"Neighborhood Bully," 1983:
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 just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.
My God. Maybe you, and the crisrixians, have a point.
Hugh:
That's kind of you to say. I'm still hoping you'll introduce me to Ricks.
Yrs
R
Happy 60th Israel !
Ironically, the "Neighborhood Bully" isn't Israel/Jews, which is obviously the point.
Go Israel!
Tremendous song from a superb album, Infidels.
Wrong, Champ.
Dylan wrote it in 1960 as a tribute to Israel. It's pretty obvious.
Ashan
1960? Unlikely. It appeared on the album Infidels in 1983 and bears all the stylistic signs of that period in his writing.
I think Champ was referring to the intentional irony of the song's title.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Ashan - yes it is pretty obvious, as anyone can see that the song is about Israel. Read my comment again with a different lens, because you misunderstood what I was trying to convey, which is also pretty obvious.
Now I know how Robert feels when HE is misunderstood. :-D
Yeah! Happy 67th B-Day Bobby, and Happy 60th, Israel!
May God bless and protect you both for the blessings you have given this sometimes unblessed world!
It's a Zionist song, you know.
Went looking for info on the song's date -- that was the second link (google:"Neighborhood Bully Dylan") behind Dylan's site. Well, I just learned that never has a song been so filled with historical lies as Dylan's "racist song".
Link number two on Google.
Yes!! Thank you, Robert!
It's a Zionist song, you know.
Went looking for info on the song's date -- that was the second link (google:"Neighborhood Bully Dylan") behind Dylan's site. Well, I just learned that never has a song been so filled with historical lies as Dylan's "racist song".
Link number two on Google.
Yeah! Happy 67th B-Day Bobby, and Happy 60th, Israel!
May God bless and protect you both for the blessings you have given this sometimes unblessed world!
Yeah! Happy 67th B-Day Bobby, and Happy 60th, Israel!
May God bless and protect you both for the blessings you have given this sometimes unblessed world!
He's in the book -- the one you already own.
Excellent lyrics, just as true today as back then.
True, Robert. My bad. I thought he was taking a dig at Israel and, of course it couldn't have been 1960. Sorry. It's a really good song.
Hey Ashan - I'm a she, and a strong supporter of Israel. No harm, no foul. Take care.
Wouldn't it be fascinating if someone(with the Dylan legal seal of approval,should commercial possibilities come in to question, naturally)churned these lyrics out in a rap "medley" and started preaching reality to a different generation and genre. A counterbalance has to begin somewhere.
Video
Neighborhood Bully
Equally astonishing is the perceptive insight Bob had, years before Rushdie, many years before 9/11, and when this view was deeply unfashionable.
Supposedly, he lost many fans following his gospel recordings, but this did not concern him.
A genuine artist, who stuck to his view of the world.
It's only now that these recordings are being reassessed as great performances of powerful statements.
Just watch this YouTube to see how intense his live performance (complete with harmonica) from that period could be.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1ATqE-Gk_pY
As the Jew among men, so now Israel among the nations...
Here is something truly magnificent, radiating a white and holy fury, that Hugh Fitzgerald posted, four years ago, and which I repost here for all those new to this comments floor.
I came across it, as I read through the archives, and was so much struck by it that I copied it and kept it. It deserves to be sent to every parliamentarian and every church leader in the non-Muslim world. They should have their noses rubbed in it. It is magnificent. It is right up there with Fallaci's essay on the new Jew-hatred in Europe; and with some of the fiery affirmations that Jacques Ellul comes out with, in Un Chretien Pour Israel.
"When one reads about some U.N. vote, in the Security Council or in the General Assembly, where the votes against Israel are usually on the order of 189 to 2, with a few abstentions, one is prompted to ask aloud of those ambassadors from civilized, or quasi-civilized lands, whether they can, when they return home to their New York apartments that night, and perhaps, mimicking Jean-Paul Belmondo in a famous scene in Breathless, looking closely at themselves in the mirror, how can they stand it? How can they bear to be participants in such hypocrisy and stupidity?
"Do they really believe the Arab propaganda? Is there something in the very atmosphere of the U.N. that causes people to lose their moral sense?
"And even if they are forced to follow orders from the foreign ministries at home, do they never protest? Never think to try to change those policies? Never seek to understand what is really going on in the endless siege of Israel?
"Never once try to identify with the Israelis, whose state was created because the civilized nations of the world, with men such as Clemenceau and Lloyd George, thought that it was, on the whole, the right and proper thing to do -- and the League of Nations regarded all of western Palestine, from the Jordan to the sea, as the very least that could be set aside (when the Mandatory Power, Great Britain, unilaterally declared that the mandatory provisions regarding Jewish immigration and settlement would not apply to the area east of the Jordan, the Mandates Commission was horrified -- curious that no one bothers to consult, or make public, their remarks at the time).
"Do you look at yourself in the mirror, grimacing in the Belmondo manner, and reassure yourself about the day's events: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
"Are you proud of having joined the pack of wolves as they snapped at Israel, trying to bring it down to go in for the final kill?
"Or do you really believe that this war on Israel is really about "two tiny peoples, blah blah blah"? Exactly how stupid, or unseeing, are you?
"Do you ever -- you ambassadors from Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France, Poland, Hungary, Spain, and so on-- ever think about Islamic teachings as the basis for the permanent refusal to permit Israel to exist, whatever its size?
"And if it is its existence that matters, not its dimensions, then surely the Israelis should choose those dimensions that will both make their own defense strongest, and also make the other side believe those defenses are at their strongest.
"For only darura, necessity, keeps Arab states from attacking.
" The only thing keeping the peace in the MIddle East between the Muslim Arabs and the Jewish state, is fear by the Arabs of the consequences, and the ability of their leaders to note that Israel still is more powerful.
"But if that state is reduced in size, it is not only Israel that will suffer, but the Arab leaders who may not really wish to go to war. For, with a reduced and seemingly vulnerable Israel, they will no longer have the excuse (for the few who might want one) of darura.
"The very pressure put on Israel to further retreat is in fact leading not to peace but to war.
"There is no "two-state solution" -- and how can there be? What would Muhammad say -- yes, it's okay for the Infidels to have their own state, where the shari'a does not apply, and they are free to live as they wish, on land that was once part of dar al-Islam? Nonsense. Double nonsense.
"Were I a schoolboy, and in my school at every assembly there was a denunciation by 188 of my 189 classmates, of the one small scholarly schoolboy, sitting in the third row on the right, who seemed to want only to be left in peace to study, and who was constantly being harassed and bullied and threatened by a gang of 22 of the most unpleasant and violent of my classmates (who, let it be said, did not confine their aggression to that one schoolboy), I would behave as the American ambassador so often behaves, refusing to agree to the bullying, the lynch-mob mentality, the pious lies uttered and repeated and blandly accepted, about the "threat" coming from this single small boy, supposedly directed at those 22 bullies.
"Not to take that boy's side would have been intolerable.
" I couldn't stand it. But a great many of you ambassadors, and the Chris Pattens and Mary Robinsons of this great wide wonderful world we live in, find no difficulty in beating up, and beating up, that boy (and I won't go into that boy's tortured, difficult life, or what happened to so many of his relatives, through time and space).
"How do you stand it, week after week, month after month, year after year, the nonsense and corruption and timewasting and hypocrisy and stupidity and paralysis and stench of failure on the East River? I couldn't stand it."
"I see that I have gone like the Liffey in Finnegans Wake round and about, from CAIR in sunny California to come to rest at the deplorable UN. It may seem to be a posting a batons rompus.
"But I won't apologize too vigorously. The appeasement of Muslim demands, by the police employing CAIR "tutors" on Islam and "cultural diversity," and by the UN in dancing to the Arab League's ululations, are connected. Tout se tient. But to those who consider this undue prolixity, let me say what I think Steve Martin suggested one should say to the IRS if you haven't filed your taxes in ten years: Sorry!"
Posted by: Hugh at May 30, 2004 5:56 PM".
Don't just read it in silence, folks. Hugh wrote it to be spoken - to be declaimed. Read it out loud, as you sit here; let the iron and the fire enter into your soul. And if you live in New York City, perhaps you should go across to the seat of the U.N. and recite it there, in the street (for such purposes, the proper conclusion is with Hugh's second repetition of the phrase "I couldn't stand it!).
And then, if you have among your number sufficient talent, let there be sung the Bob Dylan song that Mr Spencer posted here (or play Mr Dylan's own inimitable performance, on a ghetto blaster turned up to top notch).
dumbledoresarmy:
I think most characteristic of the Western world's attitude toward Israel is the incident when them PM Ariel Sharon visited the White House and, after a closed door meeting here, came outside visibly angry and declred "Israel will not be Czachoslovakia!", a clear reference to Neville Chamberlain.
The US, EU, etc., do not want Israel actually to capitulate only because then the pack of wolves would turn on them the fury our country faces. Yet, though the US and EU bear some attacks from our enemies, like Gondor to our enemies' Mordor, ever we her in Israel bear the brunt of the attacks, ever we bear the most virulent hatred of our enemies who are the enemies of all who would remain unsubdued and while we stand we remain a bulwark to the lands figuratively behind us.
One should notice the usual nature of the actions as opposed to the words of US and EU gov'ts. While the US's president Bush makes pretty speeches about supporting Israel, he arms our enemies [who for example are the Saudis and the Egyptians armign against?] and demands we arm and feed our enemies like Fatach and Chamas. True, our our gov't should refuse but I strongly suspect the usual conversation with people like Rice [Bush's mouthpiece for dirty jobs] includes sentiments like, "Oh, you think refusing will make you safer, then let's see what you say if we give them smething REALLY good!" I admit Olmert seems to want ot be pushed into acting against his own people but he is simply fool enough to have bought into the propaganda used against us.
With H`'s bracha on our actions, we will continue not only to survive but to thrive far into future, but for those Western leaders who want only to delay problems they are unwilling to face until their own terms of office are ended, we seem a good sacrifical lamb to feed to the wolves pieces by piece.
Proud? Not likely.
Warm in winter? probably
Secure with fuel supply? tentative, based on anti-Israel momentum
How many of Israel's allies can manipulate the oil weapon? - certainly, not the USA
. . .or effect UN policy.
Hugh has also written abundantly about the need to address energy independence.
Mark Steyn: Your car can't run on Congress's hot air
It is bewildering that so many Jews hate both Israel and America. Whatever the existential meaning of the Jewish people may be, their existence happens to be deeply significant to Western Civilization. Oddly, significant to all mankind. Who the heck really knows.
The self-destructive aspect of the Jewish people now is the parallel of the self-destruction of all those folks lucky enough to be the heirs of hard-won freedom.
Note to self, time to pick up some Bob Dylan tunes.
Dumbledore's Army, thanks for citing Hugh's May 30, 2004 post. I missed it the first time around.
It is--sadly--perhaps even more apt today than it was four years ago, in the wake of Jimmy Carter's antisemetic book, "Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid", and his "negotiating" with Hamas; of Israel's pullout from Gaza, and the "democratic" triumph of Hamas, and the constant rain of rockets on Sderot, and Ashkelon; and, through it all, Israel's thankless struggle to bring medical care, and electricity, and even sewage service to the very people who are trying to destroy them.
The image of the small schoolboy, inoffensive yet continually despised, is very powerful.
Great song....only one verse seems curiously inaccurate:
"What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
"He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied"
This is a slap at the incredibly generous assistance the USA gives Israel ($3 billion a year), not to mention the state-of-the-art weaponry like advanced fighter jets.
Still, what a bold and insightful effort by Dylan that sees through the bleeding-hearted narrative.
PS - I was at a party last August when the (very liberal) sister of an old friend of mine were talking about the Middle East and she stated:
"I respect and understand the methods of the Palestinians."
I responded: "Well, I can't respect or understand anyone who deliberately and willfully targets non-combatants for mass murder"...
Whereupon she haltingly tried to retract her statement.
I've been wondering ever since, 'what is it about Lefties and hating Israel?'
It finally dawned on me. Israel is a friend and ally of the USA. That alone is cause for a Lefty to hate. I honestly believe it has less to do with anti-semitism than it does with the embrace of the anti-American narrative.
I sometimes wonder what the muslim states would do if Israel didn't exist.
What else is there that unites them?
I can't think of much because it isn't islam per se. So many hate each other and their sub-sects.
If they realized that it would make for interesting speculation as to what they would do next.
Sometimes, after refuting the hate directed at Israel in various blogs, I just write how beautiful Israel is, how Palestinians get treated equally in Israel's hospitals, and how much I love Israel. That seems to leave them speechless.
Thanks, Robert, for posting those lyrics.
I'm late, but....Happy Birthday, Bobby D! My life has been happier ever since you came into it.
If I'm not mistaken, Dylan went to Israel around the time of 1983. He was just coming off his "born again" phase which didn't work out so well for him (what does one expect when he was manipulated by born agains who used the Bible to frighten him into submission, showing him where it says God would punish him by taking away his children--sick) and had sort of returned to his Jewish roots. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, this was the time when he had his eldest son, Jesse, Bar Mitzvah'd in Israel. I believe this is the period that the song 'Neighborhood Bully' (and probably the whole record, 'Infidels') was born out of.
I do love him dearly.
*blushes*