Songs of peace

Rotblit was wounded in the 1967 war, and the song grew out of that experience³. It was written during the War of Attrition and entered the Nahal troupe's 1969 programme¹. Its style drew on the American and British protest songs of the 1960s².

The song says something simple and hard: those who fell cannot be brought back, so mourning is not enough — peace has to be demanded out loud. Over the years it became identified with Israel's peace camp and was sung again and again at rallies².

Even before it reached the radio, the song angered the head of Central Command, Rehavam Ze'evi, and the head of Southern Command, Ariel Sharon, who said it harmed morale¹; according to Wikipedia, Ze'evi barred it in his command and Sharon joined the ban². On 4 November 1995, about five weeks after the Interim Agreement was signed, Miri Aloni, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres sang it on stage¹. Minutes later Rabin was assassinated. The lyric sheet, stained with his blood, was found in his pocket⁴, and Eitan Haber showed it at the funeral⁴. A photograph of the sheet is in the Rabin Center's collection⁵.

• Miri Aloni — שיר לשלום

On 19 November 1977 Anwar Sadat landed in Israel at the start of his visit to Jerusalem. As Broza tells it, Yehonatan Geffen wrote the words feverishly while watching the landing on television, then gave him 48 hours to write the music⁷. Broza was just starting out.

The song describes everyday tiredness and worry, and sets against them a stubborn belief that things will get better. Broza has said it caught the expectancy and hope of the days of the visit⁸. His official site calls it an Israeli peace anthem⁶.

It is a song that never ends: Broza has added new verses over the years, after significant events in Israel⁸. It was also the first song he both composed and recorded. It reached number one and launched his career⁷.

• David Broza — Masada Sunrise Live 2012

Shmuel Hasfari wrote the song¹⁰ while he was artistic director of the Education Corps Troupe¹². It was sung by soldiers born after the 1973 war, about twenty years on¹¹. Those were the years when the Oslo Accord and the peace treaty with Jordan were signed.

The speakers are the children born in the winter after the war. They turn to their parents and remind them of a promise: that the next generation would grow up in peace. Now they are soldiers themselves, and they ask for the promise to be kept. Tal Mosseri, who sang it as a soldier in the troupe, wrote that they sang then about hope and asked for change¹².

The song comes back whenever a young generation asks what it was promised. The Education Corps Troupe recorded it again in 2011⁹. In 2020 Mosseri tied it to that summer's youth protests¹². And after 7 October 2023 it resurfaced as a way of talking about what Israelis feel¹¹.

• חורף 73 — ביצוע עם יתומי מלחמת יום הכיפורים

In September 1973 Chava Alberstein asked Naomi Shemer for a Hebrew version of the Beatles' Let It Be. Shemer wrote words of her own. Then the war broke out. Her husband, Mordechai Horowitz, came home in uniform and insisted the song deserved a new tune, not a foreign one. Shemer composed it in a taxi on the way to Herzliya, before a live broadcast¹³.

This is not a song about a peace agreement. It is a secular prayer from inside a war: that the fighting will end, that the soldiers will come home, that what people ask for will come true. It is a reminder that the longing for peace is often born in the hardest moments.

A song that began as a translation became a fully original one within days. HaGashash HaHiver recorded it first, and Alberstein recorded it later. Shemer also cut one dark verse, out of compassion for listeners in wartime¹³.

• YouTube search: לו יהי נעמי שמר חוה אלברשטיין

Uzi Hitman wrote the song in 1978 for his newborn son. That is how his son Ido tells it: the father hoped the child would grow up into a reality of peace and love¹⁴. Those were the days of the talks with Egypt, between the Camp David Accords and the peace treaty.

The song speaks in the first person, in the voice of someone born into hope: peace here is not a slogan but a parent's wish for a child. It has stayed tied to one very specific moment — the year Israel and Egypt signed peace.

The members of Sexta did not want to sing it at first, because it did not fit their style. In the end they agreed. At the 1979 Israel Song Festival the song came fourth¹⁴, and it has been one of Hitman's best-known songs ever since.

• YouTube search: נולדתי לשלום סקסטה עוזי חיטמן

The song was written as an artistic response to the June 1967 war and the Arab defeat in it. Fairuz first sang it that summer, at the Cedars Festival in Lebanon. It came out on an album made up entirely of songs about Jerusalem, and was an instant hit¹⁵.

It should be said honestly: this is not a peace song in the sense of reconciliation between the sides. It is a song of grief and longing for Jerusalem, from an Arab point of view, and it prays for the city's future liberation. Alongside the sorrow there is a tone of resistance¹⁵. Arab listeners and Israeli listeners hear very different things in it.

What sets it apart is the way it looks at the city itself: the song mentions the houses of worship of all three faiths and stresses Jerusalem's religious and historical diversity. The music, too, moves between a military march and a church hymn. A year later Fairuz received the key to the city from the Jerusalem Cultural Committee¹⁵.

• YouTube search: فيروز زهرة المدائن

Fairuz had worked with the Rahbani brothers since the 1950s¹⁷. When the Lebanese civil war broke out she did not leave the country, unlike many of her peers. She refused to side publicly with any party, and focused on the grief the Lebanese shared¹⁶.

This is a love song to a wounded homeland, not a song about an agreement. It voices loyalty to a country at the very moment it is tearing itself apart. During the war it served as a kind of unofficial anthem of Lebanon, and has been described as a source of hope and comfort for people across the political spectrum¹⁶. Britannica writes that Fairuz became a unifying symbol of a divided Lebanon¹⁷.

In the war years Fairuz hardly performed in Lebanon. The exception was the musical Petra in 1978, staged in both halves of divided Beirut, west and east¹⁶. Wikipedia cites a 2026 Guardian article saying that some young people in Lebanon now hear the song with less sympathy¹⁶.

• YouTube search: فيروز بحبك يا لبنان

Yair Dalal is an Israeli musician who plays the oud and the violin. He wrote "Zaman el Salaam" in 1994¹⁸. That year the Nobel Peace Prize went to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, after the Oslo Accord.

The song carries an Arabic title and is the work of an Israeli musician: the title itself reaches out to the other side's language. His site describes him as committed to building bridges between cultures¹⁹. It is a song born of a moment of optimism, not of a war.

The song was performed at the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize events¹⁸. According to his official site, Dalal played at the gala concert held in honour of the three laureates¹⁹. This should be said too: compared with the other songs here, it is less known to the wider public in the Arab world, and further details of the performance were not confirmed.

• YouTube search: Yair Dalal Zaman el Salaam

Noa, a Jewish Israeli singer, and Mira Awad, an Arab Israeli singer, had worked together for years before this song²¹. In 2009 they were chosen to represent Israel at Eurovision. The choice was made against the background of the Gaza war of winter 2008–2009²⁰.

This is the only song on the list in which both languages are heard together, and its title makes a claim. The singers themselves presented it as a call to see the humanity of the other, not as a picture of an existing reality²⁰. In November 2009 the two received a peace prize for their commitment to dialogue between Jews and Arabs²¹.

It was the first Israeli Eurovision song to include Arabic, and Awad was the first Arab to represent Israel in the contest²¹. Not everyone welcomed it: artists and intellectuals, Jewish and Arab, called on her to step down, arguing that the appearance presented a false image of coexistence²⁰. The song reached the final on 16 May 2009 and finished 16th²⁰.

• Eurovision Song Contest — Noa & Mira Awad, live 2009

Khaled is an Algerian singer, one of the best-known voices in Arabic popular music. On his album Kenza, released on 7 December 1999, he recorded a version of John Lennon's Imagine with the Israeli singer Noa²². Noa has worked with many Arab musicians over the years²⁴.

Here the meaning lies less in the words than in who is singing them. An Arab singer and an Israeli singer choose, of all songs, the one that asks listeners to picture a world without borders or wars. Khaled has been described as a builder of bridges between cultures²⁵.

It is not an original Arabic work but a cover, so its place on this list is a borderline one. It is here because it ties the three parts of the page together: the most famous English song about peace, in the voices of an Arab singer and an Israeli singer. The album itself went gold in France²².

• YouTube search: Khaled Noa Imagine

In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono held a "bed-in" for peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. On 1 June the song was recorded there, in room 1742, with four microphones and dozens of guests and journalists singing and clapping along²⁷. It came out on 4 July 1969 and was Lennon's first single outside the Beatles²⁶.

The idea is simple on purpose: no political plan and no answers, just one request repeated over and over. Lennon wanted a song a large crowd could sing together at a demonstration²⁶. It has been a symbol of non-violent protest ever since.

On 15 November 1969 about half a million demonstrators sang the refrain in Washington, at the Moratorium march against the Vietnam War, led by Pete Seeger²⁷. The song reached number 2 in Britain and number 14 in the United States²⁷. A song recorded in a hotel bed became a song of the squares.

• YouTube (official johnlennon channel): GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - Plastic Ono Band (official music video HD)

Lennon wrote the song in early 1971 and recorded it between May and July of that year. The inspiration came from Yoko Ono's 1964 book of poems, Grapefruit. Lennon himself said the song should be credited to both of them, and in 2017 Ono was formally recognised as co-writer of the words²³.

The song sets the listener a thought experiment: picture a world without the things people fight over. Some hear hope in it; others hear naivety or irreverence — its words about religion have stirred controversy ever since it came out²³.

In 2023 the Library of Congress added it to the United States National Recording Registry²⁹. It has been played every New Year's Eve in Times Square since 2005, and was heard at Olympic ceremonies in 2012, 2021 and 2022. And yet in wartime, of all times, it was restricted: the BBC limited its airplay during the 1991 Gulf War, and an American radio network put it on a "do not play" list after 11 September 2001²³.

• YouTube (official johnlennon channel): IMAGINE. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers) HD
• Spotify: Imagine - Remastered 2010

Dylan was 20 when he wrote the song in 1962. He first sang it on 16 April 1962 at Gerde's Folk City in New York³¹, when it had only two verses. He took the tune, as he said himself, from a song of enslaved African Americans called No More Auction Block³⁰.

The song is made entirely of questions — about war, freedom and indifference: how much more will it take before something changes. It gives no explicit answer. It only hints that the answer is right beside us, and slips away. That is why it was sung both in the civil rights movement and at anti-war protests.

Peter, Paul and Mary's version reached number 2 on the American chart in August 1963³⁰. The singer Sam Cooke was so moved by the song that it inspired him to write A Change Is Gonna Come³⁰. The album it appeared on entered the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2002²⁹. According to Dylan's official site, he has performed the song 1,585 times in concert³¹.

• YouTube (BobDylanVEVO): Bob Dylan - Blowin' in the Wind (Official Audio)
• Spotify: Blowin' in the Wind

Pete Seeger wrote the song in 1955. The inspiration came from a Cossack folk song quoted in Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don. He adapted the tune from a folk melody and published the first verses in the magazine Sing Out!³².

The song asks one question after another, and each answer leads to the next question: flowers, girls, young men, soldiers, graves — and flowers again. Without blaming anyone, it shows war as a circle that repeats as long as nobody learns from it.

The circle was closed by someone else: in May 1960 Joe Hickerson added verses that brought the song back to where it starts. The Kingston Trio released it as a single in December 1961, and from 1962 Marlene Dietrich sang it in German, French and English. Seeger's recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002³².

• YouTube search: Pete Seeger Where Have All the Flowers Gone

Cat Stevens recorded the song in March 1971 in London, for the album Teaser and the Firecat. He told a concert audience that he wrote it while travelling on a train³³. In November 1971 the song reached number 7 on the American chart³³.

The image is simple: peace is a train that has already set off, and everyone is invited to climb aboard. It is an unapologetically optimistic song, written during the Vietnam War. It describes no particular conflict, which makes it easy to sing anywhere.

The singer converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and the song stayed with him. In 2003 he re-recorded it for the aid organisation War Child. In 2006 he sang it at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, in honour of the laureate Muhammad Yunus. And in 2021 a new version came out with more than 25 musicians from 12 countries, as part of the Playing for Change project³³.

• Playing For Change — Peace Train