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Bob Dylan is a musician from Duluth, Minnesota, United States of America, born in 1941. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians/songwriters in history (if not the outright greatest singer/songwriter), and was a signficant figure in the counter-culture movement of the 1960's, with popular and acclaimed songs on African-American liberation, class struggle, anti-war movements, and broadly on civil liberation. With his timeless poetry on struggles for equality and recognition, he is regarded as the 'voice of a generation', and in terms of influence, a worldwide figure with significance comparable to the likes of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali. However, Dylan, despite outward support for the oppressed peoples of the world, has consistently made one exception to his stated beliefs: his staunch, yet usually unmentioned support for Zionism.

###Association with Meir Kahane In the 1970's, Dylan's interest in Israel led him to associate with Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League, (currently an FBI-designated terror organisation), reportedly having contributed monetarily to the League itself. He was quoted by Time magainze as saying of Kahane: “He’s a really sincere guy. He’s really put it all together.”.

Kahane, an American-born extremist, was the founder of Kahanism, a violent, anti-Arab, anti-democratic ideology that heavily promoted the idea of preserving the demographic superiority and 'eternal war' between Israelis and Arabs. It should be noted that while Kahanism is not an official state ideology of present-day Israel, and has been offically excluded from mainstream Israeli politics until recently; in practice, modern Israel's rhetoric and actions bear extreme resemblance with his fanatical ideology. Indeed, commentators like Gideon Levy note that, "The spirit of Kahanism (have) seized control over its (Israel's current offensive in Gaza) goals and content." Itmar Ben-Gvir, Israel's Minister of National Security and one the primary perpetrators of the genocide in Gaza, is the leader of the Otzma Yehuddit party, an openly Kahanist, ideological successor of Kahane's original party (Kach). Indeed, even the ruling Likud party has been described as being 'Kahanised'. All this is to highlight the importance of Rabbi Meir Kahane to the current genocide, and how any support of him during his lifetime (when "Liberal" Zionism was the more mainstream position within the Israeli government ) can be understood as having legitimised a violent, extremist ideology that has been put into practice for the wholesale murder of the Palestinian people today.

Dylan would later publicly distance himself from Kahane's Jewish Defense League, without denouncing Kahane himself. Nevertheless, his commitment to his Zionist ideology remained strong. In a meeting with the Black Panthers (a revolutionary, anti-Implerialist organization), he immediately began lecturing Panther leaders Huey Newton and David Hilliard on their Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestine positions (causing Hilliard to walk out while referring to Dylan as a 'Zionist pig', before returning for a longer discussion). The meeting ultimately concluded with Dylan refusing to support the Panthers 'as long as (they) are against Israel.'

###Pro-Israel Music In 1983, Dylan released the song 'Neighborhood Bully', a politically-charged, outwardly pro-Israel song, on his album 'Infidels'. This is a notable departure from a majority of his released material since the mid-1960s, which was almost entirely apolitical. The song itself is replete with typical Zionist talking points, painting Israel (sarcastically referring to it as 'Neighborhood Bully') as outnumbered and beleaguered, and explicitly defends Israel's bombing of Iraq's unfinished nuclear reactor in 1981, despite the bombing campaign being unprovoked, and having being widely condemned by the mainstream at the time (It should also be noted that this campaign was precedent-setting, paving the way for aggressive Israeli campaigns like the one agains Iran in June, 2025). Furthermore, the song was released after the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, where IDF-supported militias massacred thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese civillians.

The song purports numerous Zionist falsehoods that persist to this day, such as:

• Israel's neighbours '...lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep', and '...wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed', perpetuating the lie that Israel is in a constant state of danger and attack, despite numerous offers of normalization and compromise from Arab states and Palestinian representatives for the explicit promise of Palestinian sovereignty.
• Israel 'got no allies to speak of', 'What (Israel) gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love', and 'buys obsolete weapons', despite Western powers bankrolling Israel's activities fully, Israel having extensive documented history of using highly advanced, experimental weaponry on Palestinians, and the estimation that Israel was already in possession of nuclear weapons by the late 1960s, which negates other claims of Israel having any disadvantage, as is the song's premise. It is also believed that Israel stole enriched uranium, which negates the claim the 'bully' 'pays' for 'obsolete weapons'.
• Israel 'made a garden of paradise in the desert sand', 'took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth' perpetuates the myth that 1) Palestine was an uncivilized backwater, as were, by extension the Palestinians (and the pre-Zionist jews, which were a constant target of the Zionist's ire as well). and 2) Israel was a self-made nation, despite constant support from the world's great power, the United States of America, and from the British Empire before it.
• Apart from this, the song has an undercurrent of the accusation of ascribing anti-semitic reasoning for any criticism of Israel.

The song is emblematic of Dylan's ongoing commitment to Zionism despite significant aggression by Israel in the intervening years. Dylan, in his 40's at the time, and having publicly undergone a conversion to evangelical Christianity in the interim, had still not renounced his Zionist ideals. Although it may be possible that his conversion may have reinforced such beliefs.

Dylan's consequential and uncritical support of a violent strain of Zionism, which, given his particularly notable status as both a hugely popular worldwide figure (indeed, one of the most signifcant figures in the history of popular culture) and as the revered counter-cultural 'voice of a generation', may have been a potential legitimising contributor the ultra-right genocidal state of Israel today. He remains silent today, although having performed in Israel after 2005, over BDS-backed calls for boycott, coupled with his fervent support of Zionism in the past, we can infer that Dylan's facade as a revolutionary figure is just that - a facade, crumbling at the face of a monumental injustice that happens to be inconvenient to his cultural beliefs. And we should also be consistently aware of the historical realities that lead to this moment, and how various forces brought us here.

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