It's Only Rock and Roll, but they loved it in Tel Aviv as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood defied calls for a boycott and performed a 2-hour set on Wednesday night.
Leftist weenies with no moral compass had attempted to publicly shame the bad boys of the British invasion into canceling the historic concert. Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason had publicly called on the Stones to boycott Israel comparing the Middle East's only true democracy with South Africa under apartheid (I suppose that makes both of them eligible for a cabinet position in the Obama administration.)
"Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of South African apartheid, regardless of your intentions. We encourage you, fellow artists, to ask yourselves what you would do if forced to live under military rule and discriminatory laws for decades."
Not only did the Stones ignore the admonition from the legends who brought us "The Wall," they actually went to the wall ... the Wailing Wall.
According to the Times of Israel, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood visited the Western Wall of the ancient temple as a clear sign that they stood with the people of Israel and against the amoral bullies of the BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) movement.
That outward sign of support along with Jagger's frequent attempts to speak Hebrew during the concert sent the signal that this wasn't just a payday for the Stones, they were there to send the message that they stood with the Israelis and wouldn't be pushed around by anti-Israel leftists:
Many bands manage an "Erev Tov" (Good evening) and a "Shalom" or two; Jagger spoke more Hebrew than English in the early stages of the show, including "Anachnu Ha’Avanim Ha’Mitgalgalot" (We are the Rolling Stones), "Hokol Sababa?" (All good?), and the unforgettable and frankly inexplicable, "Kanita Na’alayim Ba’Shuk?" (Did you buy shoes in the market?) to Ronnie Wood, who was wearing rather spiffy orange Nikes. […]
When the choir from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music gathered on stage for the penultimate number to chorus angelically that "You Can’t Always Get What You Want," it was a heartfelt, Rolling Stones-loving Israel that joined in with the next line: "But if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need."
The setlist appears to be pure Stones and must have rocked the 50,000+ crowd all night long:
1. Start Me Up
2. You Got Me Rocking
3. It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)
4. Tumbling Dice
5. Angie
6. Doom and Gloom
7. Get Off of My Cloud (requested number, "from nineteen-sixty-something," said Jagger.
8. Paint It Black
9. Honky Tonk Women
10. You Got the Silver (with Keith Richards singing lead)
11. Can’t Be Seen (also Keith)
12. Midnight Rambler (featuring former Stones guitarist Mick Taylor)
13. Miss You
14. Gimme Shelter (featuring vocalist Lisa Fischer)
15. Jumpin’ Jack Flash
16. Sympathy for the Devil
17. Brown Sugar
Encores:
18. You Can’t Always Get What You Want (with the choir of Tel Aviv’s Buchmann-Mehta School of Music)
19. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
In a time when it's so easy for entertainers to mindlessly jump on boycott bandwagons cloaked in the false mantle of "human rights," it's great to see the Stones show some stones.