What does Neighborhood Bully mean?

Bob Dylan: Neighborhood Bully Meaning

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Album cover for Neighborhood Bully album cover

Neighborhood Bully Lyrics

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Oct 29th 2017 !⃝

    It's a song about Israel. They are the bully ( tongue in cheek of course ). It's called irony.
    They can do no right, as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

    To many the fact that she exist is a crime, has everyone forgotten
    That the United Nations
    (i.e. the world) created
    both Israel and Palestine.

    The Palestinians and her
    Arab allies gambled with
    Her statehood and lost,
    There are no "take-
    backs" or "do-overs",
    not in the real world.

    Would they give Israel her land back, if she had lost? (I don't think so).

    That's what the song is about, best political song Dylan ever wrote.

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    m320753
    click a star to vote
    Sep 4th 2014 !⃝

    It is about Israel and the trouble they have had since being given back their country in 1948 after an exile of 1900 years.
    They are a God fearing people living amidst countries who believe in false gods. They are called the neighborhood bully because they retaliate when they are wronged.
    The question here is whether Dylan is really calling Israel the bully, or the Arab countries that surround it the real bullies.
    If recent times have shown us anything, it is Israel is not alone in this world as far as being hated by extreme Muslim and Islamic countries . In the last month alone, over 100 Catholics have suffered being burnt alive of killed by beheading alone ! not counting the number of Christians of other faiths who this new extremist group called ISIS, has reached a new low in crimes against humanity

  3. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 25th 2019 !⃝

    It's a pro-Israel song that describes Israel as "neighborhood bully"- as it is depicted by anti-Zionists and pro-BDS people or activists themselves.

  4. anonymous
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    Dec 30th 2016 !⃝

    A song about describing the ''neighborhood bully'' that had or still has to do with the power made in the state of Israel that influenced and destabilized the soul of the middle east in order to bullishly survive. But who is the actual bully there it's not really clear, like he's some kind of invisible force. Unless it's the Zionist[s] who hijacked the original Jewish Zionist ''idea'' that was turned against the people there, like was long ago when the Israelites hijacked PHILISTIA[Palestine].

    Wherenow today, only to be labeled a anti-Semite if you're a anti- Zionist against the state of Israel in the world. And ''if'' the neighborhood bully is the Zionist[s] there and everywhere, he and they don't really give a holy shit about the normal Jewish, Christian, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim etc, people there and everywhere, because the state of Israel's agenda in the Zionist[s] mind is used as a wedge to accumulate power for a Global World Order.

  5. kooljohn176
    click a star to vote
    May 30th 2016 !⃝

    It sounds to me it is more like a one man ''David'', a young servant of SAUL and the giant ''Goliath''[known to be a Philistine/Cannanite god] that it ever was and it is ''still that way now that kept his head alive'' that needs more and more rocks and stones to defend itself and continue to be the ''Neighborhood Bully'' for the fight for control that needs to make more and more room for his family tree that is cracking up.

  6. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Aug 28th 2014 !⃝

    It's about Israel.


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