Israeli singer David Broza arrives in north London from the front line
Israel's answer to Bruce Springsteen is a peace fighter but not a pacifist
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
He’s often spoken of as Israel’s answer to Bruce Springsteen, and certainly singer-songwriter David Broza has every bit as much charm and charisma as the man known universally as “The Boss”.
But David, who has just turned 69, and is due in London for a long-awaited sold-out concert on 12 September, has other strings to his guitar besides his natural warmth.
He is renowned throughout Israel for his willingness to go to the front line and bring a little bit of respite, through his music, to any sort of audience, big and small. Nowhere has this been more true than in the months following the horrors of 7 October.
David, who divides his time between Spain, where he develops his musical life, New York, where he lives with his fashion designer wife Nili Lotan, and Tel Aviv, happened to be in Tel Aviv when the news broke about the Hamas attacks.
Immediately David went out on the road. So far, he thinks, he has played around 200 separate events. “At first all the concerts were in the south, and then over the months we moved to the centre and the north; we played for displaced communities, reservists, military units… now it’s a mix. Last week we were in kibbutzim. What we should perhaps have anticipated is that everyone is everywhere right now and the entire country is a front line. Nowhere is more exposed than anywhere else”.
As a lovely illustration of how David will play anywhere for anyone – and, despite having worked with the likes of Paul Simon and Jackson Browne, doesn’t demand huge audiences – there is a sweet video online showing him keeping his promise to play for the two girl border guards outside the southern city of Ofakim.
One of the girls tells him she likes to sing. So David begins to play Carole King’s You’ve Got A Friend – and Osher Beniso reveals her magnificent voice. David, being David, doesn’t leave it there. He sends a video clip to his friends at the Rimon School of Music, which promptly awards Osher a full scholarship to take up when she finishes her army service.
David certainly doesn’t act ‘big rock star’, which in a country the size of Israel is probably just as well. His background is unusual: born in Haifa in 1955, he is the son of an Israeli-British businessman, Arthur Broza, and Sharona Aron, in her time a feted and admired folk singer.
His grandfather, Wellesley Aron, whom David adored, was co-founder of the Arab-Israeli peace village Neve Shalom, and also founder of Habonim. He became Chaim Weizmann’s political secretary.
The Spanish connection came early – when he was 12 Arthur Broza moved David and his sister Talia to Madrid for a business opportunity. “He invested all his money and lost it, and we were stuck” – in Franco’s Spain – “until he made it back,” says David.
The young David a learnt to play guitar in Spain and you can hear the driving flamenco rhythms in much of his music today. For a brief period, when his parents were worried about his schooling, David was sent to Britain for a less-than-successful year at the legendary Jewish boarding school Carmel College. It was not a marriage of true minds.
Instead he returned to Israel to do his army service, followed by a fateful meeting with the poet and journalist Yonatan Geffen, the nephew of Moshe Dayan. Aged just 22, he wrote, with Geffen, the song that has become his calling card – Yihye Tov, variously translated as It Will Be Good, or Things Will Get Better.
Almost religiously, one might say, every concert that David gives ends with Yihye Tov, and Israelis young and old know all the words and sing it with him. It is a song which has an added poignancy now, and David, a veteran peacenik with a profound belief in reaching hands across to his Arab counterparts, sings it with passion and hope.
He has said repeatedly that he does not believe in boycotts – not least of other musicians or settlers – despite the current violence in north and south Israel and the vitriolic rise in global antisemitism. Had he ever been tempted to change his mind?
“No. Because I think that the more dire it gets, the more important it is to keep the channels open. There is no doubt in my mind that if we followed the policy of the boycotters, all the way from BDS to the settlers… it’s like, ok, your daughter has just turned against family principles and as of now, she is boycotted and she’s thrown out of the family until she gets herself together. Really? Don’t you think it’s basic human nature to embrace, bring in, look them in the eyes and try to make sense of it all?
“Maybe”, David continues, “you have to learn something. Maybe the other side has to learn something. Maybe we learn from each other. But boycott? It’s primitive, it’s uneducated, unintelligent. That’s how I see it – and so I open my heart, my doors, my everything, as long as they accept me as to who I am”.
Were there not some people with whom it was just not possible to have a dialogue? David is ready for this question. “Eventually they might. Maybe you missed the chance. How do you know? Look at Arafat signing the Oslo Accords and shaking hands with Rabin. Who ever thought that would happen?”
Just the same, David is not naive. He describes himself as “a peace fighter, but not a pacifist. There’s a big, big difference. I want to make sure that where I live is safe for me and my children and the next generations. If anyone is going to come and disturb that – forget about it, never again”.
In spite of everything, David says, he remains optimistic that things will indeed get better. And he is someone who literally puts his money where his mouth is. Last week, a young Palestinian man, whose name has been withheld for his own safety, told an American presenter that he regarded David Broza as “my angel, my saviour”. He spoke of how he had been expelled from Tel Aviv University because he could not pay the fees. He put out a plea on social media for help. David saw it and made contact, asking the young man to meet for coffee. He heard his story.
“And then,” the young man said, “he saved me. He paid the rest of my tuition fees, he had me to stay at his home, he literally put a roof over my head.”
Like the song says: Yihye Tov.
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