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major.tom
Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Location: BC, Canada
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 Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 7:06 am Post subject: Barenboim first to hold Israeli and Palestinian passports |
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| Quote: | Barenboim becomes first to hold Israeli and Palestinian passports
* Kate Connolly in Berlin
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday January 15 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday January 15 2008 on p22 of the International section. It was last updated at 02:02 on January 15 2008.
Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, who has received Palestinian citizenship. Photograph: Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images
The Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim has been granted Palestinian citizenship for his work in promoting cultural exchange between young people in Israel and the Arab world.
The Argentine-born musician is believed to be the first person in the world to possess both Israeli and Palestinian passports after receiving his new documentation at the end of a piano recital in Ramallah in the West Bank at the weekend.
"Under the most difficult circumstances he has shown solidarity with the Palestinian people," Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian MP and presidential candidate, said at the recital held to raise money for medical aid for children in the Gaza Strip.
Barenboim, 65, who is musical director of the Staatsoper in Berlin and Milan's La Scala opera house, established his West-Eastern Divan orchestra with the American-Palestinian intellectual Edward Said in 1999 following a workshop in Germany. The orchestra's aim is to bring together musicians from Israel and Arabic countries to exchange ideas and perform together.
Barenboim, a regular and lively commentator on the Middle East conflict, said he was "moved and very, very happy", adding that he accepted it because it "symbolises the everlasting bond between the Israeli and Palestinian people".
In a pointed reference to US President George Bush's recent comments on the Middle East conflict in which he talked of Israel's "occupation" of the West Bank, Barenboim added: "Now even not very intelligent people are saying that the occupation has to be stopped."
Barenboim is a controversial figure to many in Israel, but less for the sympathy he openly shows towards the Palestinians than for his promotion of the music of the 19th-century antisemitic German composer Richard Wagner, which he has conducted in Jerusalem.
He criticised the Israeli government when he was forced to cancel a concert in Ramallah after Israel said it could not guarantee his safety. More recently, he held a press conference to protest at Israel's refusal to allow musicians from his Divan orchestra to enter Ramallah. |
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2240853,00.html
I can't say I've heard of him before, but good on him. |
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major.tom
Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Location: BC, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:42 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Jerusalem Diary: Monday 14 January
By Tim Franks
BBC News, Jerusalem
THE VISION OF MUSIC
Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan
President Bush confidently predicted peace within a year during his visit to Israel and the West Bank.
Barenboim is, probably, unique. He is the only person I know who holds Israeli and Palestinian citizenship. His parents moved to Israel from Argentina when he was seven.
A few months ago, Barenboim - the music director of La Scala and one of the finest pianists in the world - was awarded honorary Palestinian citizenship for his work with Palestinian musicians. He established, with the late US-Palestinian academic Edward Said, the West-Eastern Divan which brings young musicians together from across the Middle East.
Barenboim was in Ramallah to give the inaugural concert on the new Steinway, donated to the city's Cultural Palace.
He played three Beethoven sonatas, just before he embarks on a complete cycle in London.
The hall was packed, and rose in tribute, as he crashed to the end of the Appassionata.
Afterwards, he spoke to some reporters.
"I am not a politician," he told us. "But I know one thing. There is no military solution. We are blessed or cursed to live with each other... Even not very intelligent people are saying that the occupation has to be stopped."
I asked him whether he shared George Bush's optimism, expressed just two days before, in the same city.
Barenboim fixed his eyes on me with the intensity of a man who is used to conveying his musical instructions clearly, and in the expectation that they will be followed.
"We have been living in this conflict for many years. It would be absolutely horrible if now, with good intentions, expectations are raised, which will not be fulfilled... Then we will sink into an even greater depression."
On stage, just before playing a meltingly beautiful Chopin nocturne as an encore, Barenboim turned and talked to the hall.
"My wish," he said, "is that it doesn't always continue to be a special occasion when I or my colleagues come to play in Ramallah."
He wished, rather, for a "regular musical life" in the city, "so the problem is to make the occasion special, not that the occasion is special".
But there were limits.
"Music will not bring peace to the region. I'm not here to make a political speech. The negotiations required have nothing to do with music. But music will enrich all sides, if we open our ears, our brains, and our hearts to it."
Anyone listening to him play the Andante of the Appassionata would say amen to that.
THE PRESIDENT COMES TO TOWN
President Bush's own swing through Israel had its musical symbolism.
At Ben Gurion airport, Mr Bush, stood to attention for the Star Spangled Banner and the Hatikva (the US and Israeli national anthems).
In Ramallah, he emerged from his car and walked straight into the presidential office. Unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton, he was not going to listen to the Palestinian anthem.
President Bush gets the full ceremonial welcome at Tel Aviv
"That hurts," a Ramallah resident who was watching the TV pictures, told me. "It's disgusting behaviour."
Nor were there any schoolchildren on hand to serenade or to dance.
That too, according to one Palestinian government adviser, was kyboshed by the American protocol advance party.
The previous day, Mr Bush had appeared happy - even moved - to be entertained by Israeli children, singing popped-up versions of Hava Nagila and Shalom Aleichem.
Others, who had been watching the event with full stomachs, were less happy.
But did White House protocol sign off on the welcome music that the Israeli military bands played at Ben Gurion airport?
One sharp-eared Israeli friend heard them play a hit from 1963, called The Soldiers' Love Song, with lyrics by Haim Hafer.
The soldiers have to leave town...
Our love burns like fire...
And even if we fondle another
It's not the end of the world
We will think of you dear...
We don't know when we return
But until the summer
You can go with others |
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7186757.stm
Sorry to double-post, but I just saw another related article...
One interesting tidbit is (nearer the bottom) Dubya apparently refused to pause in Ramallah to hear the Palestinian National Anthem. Shameful. |
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major.tom
Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Location: BC, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Passports to Progress
Israelis and Palestinians alike should join me in taking dual citizenship - for we share one destiny
* Daniel Barenboim
* The Guardian,
* Wednesday January 30 2008
I have often said that the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian people are inextricably linked and that there is no military solution to the conflict. My recent acceptance of Palestinian nationality has given me the opportunity to demonstrate this more tangibly.
When my family moved to Israel from Argentina in the 1950s, one of my parents' intentions was to spare me the experience of growing up as part of a minority - a Jewish minority. They wanted to me to grow up as part of a majority - a Jewish majority. The tragedy of this is that my generation, despite having been educated in a society whose positive aspects and human values have greatly enriched my thinking, ignored the existence of a minority within Israel - a non-Jewish minority - which had been the majority in the whole of Palestine until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Part of the non-Jewish population remained in Israel, and other parts left out of fear or were forcefully displaced.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there was and still is an inability to admit the interdependence of their two voices. The creation of the state of Israel was the result of a Jewish-European idea which, if it is to extend its leitmotif into the future, must accept the Palestinian identity as an equally valid leitmotif. The demographic development is impossible to ignore; the Palestinians within Israel are a minority but a rapidly growing one, and their voice needs to be heard now more than ever. They now make up approximately 22% of the population of Israel. This is a larger percentage than was ever represented by a Jewish minority in any country in any period of history. The total number of Palestinians living within Israel and in the occupied territories (that is, greater Israel for the Israelis or greater Palestine for the Palestinians) is already larger than the Jewish population.
At present Israel is confronted with three problems: the nature of the modern democratic Jewish state - its very identity; the problem of Palestinian identity within Israel; and the problem of the creation of a Palestinian state outside of Israel. With Jordan and Egypt it was possible to attain what can best be described as an ice-cold peace without questioning Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The problem of the Palestinians within Israel is a much more challenging one to solve, theoretically and practically. For Israel it means, among other things, coming to terms with the fact that the land was not barren or empty, "a land without a people" - an idea that was propagated at the time of its creation. For the Palestinians, it means accepting the fact that Israel is a Jewish state and is here to stay.
Israelis must accept the integration of the Palestinian minority, even if it means changing certain aspects of the nature of Israel; they must also accept the justification for and necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel. Not only is there no alternative, or magic wand, that will make the Palestinians disappear, but their integration is an indispensable condition - on moral, social, and political grounds - for the very survival of Israel.
The longer the occupation continues and Palestinian dissatisfaction remains unaddressed, the more difficult it is to find even elementary common ground. We have seen so often in the modern history of the Middle East that missed opportunities for reconciliation have had extremely negative results for both sides.
For my part, when the Palestinian passport was offered to me, I accepted it in the spirit of acknowledging the Palestinian destiny which I, as an Israeli, share. A true citizen of Israel must reach out to the Palestinian people with openness, and at the very least an attempt to understand what the creation of the state of Israel has meant to them.
May 15 1948 is the day of independence for the Jews, but the same day is al-Nakba, the catastrophe, for the Palestinians. A true citizen of Israel must ask himself what the Jews, known as an intelligent people of learning and culture, have done to share their cultural heritage with the Palestinians. A true citizen of Israel must also ask himself why the Palestinians have been condemned to live in slums and accept lower standards of education and medical care, rather than being provided by the occupying force with decent, dignified and liveable conditions - a right common to all human beings.
In any occupied territory, the occupiers are responsible for the quality of life of the occupied, and in the case of the Palestinians, the different Israeli governments over the past 40 years have failed miserably. The Palestinians, naturally, must continue to resist the occupation and all attempts to deny them basic individual needs and statehood. However, for their own sake, this resistance must not express itself through violence. Crossing the boundary from adamant resistance (including non-violent demonstrations and protests) to violence only results in more innocent victims, and does not serve the long-term interests of the Palestinian people.
At the same time, the citizens of Israel have just as much cause to be alert to the needs and rights of the Palestinian people (both within and outside Israel) as they have to their own. After all, in the sense that we share one land and one destiny, we should all have dual citizenship.
· Daniel Barenboim is a conductor and pianist, and co-author with Edward Said of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society danielbarenboim.com |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/30/israelandthepalestinians.comment |
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