Posted on 01/13/2008 11:18:54 AM PST by Alouette
World renowned Israeli pianist, conductor receives PA passport over weekend, asserts Palestinian citizenship. Rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples, he says
Reuters Published: 01.13.08, 16:17 / Israel Culture
Daniel Barenboim, the world renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, has taken Palestinian citizenship and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples.
"It is a great honor to be offered a passport," he said late on Saturday after a Beethoven piano recital in Ramallah,the West Bank city where he has been active for some years in promoting contact between young Arab and Israeli musicians.
"I have also accepted it because I believe that the destinies of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked," Barenboim said. "We are blessed – or cursed – to live with each other. And I prefer the first."
"The fact that an Israeli citizen can be awarded a Palestinian passport, can be a sign that it is actually possible."
Former Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouthi, who helped organize Saturday's concert, said the passport had been approved by the previous government of which he was a member and which was replaced in June.
The passport had actually been issued about six weeks ago, he added.
Argentine-born Barenboim, 65, is a controversial figure in his adoptive homeland, both for his promotion of German music and vocal opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
Asked about US President George W. Bush's remarks last week on a visit to the region that a peace could be signed this year, Barenboim warned of the danger of raising hopes too high.
"It would be absolutely horrible if now, with good intentions, expectations are raised which will not be able to be fulfilled," Barenboim said. "Then we will sink into an even greater depression."
Though he dismissed any wish to play a political role, the former music director of the Chicago symphony Orchestra took a dig at Bush's strikingly forceful call in Jerusalem last week for Israel to end, in the president's own words, "the occupation".
"Now even not very intelligent people are saying that the occupation has to be stopped," Barenboim said. Barenboim, who is based in Berlin, he is closely identified with German music and in 2001 conducted an opera by 19th-century composer Richard Wagner in Jerusalem despite anger in some quarters at a performance of a work by a German accused of anti-Semitic views.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
all talent, no sense of decency.
Great conductor but I guess that they don’t have a Holiday Inn Express in Ramallah.
I am sincerely embarassed for the guy. If he hasn’t the mental faculties to realize why this is problematic, then it says more about him than I could.
I have his entire set of Beethoven’s nine on DVD-Audio. Spectacular recording. But I have to shake my head at these self loathing Jews.
Remember, he had to watch his wife, cellist Jacqueline DuPre slowly die from Multiple Sclerosis. I think that can make you crazy.
Ping
Okay, I’m just a dumb Gentile, but follow me here. If somebody takes PA citizenship, they can live in the territories, own land there, build a residence there...and nobody can make them leave. Correct?
“Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
I give this dreamer a pass because he has made an effort for peace via music
He is not just talk
Too bad he doesn't realize Jihad is eternal and Israel can give the Muslims the entire West Bank and this will not produce peace
Will he be premiering the new musical “Hello, Dhimmi!” in Ramallah?
This man accepted a passport from the Barghouti clan, a group that has dozens of family members arrested for terrorist actions over the decades. The clan has never renounced violence, and espouses the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews who do not submit to Muslim rule. This conductor has accepted subjugation over freedom. Nothing more than a capo of propaganda.
As another dumb Gentile, my understanding is that he is still (i.e. hasn’t convertered to Islam) a Jew, even if he has Pali ‘citizenship’; so, any Arab/Muslim selling him property does so illegally, committing a capital crime.
A tidbit about Mr Barenboim that may strike us as odd, under the circumstancces.
When the ‘67 war broke out, he and his wife Jacqueline DuPre (who had converted to Judaism) were among the first on a plane to Israel to help fight for its survival.
So?
He has a performance of Mahler’s Fifth that I find impressive. It’s been a warhorse for the CSO since the beginning of the Solti era.
The Barenboim reading is available on CD and also on video on DVD. Taped in 1997 in Cologne.
It leads one to wonder if his perspective has changed in the ensuing forty years.
40 years ago I was a liberal. Then I grew up.
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