When Pop Liked Israel

Though the last time folk-rock singer Donovan had a top 40 hit on the Billboard pop charts was in 1969, he recently made headlines when he canceled his Israel concert in a possible boycott. Donovan’s official Twitter feed said the reason was an incomplete contract, but the Israeli promoter broadcasted on Facebook that there were no problems with the contract and that BDS pressure seemed likely.

This would make Donovan the latest aging rock star from the 1960s and 1970s to join Carlos Santana, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello and others in submitting to the pressure of the anti-Israel boycott led by such musical militants as Brian Eno and former Pink Floyd front-man and notorious Hamas supporter Roger Waters.

True, the Land of Israel won’t be any worse off for missing a live rendition of “Sunshine Superman” or “Epistle to Dippy.” But the increasing number of surviving rock icons and heroes to millions who’ve embraced the fashionable anti-Semitism of targeting and isolating Israel is disturbing.

Israel wasn’t always seen as a hated pariah by many in pop music. There was a time when popular musicians and singer-songwriters across musical genres — from rock and country to jazz and folk — admired Israel enough to actually record songs about (or inspired by) the world’s only Jewish country.

So for a brief journey back to that time, here are the seven best pop songs that either longed for Israel or praised, defended and saluted it.

“Neighborhood Bully” – Bob Dylan (1983)

Bob Dylan recorded this pro-Israel song the same year he was photographed wearing a tallit and kippa at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. “Neighborhood Bully” is Dylan’s biting defense for Israel’s right to exist and it’s so definitive, so astute, so timeless that it’s just as urgent today as it was more than thirty years ago. Plus Dylan rocks it with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Taylor and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler joining him on guitar.

“Israel” – The Bee Gees (1971)

Even before all those falsettos and white polyester suits of their infamous disco days, the Bee Gees admired the Jewish homeland enough to devote an infectious Beatlesque melody to it. Where “Israel” lacks in substantive lyrics (“I like the smiles up on your people's faces/They make you feel warm embraces”), it more than makes up for it in its soulful vocals and graceful orchestral arrangement.

“Land of Israel” – Johnny Cash (1969)

Just to hear Johnny Cash milk an extra syllable out of the word “Sinai” and pronounce it as “si-nai-yi” is an experience in itself. Two years after Israel’s Six Day War, Johnny Cash made one of his first of many “pilgrimages” to Israel and recorded a country gospel album he called The Holy Land. The track “Land of Israel” is Cash’s public declaration of love for Israel: “From the top of Sinai/To the Sea of Galilee/Every hill and plain is home/Every place is dear to me.”

“Hava Nagila” – Elvis Presley (1970) and Dick Dale (1963)

The King of Rock and Roll meets the king of Israeli folk songs as Elvis playfully sings “Hava Nagila” in Hebrew with his band while rehearsing for a concert (which popped up on a bootleg). Though Elvis never officially recorded “Hava Nagila,” it’s an unusual kind of fun to hear him sing it. Another king, King of the Surf Guitar Dick Dale, also took on “Hava Nagila,” turning it into a rocking California surf classic with his trademark Stratocaster and drowning it with rich layers of reverb. If a Frankie Avalon beach movie were set in Israel, this would be the soundtrack.

“The Many and the Few” – Woody Guthrie (1949)

Only the son of a cowboy from Oklahoma could call Ezra the Scribe “Ezry the Teacher Man”, in a historical folk song about Chanukah and make it work. Woody Guthrie, America’s most famous and revered folk singer, had married a Jewish dancer, moved to Brooklyn and wrote a handful of Chanukah songs for parties at local Jewish community centers. “The Many and the Few” was one of them. In the twenty-stanza epic song, Guthrie identifies with the Jewish people and proudly sings about Jewish suffering, longing and victory in first person plural. This is also probably the only song in American music history that refers to the Land of Israel by its Hebrew name: “We’ve sung and danced o’er the hot rocky roads/Back to Eretz Yisroel’s land.”

“Babylon” – Don McLean (1971)

No, this song isn’t about ancient Mesopotamia’s most famous city. It’s Don McLean’s adaptation of Psalm 137 with its Jewish yearning for the Land of Israel and lamentation over the destruction of the First Temple — all on the same album with the iconic folk-rock anthem “American Pie.”

 “Israel” – Miles Davis (1949)

Just one year after the State of Israel was born, legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis recorded the song “Israel,” an upbeat instrumental blues song in minor key (no coincidence that most Jewish music is in a minor key). The world’s newest-yet-ancient country, Israel, must have seemed cool back then in the jazz world — so cool that Miles Davis included “Israel” in his iconic Birth of the Cool album.

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Most of these seven songs were recorded after the Holocaust when Israel became a state or after 1967’s Six Day War when public opinion of Israel was high. With today’s alarming anti-Semitism and Israel bashing, though, it’s unlikely that popular artists would now record pro-Israel tunes that could either help form a positive public opinion of Israel or reflect it. But that can change soon enough as we approach the full redemption of the Jewish people when the entire world will recognize Hashem and His chosen Land, the Land of Israel.