The musician Leonard Cohen died yesterday at the age of 82. Like most of my generation, I loved & still listen to his music; it was the soundtrack to our loves & life.
But I won’t grieve his loss though, not for a moment, because in 2009 he defied the cultural boycott of Israel (BDS) called by Palestinians & performed in Tel Aviv just 45 miles away from Gaza where nine months earlier Israeli warplanes carpet bombed for three weeks & killed 1,150 people.
He was a modest & gentle man they say, yet It was okay by him to be the soundtrack to ethnic cleansing in 2009. In the 1973 Israeli war with Arab countries over the Golan Heights & Sinai, our man performed for Israeli troops at the front lines. Hard to understand a gentility that can live with those contradictions.
This is one of Cohen’s masterpieces sung by K.D. Lang. He left a heritage of beautiful music along with his regrettable politics.
Build the cultural boycott of Israel in his memory. May he RIP.