Bob Dylan on Israel
Who remembers “The Neighborhood Bully”?
Actually, anybody remember “Hurrican Carter”? This was the song that got an innocent black man triply convicted of murder exonerated and eventually released from jail. I still get the chills when I listen to it forty plus years later.
That was the Bob Dylan some of us fell in love with, the folk singer who pulled no punches and couldn’t stomach injustice.
Bob Dylan probably wouldn’t make any comment about what’s going on in Israel and Gaza today. Too fraught. Anyway, he’s too clever to paint himself into tight political corners he can’t get out of.
But here’s what he had to say about or sing about Israel in 1983. No, it’s nowhere near his best song, but the lyrics…see if you recognize what’s happening now in what he wrote way back then.
Neighborhood Bully
Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have…
