Hey Thats No Way To Say Goodbye
by Roy Bard
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
When I was 16 I was given access to a whole lot of music I had never heard before. I slipped an album out of its sleeve and put it onto the turntable. As the needle landed and the lyrics started I was mesmerised. It was Leonard Cohen and Suzanne. The old goat has never failed to mesmerise me since, and his recent album streamed free on the Guardian website has been replayed repeatedly over the last few days at Concrete Towers.
From the opening lines:
I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit
It just gets better and better. In the third song a killer line:
Show me where the suffering began
springs to mind after reading Greenstein’s latest Fatwa entitled The Tragedy of Norman Finkelstein – Time to Say Goodbye. IMO it’s one of Greenstein’s most articulate pieces and, unsurprisingly it’s dripping with venom.
Of course Greenstein doesn’t like that Norman has dared to called his beloved BDS movement a cult. As always I would urge readers to go check the source for themselves, so I’m just going to comment on a small bit of it:
….Norman Finkelstein is wrong to suggest that the solidarity movement is a mirror image of the Palestinian authority. It is noticeable that despite characterising the PA as ‘a gang of corrupt, wretched collaborators’ which fears its own people, he supports their aspiration to a bantustan in the West Bank.
Beacause, I think the irony of it is that there is a danger that it is Greenstein and his cohorts who are endeavouring to turn the Palestine Solidarity Movement into a mirror image of the PA with its strict party line, and the security services who will hunt down the dissidents and torture or banish them.
It is this streak in Greenstein that has driven me into the deLiberation fold, which I think offers a much more humane and caring approach to the whole business of solidarity, despite the fact that it is, so far, almost totally made up of the targets of Greenstein’s torture and banishment.
While Greenstein insists that rejectionism is the way forward with Finkelstein, Gilad offers those of us dubbed ‘Atzmonites’ this thought:
However, if the solidarity movement is a pluralist and tolerant movement, it should debate and tolerate Finkelstein’s ideas and criticism.
And on this I agree. We must be looking at how we can become pluralist and tolerant as a movement. I also believe we need to find a better way of articulating the injustice that has been done to the Palestinians, and which needs to be addressed before there can be peace between them and the Israelis. And that we need to it in a way that does offer Israel normalisation or acceptance, that it does not deserve until such time as it has addressed that injustice and made amends.
At the end of the day, if Israel’s existence is dependent on continued oppression and dispossession of the indigenous population, then regardless of what Norman thinks International Law says, it cannot be legitimate.
There is no doubt that Norman Finkelstein has made some invaluable contributions to the discourse in the past, even Greenstein concedes this. That he has called for the video to be pulled suggests that he may have realised that his argument needs reconsidering and honing. Perhaps, like Leonard he will bounce back with new contributions that capture the imagination once again.
If there is a performing bear in town it is Tony Greenstein, with his endless fatwas and need to control the discourse, and tell us all what we should be doing.
Perhaps even Tony will one day be able reflect on his style and aggression, and find newer more inclusive and more caring ways of dealing with us…….
Posted by Roy Bard
on February 18, 2012. Filed under Jewish Matters,Palestine,Sayan of the week.
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8 Responses to Hey Thats No Way To Say Goodbye
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ariadna
February 20, 2012 at 2:18 am
Was it in 67 or 73 when LC went to Israel to enroll in the IOF and claimed (in one of his songs anyway) to have fought to ‘defend’ Israel?
Roy Bard
February 20, 2012 at 8:24 am
It was ’73 although he never seems to have spoken much about it. Oshik Levi remembers it thus:
“The most horrible war was the Yom Kippur war , it was just awful. From day one, Saturday, I was performing.
It started out with an evening for the air force people and the day after I met Leonard Cohen in a café in Tel Aviv. I was just putting together an entertainment group with Pupik Arnon , Mati Caspi and Ilana Rovina and from the second evening we were performing with Leonard Cohen. It was in Hatzor and it was an amazing performance.
Leonard arrived to Israel as a Jew who wanted to work in a kibbutz and donate his share
And I dragged him to war. He said :” listen, my songs are sad” , and I said: “It is going to be ok”.
It was in an air force base, I got on stage and said we have a special guest: Leonard Cohen, and between the second and the third performance he wrote :”Lover, lover, lover”,
The third morning Pupik and I performed to paratroopers who afterwards boarded the planes heading towards Suetz ….at evening time they would return wounded and dead. When we were in an hospital in Said , there were not enough stretchers to carry the wounded.
During that period of time, that artists would just wander around and each was given a place to go to and you wouldn’t have a clue who is taking you where, only the officer that approaches you and says you have to come… .You would arrive to this hole in the darkness and you see 8 soldiers around a 175 mm cannon, and you are supposed to stand there and sing and entertain. In the middle of the song the officer would say :”hold on a second”. They would lift the cannon, charge it and shoot, and then you would go on with the performance , ect…
It was a terrible war and the sites were difficult to see. We performed about 8 times a day , day after day , sometimes 10 performances a day. It was physically and emotionally exhausting . We did that in hard conditions and we did the best we could.
Leonard Cohen proceeded with us for 3 months , day after day , 4-5 and sometimes 8 performances a day, and in every place we arrived at , he wanted to be drafted . at one time he wanted to be a paratrooper, at another time in the marines , and another time he wanted to be a pilot. We would sleep in sleeping bags on the floor because there was no room, and Leonard , who didn’t want to feel like a star , refused when I tried to arrange a place for him at the culture room.
It was emotionally and physically draining… during that horrible war there was a strong bond between the artists because we didn’t know who is against what”.
He also defied BDS calls in 2009, and stated he would give the money to Amnesty – who refused it.
On stage he said:
“It was a while ago that I first heard of the work of the ‘Bereaved Parents for Peace’. That there was this coalition of Palestinian and Israeli families who had lost so much in the conflict and whose depth of suffering had compelled them to reach across the border into the houses of the enemy. Into the houses of those, to locate them who had suffered as much as they had, and then to stand with them in aching confraternity, a witness to an understanding that is beyond peace and that is beyond confrontation. So, this is not about forgiving and forgetting, this is not about laying down one’s arms in a time of war, this is not even about peace, although, God willing, it could be a beginning. This is about a response to human grief. A radical, unique and holy, holy, holy response to human suffering. Baruch Hashem, thank God, I bow my head in respect to the nobility of this enterprise.”
He described his upbringing in a Jewish family thus:
“I had a very Messianic childhood.” He told Richard Goldstein in 1967. “I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest.”
He argues that his practice of Buddhism offers no theological challenge to Judaism and in ’96 stated:
“I’m not looking for a new religion. I’m quite happy with the old one, with Judaism.”
fool me once...
February 20, 2012 at 11:56 am
This is gonna be tricky, being a bit less than complementary about someones fave performer. A performer who has touched people deeply through the vibrations of instrument and voice, over many decades.
In the ’80s, as a teenager any mention of Cohen would bring in a chorous of “nah way, he’s depressin’ as f…” So it wasn’t until the late ’90s that I got to check him out and feel him touch my perfect body with his mind, er, as you might say.
“Suzanne” is certainly a powerful song, dare I say, a masterpiece. Even though deciphering his pronunciation of “oranges” brings a hiccup to the flow of imagery.
But then again, after a night-in with Cohen and you’ve blown out the candles, wrung out yer hanky, slowly climbed the stairs of you’re wooden tower, donned your hair-shirt and laid down on your bed of misery…BAM! it hits you, yeah, of course I feel like this, he’s the unrivaled high priest of schmaltz, the millionaire buddist, the murdering IDF backing track extraordinaire.
No Len, sorry mate, you’re as fake, manipulative and mixed up as Bob Dylan and Madonna et al.
P.S
Hmmm, yeah Roy, I re-read your original post again:
“the deLiberation fold, which I think offers a much more humane and caring approach to the whole business of solidarity”
and:
“We must be looking at how we can become pluralist and tolerant as a movement”
I agree what you’re saying, but sincerity, for me, plays a big part in acceptance. Remember, performers are just actors playing with our emotions.
Jonathon Blakeley
February 20, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Hey “Fool me once” don’t hold back now… say what you really mean. lol
)
Roy Bard
February 20, 2012 at 12:18 pm
fool me once...
February 20, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Nice lyrics, you’ll be glad to hear they inspired me to try my hand at some poetry.
Ahem…
.
.
If you beg we’ll consider, to show you some mercy,
But listen, there’ll be, no more gold for your pursey.
“All the ladies go moist”, oh yeah tell me another,
That woman in the jury shedding tears is your mother.
Don’t thank me son, of your schmaltz I’m no fan,
When you serenaded the land thieves, did you feel like a man?
We deLiberate your craft, and unlock what you give,
Sincerity is the key, for the singer to live.
fool me once...
February 21, 2012 at 7:46 pm
@Roy
Ha ha you’ve given me the Leonard lurgy – how’s about this for poetic justice – worked all day in the pissin’ rain, on me own, tormented by the tune and words “Tea and orranges, that come all the way from China..” in an endless loop!?!
Somehow, with your “see the good in everything” vibe, you cosmically touchéd me.
Roy Bard
February 22, 2012 at 8:58 am
LOL – you’ll be pleased to hear that I am still rattling my brains trying to figure out how my article about two men whose outlook on life is profoundly affected by their upbringing as Jews, turned into an article about three men whose outlook on life is…..