A Long And Winding Road To Israel

Here comes the sun: Paul McCartney’s “sunny disposition,” says an Israeli culture critic, is a “respite from reality” in a dangerous time. Getty Images

Here comes the sun: Paul McCartney’s “sunny disposition,” says an Israeli culture critic, is a “respite from reality” in a dangerous time. Getty Images

by Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — Forget the meltdown on the New York and Tel Aviv stock exchanges, Prime Minister Olmert’s resignation and threats from Iran.
Paul McCartney, still baby-faced if a bit leathery, was slated to perform in Tel Aviv this week, and that was enough reason for Israelis to celebrate.
While many famous musicians have graced Israeli stages over the years, the news that McCartney, a former member of the legendary Beatles, was finally coming to Israel prompted gleeful fans — both young and old — to shell out an unprecedented 490 to 1400 shekels (about $143-$409) for the show.
And, quite unexpectedly, it sent the nation on a trip down memory lane, to a time when Israelis, once so insular and unworldly, trusted their government to

make artistic decisions.
The media have reported on every conceivable aspect of McCartney’s visit, from his dietary habits (strictly vegetarian), to the furniture in his backstage tent (no leather, for animal-rights reasons). A grand piano was installed in his presidential suite at the Dan Tel Aviv, where staffers baked a cake resembling his latest CD, three feet in diameter.
Owners of several local clubs said they had scrapped their shows the night of the concert, believing no one would show up. Bars, on the other hand, designated Sept. 25 “Beatles Night.”
Just as Beatlemania began to grip the country, Omar Bakri, an Islamic extremist, threatened McCartney’s life in mid-September. Bakri told Britain’s Sunday Express newspaper, “If he values his life Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel. He will not be safe there. The sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him.”
There was a collective sigh of relief in the Israeli street when McCartney said, “I was approached by different groups and political bodies who asked me not to come here. I refused. I do what I think and I have many friends who support Israel.”
Stuart Schoffman, a longtime commentator on Israeli culture, believes the mania surrounding McCartney’s visit stems from a profound desire for some normalcy.
“At a time when the situation here is as unpredictable and potentially dangerous as ever, it’s heartening to see someone of McCartney’s stature, with his sunny disposition, come here and blithely brush away terrorist threats. It’s a wonderful respite from reality.”
To both younger and older Israelis, “the Beatles symbolize transcendence over politics and reality,” Schoffman says. “They asked people to imagine everybody holding hands in a place with no religion, no ethnicity. They’re one big hug-a-thon.”
Given present-day Israel’s Westernized values and cultural norms, Schoffman finds it a bit hard to imagine how the Israeli government scuttled a scheduled visit by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, reportedly on the grounds that the band was not wholesome enough to entertain Israeli youths.
“You look back at that and the kind of severe cultural ethos that prevailed at the time from the secular point of view; that a visit by the Beatles would in some way undermine the discipline of the spunky, young struggling society,” Schoffman notes. “Now, Israel is an enormously permissive place. Its own popular music culture goes far beyond what was considered subversive in the 1960s.”
Until a few weeks ago, when McCartney gave the green light for the Tel Aviv show, few young people knew that the Beatles were scheduled to perform in Israel four decades ago. After the venue was booked and the tickets (now a valuable collector’s item) were printed, the government forced the concert’s cancellation, at least partly because Paul, John, George and Ringo might corrupt impressionable Israeli teens.
The newspapers have been full of piquant features about the long-defunct Interdepartmental Committee for Authorizing the Importation of Foreign Artists, which nixed the Beatles’ appearance in 1965.
The committee made its decision for two reasons.
“First, it is apparent ... that the band has no artistic merit,” the committee said, basing its opinion on contemporary media reports and feedback from various Israeli embassies. “Second, the band’s performances caused hysteria and mass disorder among young people.”
Former Knesset member Yossi Sarid, whose father, Ya’akov Sarid, directed the Ministry of Education at the time and was one of the committee members, is convinced his father and the other government men knew absolutely nothing about the Beatles, and were easily duped by a concert promoter.
Writing in Haaretz, the younger Sarid said, “it was not a conservative and old-fashioned establishment that prevented the Beatles from performing in Israel; it was a spat between impresarios.”
Giora Godik did not like the way that Yaakov Uri was treating him and went running to the Knesset’s Finance Committee, where he convinced members not to allocate any foreign currency to the competing impresarios. (In those days, the law was much stricter on controls of foreign currency.)
“So why,” Sarid continued, “should they have expected anything different from David Ben-Gurion and from my father, who had never heard the Beatles’ music and never heard of the band. Why should they allow the Jewish youth of a young nation-state to be corrupted by the evil influence of these ‘dung beetles?’ Over their dead bodies!”
Though it is easy to ridicule these innocent times, David Brinn, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and a veteran culture writer, agrees that the committee’s policy isn’t that hard to understand, provided you view it in historical context.
“At the time Israel was a very innocent country. There was no TV and people got their information from newsreels and the radio, which would have been heavily monitored. Sure, some young people knew about the Beatles, but the average adult was more shielded.”
Today, Brinn says, “Israel is as advanced as any other country. With the Internet and the electronic media we get information as quickly as anyone else. And we’re as corrupt as anyone else.
“Those were more innocent times,” Brinn says, sounding a nostalgic note. “That wasn’t such a bad thing.”

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