Mr. Arcadi Gaydamak is a Jew that was born in Russia, emigrated to France, made millions there trading weapons and a few years ago came to Israel. Here he does a lot of business of various kinds and attracts a lot of media attention – he invests in soccer teams and gives a lot of money to charity, among other things. He also organized a big Independence Day party this year, free for everyone. He was harshly criticized for this and other overblown charity projects, such as providing free shelter for refugees from Northern Israel in the last war. The critics say that this way he “buys” the public support and eventually he will manipulate local politics (they are at least partly correct – today he announced his intentions to run for the mayor of Jerusalem).
And you know what? I don’t care. It’s his right to spend his money on anything he likes. Our politics can’t get much worse.
But i haven’t heard anyone criticize for making millions out of weapons – until today.
Apparently at his big Independece Day party the singer Shay Gabso appeared. Gabso got to the third place at the first season of “A Star is Born”, the Israeli “Pop Idol” and went on to a moderately successful pop career, with two albums and several radio hits. At the party he sang Dylan’s “Masters of War”. He says that he was asked by the organizers not to sing it, but he rebeled! Yeah!
He made up his own melody, changed the mood of the song and translated the lyrics to Hebrew without any rhymes. But in this case i salute him anyway.
Video: Shay Gabso – Masters of War (streaming wmv video; it is badly nonstandard, but i am making an exception).
Hebrew readers are welcome to read the YNet article “Woodstock is Here” (as if you haven’t already).
Aharoni in Unicode 
Well i have to say, it doesn’t get close to Eddie Vedder’s performance, but it’s steel very good.