Cohen's Tel Aviv concert a plea for peace
Last Updated: Thursday, September 24, 2009 | 7:35 PM ET
CBC News
Canadian poet and singer Leonard Cohen performs at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 8, 2008. (Keystone/Laurent Gillieron/Associated Press)Canadian music legend Leonard Cohen is in Israel bearing an olive branch after a concert Thursday night to fund the movement for peace.
Cohen was greeted with an adoring audience for the concert at Ramat Gan stadium in Tel Aviv that included some of his most beloved songs. The 47,000 tickets sold out in a few hours earlier this month.
The Montreal singer-songwriter showed no effects of the collapse he suffered in Spain on the weekend, reported to be the effects of food poisoning.
Planning the concert, like everything to do with Middle East politics, was fraught with dangerous politics.
Cohen called the gig A Concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace and plans to give the expected profits of $1.5 million to $2 million to a charity he has created of the same name.
The singer has run into problems from the moment he announced the show in Israel, where he had not played for more than 20 years.
The Palestinian Committee for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the same group opposed to the recent spotlight on Tel Aviv at the Toronto International Film Festival, asked him to cancel the concert.
"We're asking Leonard Cohen to respect our boycott against Israel, our cultural boycott against Israel, similar to what artists were asked during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa," said Omar Barghouti, one of the committee's founding members.
Buddhist background
Cohen, who is Jewish and was ordained as a Buddhist monk, responded by offering to perform in the West Bank, but that offer was rejected by the same Palestinian group.
He had asked Amnesty International to help him distribute the funds, which Cohen hoped would advance smaller groups that work for the co-existence of Israelis and Palestinians.
But Amnesty backed out of that arrangement and Cohen had to start his own charity, run by a board of Israelis and Palestinians, to distribute money to community groups.
There is no guarantee that Palestinian groups will accept it. Palestinians who are against what they call the "normalization" of relations with Israel are urging small groups to reject the funding.
The Parent's Circle, which unites Israeli and Palestinian families who've lost loved ones to the conflict, is one of the groups set to benefit from Cohen's peace fund.
Member Ali Abu Awadd , whose brother was killed by Israeli gunfire at a checkpoint in 2000, says he doesn't see how refusing Cohen's money would help Palestinians.
Awadd said he doesn't believe hatred will bring back his brother, nor does he agree with banning Cohen from the West Bank.
"Leonard Cohen is not coming to play to encourage the settlement, and he's not coming to encourage the attack against Israel. He's coming to say there is no other choice [but to seek peace]," he said.
In the audience for Thursday's concert were 200 bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families who had lost relatives in the ongoing conflict.
Among them was Israeli novelist David Grossman, whose son was killed in Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon.
"We are here today to show that with a joint effort, we can redeem each other from this hate," Grossman said at a fund-raising event ahead of the concert.
Cohen has said he wants to inspire fellow musicians to donate to Israeli-Palestinian groups focused on reconciliation.
With files from CBC's Margaret Evans
