Leonard Cohen’s first concerts for Israelis
Singer-poet Leonard Cohen’s first concerts for Israelis weren’t in Israel. They were for troops in the then-occupied Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, part of a morale-boosting tour that the Montreal native gave during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Thirty-six years later, for what has been billed as the Concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace, the 75-year-old grandfather of angst-pop is again embroiled in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This time he has been the target of a boycott campaign that aims to discourage artists, writers and others from performing or touring in Israel.
As he went onstage Thursday night in a 45,000-seat soccer stadium near Tel Aviv, it was amid accusations that he had betrayed his humanist and Buddhist principles. The concert was “a kind of validation” of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, said Shir Hever, an economist and activist with the Alternative Information Center, a group opposed to Israel’s policies toward Palestinians. The proceeds of the show were intended for a Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation fund started by Cohen, but the singer also decided over the summer to balance the schedule with a smaller companion concert in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “He was mindful of the conflict” when he decided to perform here after a long absence, said manager Roger Kory. The Ramallah concert came under fire as a “pity performance” and was canceled.
At a reception before Thursday’s concert, members of the mainstream Israeli peace movement criticized what they regard as fringe groups trying to undercut cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. But it was Cohen who “missed the point,” Hever said. “Palestinians don’t want appeasement, they want recognition of their rights.” Israelis “point out the willingness of people like Madonna and Leonard Cohen to give shows as a sign that Israel is normal, like a European country. It evades responsibility,” he added.
