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I'm catching up on some older Honestly podcasts and came across the first episode I could not finish. I knew little about Leonard Cohen and thought the premise of the story was fascinating, but Matti Friedman was infuriating. Nearly 3,000 Israelis and maybe 15,000 Arabs died in a war intended to wipe Israel off the map and Matti Friedman thinks it's all absolutely hilarious,. He could barely finish a sentence without giggling. He tells us about Cohen playing for soldiers who had been witnessing their friends being killed in front of them, and who knew they might not survive the week themselves, and that's good for titters from Friedman. Friedman also thinks it funny that Leonard Cohen played for patients in a French mental hospital, which was worth a good giggle, too. I have to wonder if his book is full of one-liners about how many dead soldiers you can fit under the tracks of a tank. Bari, you can do much better than this misanthrope. Fortunately, since then you have.

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