Praising Leonard Cohen without mentioning his record regarding Israel is odious. He performed for occupation soldiers and remained a Zionist until his end.
Saturday was the tenth anniversary of Cohen’s death and there have been a flood of articles and events about the Montreal poet. Even critics of Israel have celebrated the musician in recent days. Former NDP MP Charlie Angus published “What Leonard Cohen can tell us about where Canada stands in the aftermath of the mid-terms” while Ricochet-turned-Montreal-Gazette columnist, Toula Drimonis, published “10 years after his death, Leonard Cohen is all around us”.
Amidst Israeli horrors in Gaza, expansionism in the West Bank, attacks on Syria, destruction in southern Lebanon and war on Iran, it is questionable at best and odious at worst to praise someone who backed Jewish supremacist colonialism and violence. In 1973 Cohen responded to Egypt seeking to recover territory Israel had occupied six years earlier by flying there to perform for IOF troops. Cohen travelled through the Sinai Desert, which Israel occupied in 1956 and again in 67, singing for small numbers of troops sometimes by the light of flashlights. Cohen was photographed playing for then major general Ariel Sharon.
In explaining himself, Cohen declared, “A Jew remains a Jew. Now it’s war and there’s no need for explanations.” On another occasion he stated, “I’m joining my brothers fighting in the desert. I don’t care if the war’s right or not.” The next year Cohen said, “I’ve never disguised the fact that I’m Jewish and in any crisis in Israel I would be there.”
The poet found the killing invigorating. “War is wonderful,” Cohen told a magazine interviewer afterwards.
During his ‘bolster the spirits of the occupiers’ performances Cohen wrote the famous song “Lover Lover Lover”. Composed on an Israeli Air Force Base, the original version began, “I saw my brothers fighting in the desert.”
Cohen’s promotion of Jewish supremacist violence isn’t obscure. Canadian turned Israeli journalist Matti Friedman published a book on the trip titled Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai.
It wasn’t Cohen’s first trip to Israel. From a wealthy Westmount family, Cohen traveled there as a young man in 1960. After becoming famous, he also played concerts there in 1972 and 1985. More controversially, Cohen played the apartheid state in 2009. Four years earlier over 100 Palestinian civil groups launched the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and there was significant pressure put on Cohen to not perform in Tel Aviv. An activist friend who did the illustrations for his first book, Freda Guttman messaged the famed poet she’d briefly dated in the 1950s to ask him to not whitewash apartheid. He ignored her and many others’ calls. Instead, Cohen sought to perform in occupied Ramallah to demonstrate (fake) sympathy for the victims of Zionism. But, reported the UK Guardian, “Palestinian hosts call off Canadian singer’s gig amid claims it was a hollow attempt to ‘balance’ Tel Aviv performance.”
Understandably, Zionist groups actively promote Cohen. The second largest Cohen Billboard in Montreal has a large Federation Combined Jewish Appeal logo on it and CJA frequently highlights Cohen. In Saturday’s Montreal Gazette the cantor at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmount, which two generations of Cohens led, published the pro-Zionist “Leonard Cohen — ‘a man whose compass always led him home’”. On Monday the Israel consulate in Montreal posted, “In 1973, in the midst of the Yom Kippur War, Leonard Cohen, the legendary Montreal-born singer, songwriter, poet, and performer, left his home in Greece and travelled to Israel to stand in solidarity with the country and bring comfort and encouragement to its soldiers through his music. Ten years after his passing, we remember and honour this remarkable Montreal legend, whose humanity, courage, and music left an enduring mark on the world. May his memory be a blessing.”
It’s appalling that anyone who opposes apartheid and genocide would celebrate Leonard Cohen. He should be viewed in a similar light to the musicians who played for Nazi soldiers.
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