Schenker: Let Leonard Cohen sing in Israel

This is another missive from our chaver in Tel Aviv, Hillel Schenker, co-editor of The Palestine-Israel Journal:

While everyone else was writing about the Pope’s visit to the Middle East, I wrote the following piece in response to the Open Letters to Leonard Cohen that have been circulating in the UK and Israel. While preparing this piece for the Guardian, I discovered an extraordinary version of Last Night I had the Strangest Dream, sung together by Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel and Rashid Hussein back in the early 60s. I also discovered that the text of the historic New Outlook Israeli-Palestinian dialogue from 1978, “When Enemies Dare to Talk,” is on the Internet in its entirety, part of the Google books scanning project.

And finally, I highly recommend the film “18 Kilometers” that I mention at the end of the piece, which will begin a commercial run at the Tel Aviv Cinemateque at the end of May.