He’s a rock star, not a sage or a statesman. But Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry began 2017 as my personal hero, joining a small but growing list of mensches and menschettes who’ve risked their careers, and possibly their safety, to stand up for what is right.
“Shalom, Israel,’’ the talented strummer intoned in an online video posted Jan. 1. “This is Joe Perry from Aerosmith.”
He’d just played a bluesy slide-guitar rendition of a folk song familiar to anyone who has attended a Jewish wedding: “Hava Nagila.”
“Wishing you a happy Hanukkah, and we’ll see you May 17,’’ he said. “Aero-vederci, baby!”
With that, the band from Boston — which also includes the amazing frontman Steven Tyler — rose in my estimation from a musical act to something greater: The Aerosmith guys became warriors in the battle for the Jewish state’s right to exist, defying forces, from others within the artistic community to the Obama administration, who wouldn’t mind seeing the United States’ steadfast ally wiped from the map.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which the rights of women are upheld, and where gays, lesbians and transgender people are not threatened with being thrown off tall buildings or stoned to death.
Also there, men and women with microphones are free to celebrate love, anger, even sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, without fear of punishment by mad mulllahs and government goons hellbent on crushing infidels.
Slowly, times are a-changing.
Some performing artists are rising up courageously against the rank hypocrisy and bigotry displayed by ringleaders of the orchestrated effort to destroy Israel. This marks a repudiation of the international BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement that aims to starve the country with the removal of cultural, business and academic ties. And it represents an uprising against the American administration’s refusal to veto the recent anti-Israel resolution that passed in the United Nations.
It also takes on Roger Waters, perhaps the world’s leading Israel-hater. He maintains that his dastardly deeds target the Israeli government rather than the Jewish people.
Rubbish. This is anti-Semitism 101.
The British Pink Floyd co-founder, who has compared the Israeli government’s self-defensive treatment of Palestinians to Nazi atrocities (never mind that Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy the right to vote and serve in elected office), wrote a subtly menacing 2013 open letter to his peers. He urged them not to perform or exhibit in the “apartheid” regime, and to reject awards or funding from its government “until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.” Not a word about deadly outrages committed by Palestinians against Israelis.
Thankfully, some celebs have declared solidarity with the Jewish state.
Pressured by Waters to cancel their first-ever concert in Tel Aviv in 2014, the Rolling Stones not only ignored him, the British rockers delayed the start of their show by 45 minutes to allow devout Jews, who don’t drive on religious holidays, time to arrive for the gig after the Jewish feast of Shavuot ended at sunset.
Four months before a 2015 show in Paris by the California-based band Eagles of Death Metal was turned into a bloodbath by Islamic butchers, frontman Jesse Hughes lobbed a few choice words at Waters from a Tel Aviv stage. Waters had written a letter to band members imploring them not to play there.
“You want to know what I wrote that c–ksucker back?” Hughes shouted.
“Two words: F–k you!”
His band played again in Israel this past September.
In May, Canadian popster Justin Bieber is planning a do-over of his 2011 Israeli concert. Even leftist rocker Bruce Springsteen, who isn’t Jewish despite claims to the contrary, told an Israeli woman who traveled to New Jersey in October for a signing of his new memoir, “I need to play there.’’
In a series of tweets he issued last May, Springsteen’s E-Street bandmate, guitarist Steven Van Zandt, called Israel boycotters “politically ignorant, obnoxious idiots.” He suggested that one commit a physically unlikely sex act on himself.
As the Italian-ish title suggests, Aerosmith’s worldwide “Aero-Vederci, Baby!” tour, which kicks off in Israel, is expected to be the band’s farewell. A pity. We need more brave souls like these.
And their music is pretty great, too.
A ‘dressing’ the Melania dilemma
Incoming First Lady Melania Trump won’t go starkers when her husband, The Donald, is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.
High-end clothing designer, filmmaker and Hillary Clinton fan Tom Ford sniffs that his duds are too pricey to grace Melania’s back, or even Clinton’s, were the latter entering the White House.
Sophie Theallet, who has clothed luminaries from Kim Kardashian West to outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama, posted an open letter on Twitter refusing to consider dressing the former model. Marc Jacobs said he has “no interest whatsoever’’ in the job.
But the snooty rag world also contains Zac Posen, B. Michael America, Victor de Souza, Zang Toi and others who would leap at the chance to put their threads on Melania, Jean Shafiroff, who is on The Couture Council of the Museum at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, told The Post.
Fashion emergency averted.
‘Locks’ of love for killer brothers
Lyle and Erik Menendez prove that hearts grow fonder when couples can’t fool around. The brothers are locked up in separate California prisons for life without the possibility of parole for murdering their wealthy parents in 1989, claiming physical and sexual abuse by their father.
A jury didn’t buy it.
Lyle, now 48, told ABC News in a phone interview that he’s been happily married since 2003 — to his second wife behind bars, despite a prohibition on conjugal visits. Erik entered into a sexless marriage in 1999.
At least the gals know where their men are at night.
Open season – on everyone
I can’t understand why Iraq war veteran Esteban Santiago, 26, was allowed to check a 9mm handgun on an Alaska-to-Florida flight Friday — after, according to authorities, he walked into an Anchorage FBI office in November claiming that voices in his head were urging him to join ISIS.
He was briefly hospitalized and had his gun taken away. But he got it back, and allegedly used it to murder five people and wound six others in a rampage in the baggage-claim area of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. He faces charges that could get him the death penalty if convicted.
How did this happen?
Stricter gun control measures won’t stop this. We’re all sitting ducks when nut jobs and alleged terrorists may bear arms.