ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 TAG: 9608280073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: JERUSALEM
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
Songwriter and composer Yair Rosenbloom, whose ``Song to Peace'' was sung by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin moments before his assassination, died Tuesday of cancer. He was 52.
The song became inextricably linked with Rabin after he was killed Nov. 4 after a Tel Aviv peace rally. The lyrics were read at his funeral, and Israeli radio and television stations played it over and over during the following weeks.
Rosenbloom and lyricist Yaacov Rotblit wrote ``Song of Peace'' as an anti-war protest. When it was released in 1969, the military denounced it as defeatist and banned it from army radio.
With lyrics such as ``The purest prayer will not bring us back, he whose candle was snuffed out,'' the song tapped into public confusion over the mounting casualties in Israel's war of attrition along Egyptian and Syrian front lines.
Rosenbloom wrote more than 1,000 songs, including some of Israel's most popular. He presided over army entertainment troupes in the 1960s and '70s and helped build the careers of some of Israel's top musical entertainers.
Rosenbloom died at his home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon. He will be buried Wednesday.
LENGTH: Short : 35 linesby CNB