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.
“Remember, he had to watch his wife, cellist Jacqueline DuPre slowly die from Multiple Sclerosis. I think that can make you crazy.”
Actually, as her disease progressed, he dumped her and married another woman.
Musical talent need not be linked with moral judgment or political insight.... if he likes the dungheap that is Palistan so much he can go live there and see what it’s really like. Here he is helping the propaganda campaigns of the terrorists who slaughter so many innocents. What a travesty.
Frankly I have no idea how you can turn your back on your own people and thumb your nose at them as if they are all wrong and that the poor pali's are so mistreated. A tool of peace?
I think not!
Shalom ya all!
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sitetest
There is a certain Israeli tradition here. A former conductor of an Israeli symphony was if my memory serves me correctly, a member of a wartime ghetto police force.
He dumped her at the very beginning of the disease -- not when she was anywhere near her deathbed. And that was only after he had cheated on Barenboim with her brother-in-law.
“Remember, he had to watch his wife, cellist Jacqueline DuPre slowly die from Multiple Sclerosis. I think that can make you crazy.”
And while he was “watching his wife slowly die from Multiple Sclerosis” he was carrying on an affair with another woman and having 2 children with her.
He’s quite loyal all around I guess.
Who are these people (or in more simple terms, WTF! )that feel the need to commit cultural suicide and march willingly into the doors of Islamofascist barbarians and murderous thugs?
Always trying to prove that you’re a “liberal” comes first with these people. They’d rather die than not be considered “tolerant”.
Good luck turncoat Barenboim.
Yes, but he had two sons with another woman before she died. ‘Thinks he kept it secret from DuPre though. And at least he married his concubine once DuPre was cold.
Reading the threads below (above?) about his private life makes we want to go rent the film HILLARY & JACKIE.
btt
He always was a jerk.
After all, the highly-cultured Pallies can afford the lofty prices commanded by his concerts and for his albums, while most ill-bred, lumpkin Israelis have trouble paying to see and hear him.
Not only is he a talented conductor, Barrenbrain is also touted as a savvy businessman.
Leni
Sarcasm right?
Leni
Remember what we learned about Leonard Bernstein from Tom Wolfe’s book ‘Radical Chic’.
Exactly right. As to him, the phrase “yemach shemoe” comes to mind..
IT’S ALL IN THE TITLE-—The 60s saw an explosion among people you’d think would know better of giving in to the irresistible urge of proving their hipness by doing things like hosting cocktail parties with people like the Black Panthers as honored guests, which is what Bernstein did. More recently Bill Clinton invited the Crips and the Bloods to the WHouse during his first term. VERY hip bid to gain ‘street cred.’ But by now this whole thing is so well integrated into the way the Media/Political/Celebrity culture do business that we find ourselves having to listen to the criminal Al Sharpton expound on his “community” as if he’s some kind of ‘leader’ rather than scam artist/hustler/
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