I will ask for the mercy that you love to decline.
And all the ladies go moist, and the judge has no choice,
a singer must die for the lie in his voice.

And I thank you, I thank you for doing your duty,
you keepers of truth, you guardians of beauty.
Your vision is right, my vision is wrong,
I’m sorry for smudging the air with my song.

No Len, sorry mate, you’re as fake, manipulative and mixed up as Bob Dylan and Madonna et al.

Hey “Fool me once” don’t hold back now… say what you really mean. lol )

“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.”