1600/old%2Bwizened%2Bman%2Bdylan.jpg>I
have to make a confession. I’ve been a Dylan aficionado for most of my life.
Together with the Beatles, Stones and Simon and Garfunkel he defined the
‘60s musically for me. He was the child of the civil rights movement, who
played at the Washington March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, the year of
Alabama’s last stand.

Unfortunately the older he has grown, the more foolish and greedy Dylan has
become. It is as if the elder Dylan was determined to act out the worst
caricatures of his younger self, a form of self-castigation. Who for example
could imagine back in 1964 that Dylan would allow a song of his (Forever
Young) to appear in a [image: Align Centre]commercial for Pepsi Cola? The
line about ‘money doesn’t talk, it swears’ and the stanza from one of his
greatest but simple songs, It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding comes to mind:

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

I know that people are inclined to talk up his more recent work but for me
the last great albums were from the 1970s –Blood on the Tracks and Street
Legal in particular. There then followed his Christian period and the truly
atrocious Slow Train Coming. Dylan was thought to have reached the bottom of
the pit when he told
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/photos/the-evolution-of-bob-dylan-20110509/born-again-1979-1981-0025636>his
audience in 1980

"I told you 'The Times They Are A-Changin' and they did!" he told a crowd in
New Mexico. "I said the answer was ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and it was! And I'm
telling you now, Jesus is coming back, and he is! And there is no other way
of salvation."

In 1971 he had declared <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Kahane>, in an
interview in Time magazine, that the Neo-Nazi Zionist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was
‘"a really sincere guy. He's really put it all together.’ One can only
assume that it is Dylan’s ignorance and political idiocy which prevented him
from understanding that the very segregation he once opposed was at the
heart of Kahane’s philosopy, and worse.

Today Dylan is ploughing the same furrow that has guided his career – a love
of the money that he lyrically disdains. It should therefore come as no
surprise that he is playing in Israel on June 20th. An Israel which
maintains a brutal occupation in the West Bank, bombs and murders in Gaza
and which treats its Arab citizens in the same way as South Africa treated
Black people under Apartheid. But no doubt the money is good. The fact that
at 70 years of age Dylan is already fabulously rich and shows no signs of
wishing to spend his fortune in retirement, one can only assume that it is a
love of money for its own sake that is his guiding principle.

As to whether or not to try and dissuade him from going I disagree with
Lenni Brenner. Of course Dylan will no more listen to the voices of Boycott
than he did to those who asked him to speak out against the Vietnam War. But
the call for Dylan not to go to Israel is aimed primarily at those who still
fondly imagine that the Dylan of 1963 bears any resemblance to the old man
of today.
<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1thn74XASkE/Td26nlsNyEI/AAAAAAAAGi4/lDgoqxN11SA/s1600/Dylan%2B69.jpg>Dylan
is a pastiche of his former self. His lyrics are often borrowed wholesale
from others, without acknowledgement and the songs themselves are dark and
broody for the most part. They represent the depths to which Dylan has sunk
since his visit to a dying Woody Guthrie, an idol of whom no more is spoken.

The words of one of his most underrated songs, Masters of War, come to mind
when one thinks of Dylan taking blood-soaked shekels whilst he fawns in
front of an almost completely Jewish audience.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

Below is an article by Lenni Brenner, the Jewish anti-Zionist who wrote Zionism
in the Age of the Dictators about the collaboration between the Nazis and
Zionist movement and also an article on his racist pro-settler song
‘Neighborhood
Bully’. As the right-wing Jerusalem Post
noted<http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Music/Article.aspx?id=216945>Neighborhood
Bull was ‘Dylan’s
1983 Likudnik paean to Israel and the Jewish people. Chances? None. He has
never performed
it.’<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wFaoiXwvCnQ/Td26nK58oFI/AAAAAAAAGio/wlYO0og5SAk/s1600/bob1_1777524c.jpeg>Has-Been
Bob Dylan's May 24 Birthday
By Lenni Brenner

Hi folks,

I recently received a request from an Irish anti-Zionist to try to get Bob
Dylan to cancel his upcoming June 20 engagement in Israel. Below are my
answer to the Irish comrade and an article I wrote in 2003 on how I
triggered off Bob's song writing career in 1961. The Dylan of that era was a
genius, but today he's such an obvious intellectual has-been that his
playing in Israel in 2011 will end up being an embarrassment for Zionism.

*********************************************

Hi comrade,

There are two reasons why people shouldn’t waste their time trying to get
Dylan to boycott Israel.

1 - He’d play in Hell if he could make money at it.

2 - All intelligent Americans, Jew or gentile, see today’s Dylan as a
crackpot.

Below is an article I published in 2003 in CounterPunch re me and Bob. I
ended it by declaring that

“His radical songs will live on. But “do a good deed and throw it into the
sea.” His later theological trapeze act, swinging between Jesus and the late
Lubavicher rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, can only be described as the
all-time-most-pathetic American Jewish tragi-comedy shtik.”

Bob was born into a Jewish family, but the Bob I met in 1961 had become an
atheist lefty who went on to write the political anthems of that age. Then
he became a Jesus-freak and, later yet, he topped that folly by reconverting
to Orthodox Judaism. And within Orthodoxy he hangs in with the Lubavicher
sub-sect, whose followers believe that Schneerson was the messiah, who will
- any minute now - rise out of his coffin and save his followers.

Let me put this in its real world sociological context. Orthodoxy is
Israel’s official religion. But no more than 10% of America’s Jews are
Orthodox. Every day, Orthodox males say, as part of their morning
prayer, “Thank
you God for making me a man, not a woman.”

About 40% of American Jews belong to either the Conservative or Reform
Jewish sects. They have dropped that male chauvinist manure and now have
women rabbis and gay rabbis. The other 50% have completely abandoned any
type of Judaism.

So now we have a unique situation. Bob is one of the most famous people on
the planet. But his fame is due to songs he wrote in his leftist period.
When he got into Christianity he discredited himself intellectually with 99%
of Jews, from Orthodox to atheist. We may disagree on everything else, but
we all believe that Christianity is a fairy-tale, and that any Jew who
converts to any form of it is sick in the head. The result is that when he
got involved with the Lubavichers, most Jews didn’t cheer, not even most
Orthodox, except for the Lubavichers, who are ridiculed even by most
Orthodox. We all saw his reconversion as another chapter in his mad
autobiography.

Since all of this is from a Jewish perspective, it may be hard for Irish
folks to understand. So let me give you an Irish analogy. Imagine if Bob
O’Dylan was born into a Catholic family. Then he became an atheist leftist
and a great songwriter. Then O’Dylan joined Paisley’s Protestant church.
Later he reconverted to Catholicism, studied hard and became a priest. Who
on the Island - atheist, Catholic or Protestant - would respect Father
O’Dylan?
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gOiOypyBzao/Td26naSDytI/AAAAAAAAGiw/sYooJAMsHkY/s1600/bringing%2Bit%2Ball%2Bback%2Bhome.jpg>
American Jews have the highest income and education of any ethnic or
religious stratum in the U.S. That means that they are the most travelled.
But the Israeli government admits that more adult American Jews go to
Britain than Israel. So I suggest that you just ignore his Tel Aviv gig, or
else play with it. Something like

‘Only American Jewish fools like Bob Dylan go to Israel. Educated Jews go to
Shakespeare’s home town. So what is the new Dublin government doing to get
them to come to the land of Joyce and Yeats?’
<http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7EXZwajvzGM/Td26m7cH5tI/AAAAAAAAGig/JhTayak1uVk/s1600/blonde%2Bon%2Bblonde.jpg>
Stay well, give 'em hell, Lenni


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digest: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    [email protected]

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Reply via email to