Yes, all true. But remember. People need to be held to account, particularly
those in the public eye. That is, unless you agree with Obama that we should
only look forward and ignore what has been done in our name up until today.
It matters when people are honored for beautiful words which turn out to be
hollow and devoid of meaning when it comes to specific ethnicities. Our
minds are so clouded with the horrors of the holocaust and anti-semitism,
that most of us are completely blind to what is being done to Palestinians
on a daily basis in Israel proper, in the West Bank, in Gaza, in the refugee
camps throughout the Middle East. Your tax dollars and mine, 38 billion
dollars, annually, are supporting an ongoing genocide so I 'm sorry, but I
can't be so forgiving toward public figures who have represented change and
progress and peace, and who wholeheartedly support the project of Israel as
a Jewish state, Israel, whose stated goal is to take over all of Palestine
in the name of God, the bible, and the survival of the Jewish people.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2016 10:52 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Bob Dylan's embrace of Israel's war crimes
Well said, Joe. I'd sure hate to be judged by who I was back in the 50's
and 60's. But even worse, I'd hate to still Be that person.
Although the road gets shorter before me, and longer behind, I still have
some distance to travel. My hope is that when I reach that final step here
on Earth, that I am not the same person that I am today.
I too, accept the lyrics Bob Dylan spun out so many years ago. They were
from a different time, and frankly, I don't really care what Dylan is
thinking today. If he is so far out of step with his original cries of
anguish, then the place he is now living in has no meaning for me.
What Israel is doing to the hapless Palestinians, is no stranger to
the Indian Killers who, along with their God, took over this "Promised Land"
we came to call America. If Dylan's mind has moved away from the plight of
the forgotten and the down trodden, then more's the pity. And, "good night
Mrs. Calabash wherever you are".
Carl Jarvis
On 10/19/16, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I tend to think of things a little bit, and I repeat a little bit
differently here. I think that Dylan is Dylan and he hasn't been the
Bobby Zimmerman of Hibbings, Minnesota for some time, about 55 years
or so. And times have always been a changing.
I again love Dylan and his works and don't now adjudge him from a
working class prism per se.
I say that in spiteof not only his social, etc. inconsincies, but also
mine
as well over decades, but rather for them as well.
Look yawl we're all getting older and none of us have got this shit
right, or perfectly...Errr well maybe I'm speaking for myself here but
I'm far from
perfect, although I'm still one sort of self-rightiously, handsome
son-of-a-bitch and if you don't believe that then just ask me for I'm
the next to perfect mirror of myself except for that rat bastard Billy
Clinton and that narcicist Donald what's his name.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 9:43 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Bob Dylan's embrace of Israel's war
crimes
While I feel no need to either defend or damn Dylan, I do have to
point out that it was this same Nobel Committee that presented our
very own Prince of Peace, Barack Obama, the Peace Prize. Dylan's
selection, so far as I am concerned, neither adds to or detracts from
his entire body of work. It's a sign of the times when a one time
protester becomes an apologist for the Establishment. I remember the
comments of a reporter who arrived at John Steinbeck's home one mid
day, only to find the great author sitting on his veranda in a
dressing gown, eating a very late breakfast. The reporter asked the
author why he no longer wrote of the poverty and suffering of the
working men and women. Steinbeck told the reporter that he no longer
wrote about the poor because he himself was no longer suffering from
poverty.
Perhaps Dylan has also moved beyond being able to relate to the
abject suffering of an entire people.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/19/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
Bob Dylan's embrace of Israel's war crimes Michael F. Brown Arts and
Culture 18 October 2016
American folk-rock legend Bob Dylan performs in Tel Aviv, on 20 June
2011, in defiance of a Palestinian call for boycott.
Abir Sutan EPA
Controversially, musical genius Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize
for literature last week.
Even some critics who acknowledged his musical brilliance have
argued that awarding a musician was a step that too dramatically
expanded the definition of literature. What few dispute is that his
music inspired millions in the midst of the anti-war and civil
rights movements.
But there is also a less pleasant, less known side to the artist,
particularly his views on Israel, Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense
League.
In 1983, in The New York Times, Stephen Holden described Dylan's
album Infidels as "a disturbing artistic semirecovery by a rock
legend who seemed in recent years to have lost his ability to engage
the Zeitgeist."
Holden asserted that a "stomping, hollering rhetorical tone infuses
the two most specifically political songs, 'Neighborhood Bully,' an
outspoken defense of Israel, and 'Union Sundown,' a gospel-blues
indictment of American labor unions."
"The lyrics suggest an angry crackpot throwing wild punches and
hoping that one or two will land," Holden added.
With its opening lyrics parroting Israel's own narrative of being
the blameless, perpetual victim of Arab violence, "Neighborhood
Bully" came just a year after Israel's bloody invasion of Lebanon
that would claim tens of thousands of lives:
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 invasion of Lebanon was a calamitous war, widely opposed even in
Israel where it was likened to the US quagmire in Vietnam.
Yet Dylan sang these words exonerating Israel even after the world
had witnessed the horrifying massacres of Palestinian refugees in
the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by an Israeli-allied militia
during the occupation
of
Beirut.
Today, the lyrics read like a prelude to the racist nationalism
embodied
in
the politics of today's Israeli leaders, including Benjamin
Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett.
Deeper into the tune, Dylan betrays an ignorance of the enormous
support given by the US government to Israel, notably the huge
influx of military support provided by the administration of
President Jimmy Carter shortly before the release of the album.
That funding continues to this day with the record-breaking $38
billion in military aid over 10 years recently negotiated by the
Obama administration.
Yet Dylan sings:
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 Kahane The equal rights
backed by Dylan in the US seemingly have no place in his politics
regarding Israel and its neighbors.
Dylan's challenge to power in the US is transmuted into an embrace
of Israeli militancy because of a flawed sense of reality, perhaps
one learned from Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League
(JDL) and later of the racist Kach party in Israel.
Dylan's relationship to Kahane and the JDL is not entirely clear,
but was explored by Anthony Scaduto in The New York Times in 1971.
"Dylan's interest in Israel and Judaism led him, over a year ago,
into an unexpected relationship with Rabbi Meir Kahane and the
Jewish Defense League," Scaduto wrote.
The singer reportedly attended several JDL meetings and may have
given money to the organization.
Already in 1971, Scaduto wrote, "Dylan's enthusiasm for the militant
Jewish organization has brought down the wrath of some in the
radical movement."
Scaduto detailed this just four years after the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria's Golan Heights and Egypt's
Sinai had
begun:
"To many young radicals, including Jewish kids, Israel is simply
another one of those fascist states propped up by a fascist American
Government, and Dylan's fervent support of Israel and his
over-publicized contacts with the JDL are to them a further
indication that he has sold out to the political right he
condemned."
Rejecting Palestinian struggle
Dylan's drift away from the anti-war movement over the course of the
next
45
years - and his clear embrace of Israel after its invasion of
Lebanon - led to no surprise when he rejected the boycott,
divestment and sanctions
(BDS)
movement's call for him not to play Israel in 2011.
The right of return for refugees, the end of the occupation and
equal rights for all Palestinians - the BDS movement's key demands -
would not have resonated with the man who wrote "Neighborhood
Bully."
Ironically, both Dylan and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters performed at
the Desert Trip musical festival this month.
Today, however, it is Waters who is politically relevant, with his
support of the BDS movement and Black Lives Matter, his blasting of
Donald Trump's racism and his love and support for children wearing
"Derriba el muro"
T-shirts - Spanish for "take down the wall."
In front of an audience of tens of thousands of festival-goers in
Indio, California, Waters gave a shout-out to Students for Justice
in
Palestine:
Both Waters and Dylan are now in their 70s; one has grown over the
last 50 years in his willingness to embrace urgent contemporary
struggles for freedom and equal rights. The other has stepped back
from vital political engagements and yet been rewarded with a Nobel
Prize.
Today it is no longer Dylan who best embodies the spirit of one of
his best known lyrics:
Yes, and how many years can some people exist Before they're allowed
to be free?
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//blog/blog/arts-and-culture
Bob Dylan's embrace of Israel's war crimes Michael F. Brown Arts and
Culture 18 October 2016
American folk-rock legend Bob Dylan performs in Tel Aviv, on 20 June
2011, in defiance of a Palestinian call for boycott.
Abir Sutan EPA
Controversially, musical genius Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize
for literature last week.
Even some critics who acknowledged his musical brilliance have
argued that awarding a musician was a step that too dramatically
expanded the definition of literature. What few dispute is that his
music inspired millions in the midst of the anti-war and civil
rights movements.
But there is also a less pleasant, less known side to the artist,
particularly his views on Israel, Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense
League.
In 1983, in The New York Times, Stephen Holden described Dylan's
album Infidels as "a disturbing artistic semirecovery by a rock
legend who seemed in recent years to have lost his ability to engage
the Zeitgeist."
Holden asserted that a "stomping, hollering rhetorical tone infuses
the two most specifically political songs, 'Neighborhood Bully,' an
outspoken defense of Israel, and 'Union Sundown,' a gospel-blues
indictment of American labor unions."
"The lyrics suggest an angry crackpot throwing wild punches and
hoping that one or two will land," Holden added.
With its opening lyrics parroting Israel's own narrative of being
the blameless, perpetual victim of Arab violence, "Neighborhood
Bully" came just a year after Israel's bloody invasion of Lebanon
that would claim tens of thousands of lives:
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 invasion of Lebanon was a calamitous war, widely opposed even in
Israel where it was likened to the US quagmire in Vietnam.
Yet Dylan sang these words exonerating Israel even after the world
had witnessed the horrifying massacres of Palestinian refugees in
the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by an Israeli-allied militia
during the occupation
of
Beirut.
Today, the lyrics read like a prelude to the racist nationalism
embodied
in
the politics of today's Israeli leaders, including Benjamin
Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett.
Deeper into the tune, Dylan betrays an ignorance of the enormous
support given by the US government to Israel, notably the huge
influx of military support provided by the administration of
President Jimmy Carter shortly before the release of the album.
That funding continues to this day with the record-breaking $38
billion in military aid over 10 years recently negotiated by the
Obama administration.
Yet Dylan sings:
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 Kahane The equal rights
backed by Dylan in the US seemingly have no place in his politics
regarding Israel and its neighbors.
Dylan's challenge to power in the US is transmuted into an embrace
of Israeli militancy because of a flawed sense of reality, perhaps
one learned from Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League
(JDL) and later of the racist Kach party in Israel.
Dylan's relationship to Kahane and the JDL is not entirely clear,
but was explored by Anthony Scaduto in The New York Times in 1971.
"Dylan's interest in Israel and Judaism led him, over a year ago,
into an unexpected relationship with Rabbi Meir Kahane and the
Jewish Defense League," Scaduto wrote.
The singer reportedly attended several JDL meetings and may have
given money to the organization.
Already in 1971, Scaduto wrote, "Dylan's enthusiasm for the militant
Jewish organization has brought down the wrath of some in the
radical movement."
Scaduto detailed this just four years after the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria's Golan Heights and Egypt's
Sinai had
begun:
"To many young radicals, including Jewish kids, Israel is simply
another one of those fascist states propped up by a fascist American
Government, and Dylan's fervent support of Israel and his
over-publicized contacts with the JDL are to them a further
indication that he has sold out to the political right he
condemned."
Rejecting Palestinian struggle
Dylan's drift away from the anti-war movement over the course of the
next
45
years - and his clear embrace of Israel after its invasion of
Lebanon - led to no surprise when he rejected the boycott,
divestment and sanctions
(BDS)
movement's call for him not to play Israel in 2011.
The right of return for refugees, the end of the occupation and
equal rights for all Palestinians - the BDS movement's key demands -
would not have resonated with the man who wrote "Neighborhood
Bully."
Ironically, both Dylan and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters performed at
the Desert Trip musical festival this month.
Today, however, it is Waters who is politically relevant, with his
support of the BDS movement and Black Lives Matter, his blasting of
Donald Trump's racism and his love and support for children wearing
"Derriba el muro"
T-shirts - Spanish for "take down the wall."
In front of an audience of tens of thousands of festival-goers in
Indio, California, Waters gave a shout-out to Students for Justice
in
Palestine:
Both Waters and Dylan are now in their 70s; one has grown over the
last 50 years in his willingness to embrace urgent contemporary
struggles for freedom and equal rights. The other has stepped back
from vital political engagements and yet been rewarded with a Nobel
Prize.
Today it is no longer Dylan who best embodies the spirit of one of
his best known lyrics:
Yes, and how many years can some people exist Before they're allowed
to be free?
