David Cohen

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Jan 1, 2018, 11:38 AM

Lorde have mercy

Shmuley Boteach once produced a wittily titled book, The Jewish Guide to Adultery. It's a lightly written romp (so to speak), deft, amusing and insightful by turns, that well lives up to its intriguing promise. If only the same could...

Dec 24, 2017, 10:10 AM

So the Kiwi songstress Lorde is reconsidering her Israeli options. How very unsurprising. Depending on how one reads these things, my fellow New Zealander has either suffered a horrendous backlash from gazillions of her fans or a concerted campaign by...

Nov 23, 2017, 9:34 AM

No more phone calls, please, we have a winner in the musical category of our competition to name The Most Pretentious Statement Of All Time. A thunderous round of one-handed applause, if you will, for Mr Roger Waters and his...

Oct 7, 2017, 12:15 PM

Sounds of silence

The news that an undercover FBI agent helped thwart a jihadist plot last year to attack targets in New York carried a depressing musical footnote. In a statement, the FBI said that three suspects had identified multiple locations and events in...

Sep 7, 2017, 3:15 PM

Finkelstein goes punk

Norman Finkelstein is a punk. No, really. That’s punk as in punk rock — and in what may yet be the most interesting career swerve for the outspoken critic of Israel (and, occasionally, of the BDS cause) since being denied...

Aug 23, 2017, 10:17 AM

Tell us about it, Billy

The singer Billy Joel comes across as a decent fellow — all the more so for many of those whose professional paths have crossed with his. One of my memorably pleasant interludes in the late 1980s was meeting and interviewing...

Aug 16, 2017, 10:25 AM

Comfortably dumb

G K Chesterton famously held that journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. Roger Waters, who is alive, says he nowadays finds himself in the opposite situation at the...

Jul 30, 2017, 12:01 PM

Persona non grata in the Middle East

The big news story about five members of an "interfaith delegation" to Israel who were prevented this past week from flying from Washington to Tel Aviv struck a nerve for me. True, the would-be travelers were bumped off an Israeli-bound...

Jul 26, 2017, 11:58 AM

Levy strikes out

The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is sometimes described by those in the know as an internationally famous reporter and commentator — which is to say, most people in the world have probably never heard of him. That might change this Southern Hemisphere...

Jul 16, 2017, 1:34 PM

An open letter to open letter writers

Who really reads 'em anyway?

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About Me

David Cohen is a Wellington-based author and journalist whose work appears frequently in publications around the world.