Recently Publicized Manuscripts Include Bob Dylan’s Reflections on Anti-Semitism

That Robert Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan at the outset of his musical career is well known. But a collection of papers belonging to Dylan’s friend and fellow musician Tony Glover—recently put on auction by Glover’s widow—suggests that Dylan was very conscious of trading a Jewish-sounding name for one that was less so. William Kole writes:

Transcripts of 1971 interviews with the late American blues artist Tony Glover—and letters the two friends exchanged—reveal that Dylan had anti-Semitism on his mind when he changed his name. . . .

Some of the 37 typed pages contain handwritten notes in Dylan’s own scrawl.

A March 22, 1971, conversation began with Dylan joking: “I mean it wouldn’t’ve worked if I’d changed the name to Bob Levy. Or Bob Neuwirth. Or Bob Doughnut.”

But in handwritten additions, the tone became more serious as Dylan discussed his Jewish identity. “A lot of people are under the impression that Jews are just money lenders and merchants. A lot of people think that all Jews are like that. Well they used to be cause that’s all that was open to them. That’s all they were allowed to do,” he wrote.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: American Jewry, Names, Popular music

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF