No surprise Bob Dylan is visiting the ‘neighborhood bully’
You may have seen the recent letter by the Israeli peace and justice group “Boycott From Within” (BfW) asking Bob Dylan to heed the Palestinian call for BDS and therefore not perform in Israel. The letter follows reports of Dylan’s 2011 summer tour, during which he will perform at Ramat Gan Stadium on June 20th.
The BfW letter hits all the right notes and speaks truth. It asks Dylan “not to perform in Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights,” explaining that “a performance in Israel, today, is a vote of support for its policies of oppression.” The letter speaks of ethnic cleansing, land theft, martial law, air strikes, and massacres. It beseeches the folk legend, who has “been part of a civil rights movement,” to stand with the oppressed against the aggressor. BfW writes that “BDS is a powerful and united civil initiative in the face of a brutal military occupation and apartheid. It’s a nonviolent alternative to a waning armed struggle and it has reaped many successes and instilled much hope, in the past six years.”
A Ha’aretz article proudly notes that the Dylan concert will be held “where Leonard Cohen and Elton John recently performed,” and is being promoted by “Marcel Avraham, the promoter who organized the Leonard Cohen and Elton John concerts – as well as the upcoming Justin Bieber concert that will be held over Passover.”
So, will Bob Dylan – the man who wrote “Masters of War” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in 1963 – heed the call? Of course not. Although Dylan would appear to be the perfect political ally, his human and civil rights bona fides have faded over time – to the point of non-existence.
In 1971, Time Magazine reported that Dylan was “returning to is his Jewishness” and “getting into this ethnic Jewish thing.” A friend of his told the magazine, “He’s reading all kinds of books on Judaism, books about the Jewish resistance like the Warsaw ghetto. He took a trip to Israel last year that no one was supposed to know about and even, it is rumored, gave a large donation to the Israeli government.” The article continues:
Dylan denied giving money to Israel or to the fanatical Jewish Defense League, but he confesses great admiration for that “Never again” action group and its reckless leader Rabbi Meir Kahane. “He’s a really sincere guy,” says Bob. “He’s really put it all together.”
Yes, you read that right. Bob Dylan said Meir Kahane, who favored the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and whose racist Kach party has since been banned from Israeli politics, is “a really sincere guy” who’s “really put it all together.”
In 1983, twenty years after he sang, “you don’t count the dead” and “you never ask questions, when God’s on your side,” Dylan penned a song in response to the international outrage over the devastating Israeli assault on Lebanon in 1982, which took the lives of nearly 18,000 Lebanese civilians and wounded about 30,000 others. The song did not mention the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, in which between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were murdered. The Israeli Kahan Commission, published in February 1983, found that Israel bore “indirect responsibility” and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon “bears personal responsibility” for the massacre.
Rather, Dylan’s song, entitled “Neighborhood Bully” and featured on his Infidels album (which incidentally also contains the songs “Man of Peace” and “License to Kill“), is a bitter and indignant defense of Israel’s actions, an exercise in Zionist mythology, eternal victimization, and bogus “right to self-defense” hasbara, that sounds like it was written collectively by Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Anthony Weiner, and Golda Meir.
Dylan sings of nameless (though obvious) “neighborhood bully,” labeled such by “his enemies” who “say he’s on their land” and have him “outnumbered about a million to one” with “no place to escape to, no place to run.” And that’s just the first verse.
The hasbara escalates as the song continues. Dylan sings of exile (“The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land”) and bigotry (“He’s always on trial for just being born”), of lonely survival and attempts at delegitization (“He’s criticized and condemned for being alive”), of the Osirak bombing, of deserts blooming. The only way to believe how thick the Zionist talking points are laid on is to listen to the whole song, or read the complete lyrics (copied below).
Unfortunately for the BDS community and the courageous activists of BfW, Bob Dylan will not be an ally in the fight for justice or international law. He made his choice decades ago. It is Dylan who can apparently no longer see “where the people are many and their hands are all empty, where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, where the executioner’s face is always well hidden, where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, where black is the color, where none is the number.”
And, although Dylan once claimed that he’d “tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, and reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,” he has decided to stand with those who aggress and oppress, with those who starve and deprive, with those who surround and fly-over and bomb hospitals and deny, with those who steal land and resources, with those who reinvent and erase history, with those who criminalize memory and prioritize ethnicity and religion.
By ignoring the call to boycott and by performing in Israel this summer, Dylan is solidifying his reputation as one who – when it counted most – didn’t stand for morality and humanity. Dylan once asked, “how many years can some people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?” It seems that Dylan’s own answer to the Palestinians would be, “A while longer and don’t ask me to help.” He has become his own rhetorical character: the man who turns his head, pretending he just doesn’t see.
So, the questions remain. “How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry? How many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?” The answers are no longer simply blowing in the wind, however. They are in discourse and education, flash mobs and rallies, sit-ins and walk-outs. The answers are international law and humanitarian justice. The answer is promoting basic morality and common decency. The answer is raising public awareness. The answer is opposing settler-colonialism, military aggression, collective punishment, air strikes and assassinations, drone attacks and white phosphorous, tear gas and torture, ethnic cleansing, diplomatic immunity, war crime impunity, ethnocentrism and supremacism, racism and discrimination, apartheid and occupation. The answer is BDS.
And, as Bob Dylan told us himself, the times they are a-changing’.
Sadly, this time around, however, it seems Dylan does need a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing.
Neighborhood Bully
Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully
He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully
Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully
What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully
April 13, 2011 -
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular
Aletho News
Aletho News 
Dylan was a wordsmith par excellance , these words he sold with the help of a voice capable of great pathos. Still, such men have a tribe and as life nears end he will be with that tribe. For fun I will call him a spent force with little meaning to the Beiber crowd. Goodbye Bob.
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Very disappointing but I guess he is just a member of the Tribe and not a man of peace at all….just did it for the money.
Well, we still can believe in John and Yoko:)
Again, Goodbye Bob Zimmerman.
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It seems that all the rich and famous are on the israeli side.. hmmmm can that mean they think they are on the ‘winning’ side? I can’t understand any other reason…. the rich have a lop-sided view of what is right and wrong… after all what is life about, except being the best you can be…. oh yeah… I guess it is getting on top..(of what?????)…what a screwed up world we live in. Disgusting.
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Let’s say there was a fast food eating competition. Baconators are worth 10 points each and Double Big Macs are worth 8 points, etc. Out walks a now humoungeous Mark Spitz who, dare I say it, just devours his competition. If you were a fan of his because of his Olympic greatness, you’re not going to suddenly flip like a buttered pancake on the grill on your opinion of physical fitness because Mark Spitz no longer believes in heart attacks.
Bob Dylan once sincerely believed that people were entitled to dignity. He grew up an intellectual Jew in the state that once made Charles Lindbergh’s father a Senator. A state that also gave us Paul Wellstone. Unfortunately, he was told that an extention of fame comes at a price – his soul.
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And if we follow the money… all those who seek fame/fortune have all sold their soul to the devil., even the wannabees who ‘want it’, but never ‘got it’. It is the desire of ones heart that one cannot deny. For from the heart, the mouth professes loyalty. Unfortunately his sincerity was not deep enough to fight for, and the ones you mention are famous.. so we continue to follow the money to see ‘who’ they really are. And our own hearts tell the same story.
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I have no doubt that this aspect of his life is a part of the “dharma transmission” of Bob Dylan’s life. He once converted to Christianity and sang lyrics like “you’re going to have serve somebody.” Now, he’s unravelling the twine of a former FBI informant. Although I do not have the answers that he must find, prior to his arrival on the music scene, there were ballads with insights, but Bob Dylan was the first to give the music significance and to be widely accepted. Whatever music could possibly offer him now, he must surely already have.
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I agree with you, as I often do. Sometimes we, I will say me, who was born in 1945 or after, embraced for one, the idea of christianity, which I, for one, now find ludicrous.. but that is not the issue..Bob Dylan did seem to have the morals we search for and sometimes find in our songs/singers. I love beautiful music.. all kinds.. just some are more passionate.. the song above seems to me, and please feel free to correct me, sounds like the world bully, u.s.of a.now joined at the hip with israel, or the school bully. Just as in world bullies, the school bully is avoided.. at all costs.. some of the kindest, loving, most inspiring of younsters give those jerks a punch now and again, but they are usually just allowed to pick on who they want.. and mercilessly. I know the spirit of mankind. I see/saw myself growing up, no kind of menace to anyone.. but as I got into the work force and had to take a hard stand on some issues…like sexual harrassment.. I stood alone.. even though I was fighting for everyones right to work in a place free of bullying, either in going to bed to get the job, or just outright freedom to do nothing while others worked their tail off.. I won 3 sexual harrassement charges in three different post offices..not for money, which they did offer, and I refused.. it was for principal alone. I have never heard of any others who won.. they have to have absolute truth behind them, and the drive to stand alone, whether anyone stands with you or most likely don’t…in my case certainly didn’t. I guess what I am saying is, we as humans have to know what the truth is from the start, or be able to search it out and dismiss the lies we were told, and always try to do the right thing. The world and sometimes our songsters don’t send out this message…. I listen to the ones who do. To see who is authentic, we must look at the whole of who they are.. what do they do and say when no one is looking. Everyone should aspire to do the same thing.. but this is the world.. not heaven, and I never forget that fact…
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“.. but this is the world.. not heaven, and I never forget that fact…” That is a very deep statement. I think given the vulerability of Israel and what a battle involving the modern weaponry of the Superpowers would leave in its wake, it makes sense to not to inflame instability in the Arab world with expansionist and outright racist policies despite a book over 5,000 years old egging them on to do otherwise.
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Well they wrote the book according to their own ideas and goals, so that is what they want.. submission by fear. Everything the so called superpowers have told us is a lie. Everything. My life on earth, which is valuable only to the One who created it, has been dedicated to truth. I know truth. I know that no one has to believe anything I say, and that is ok with me… but when judgement day comes, and it can be denied but anyone looking for peace and love, which ain’t here, can see that the apocolypse is here (the revelation of truth) and the great reckoning of God, (the Tribulation) is upon this hell… and God looks me in the eye I know I can look back and He will tell me “Well done, my good and faithful girl”. So whatever I say, I have researched totally and completely to find the truth. I also ask God, and He, which I have been maligned and greatly ridiculed for saying so, (which I also don’t care about their opinion)has told me. Which in case anyone wants to talk to Him, He will answer them also. So I know truth. I had to ‘grow’ through many diminsions to be able to grasp alot of it, and for some, the efforts to ‘grow’ just aren’t worth it. I know for a fact that who we are here on earth, is the same as ‘who we are in heaven’. That can never be changed.. God puts the knowledge of Himself in each heart. Those who fought against Him in heaven still do.. those who love Him now, loved Him then. We still fight against the enemy. That is the simple truth of it all. Why are all other galaxies and universes that He created peaceful and in complete submission to the ONE who demands respect, and love? Why wouldn’t we?? Are WE the ones who created HIM??? no. Everything on this earth has to be exposed thus the apocolypse, before the end war begins.. although we know the signs are all there and getting more obvious..
There was no old testament.. the new one is filled with lies. HOWEVER, and this is a huge ‘but’.. there is enough truth to it, that the lies cannot be swallowed.. I have had a horrendous life.. so much has happened [bad] that I can’t remember most of it.. I just keep going forward. People say what the world believes, that God must not love me. I KNOW the truth. I know who I am in Heaven, and He trusts me not to be afraid of what happens to me, because He is there all the way with not only me, but all His people He had faith in…. to do the right thing.. all the time… so to know the truth about israel and the middle east we have to believe the opposite of what ‘they’ tell us to. God hates oppression. He is God and even if He could does not oppress. We are free to love Him or not. Israel & amerika has oppressed the world and none of us are FREE. So …. God is on the side of the Freedom Fighters who, like me, have NEVER had a free moment on earth/hell. He showed us what He has planned when He sent the vision of the White horse and rider on Feb. 5th. The Rev 6 that brings many victories.. GOD is behind the Freedom Fighters.. all over the world..Just because things don’t happen quickly doesn’t mean they won’t happen.. I watch each day unfold with HIS eyes, and can plainly see it. I am much more impatient than I should be but my heart belongs in Heaven and like the salmon has that homing instinct. Won’t stop fighting upriver until we get home. God is on the side of the Arab world. He hates amerika and israel, the ones who follow the great deceiver: Lucifer/satan. The earth has been sacrificed to make sure the likes of them does not interfere with our lives in eternity again. God is the power behind goodness/love/mercy/honor/and all the great things that HE stands for. He will NOT be denied. He loves those who love Him and volunteered to go to hell to bring Him glory. And that includes Gaza and the Arabs. God has not interferred with satans deadly mischief until now, and HE WILL WIN. And that is all that matters.
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That second verse could be written for the inmates of Gaza and West bank.
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