Watch: Daniel Barenboim on the West Bank
mainThe conductor has been working today with young Palestinian musicians.
He now seems reluctant to accept that the 1967 war was a matter of survival for Israel and speaks of it instead as a prelude to occupation.
He adds: ‘Jewish blood runs through my veins and my heart bleeds for the Palestinians’.
Barenboim speaks here to the BBC.
Remeber when Barenboim travelled with Jackie du PrĂ© to Israel in 1967, they were all so excited and happy about the outcome of the war, and about the new state, Jacqueline converted to Judaism in one day and they married conform Jewish law. At the wedding party were present Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Teddy Kollek and many other personalities. All this long forgotten…
Mitzouko, this wedding was a political show that used well by propaganda. The ruller of Israel that you name were the war criminals. And conversion in one day’s laughable. It’s long process in Jewish religion. Well organized show. I bet DB regret this type of marriage that he couldn’t divorce latter J du Pre and was free after her premature death or alleged suicide.
Yes, it’s curious how he has chosen to forget that fact and how he also chose to abandon du Pre for another woman before she died!!
So, apart from being a hype-driven curator of clickbait masquerading as music journalism, Norman Lebrecht is also a supporter of Israel’s violent occupation of Palestine. Good to know.
anti-semitic much, B.K. ?
Jewish, actually.
Those are not mutually exclusive actually.
Then you must extend the same label to Mr. Barenboim as well, though even a tiny bit of thought would preclude such comments.
Maybe I should, but I prefer to avoid labeling people.
The enemies of the Jewish people have always been able to count on people like you.
there will always be enemies. you just have to look hard enough. and use imagination. If you need enemies, you will find enemies.
That may be true, but unfortunately some of us don’t even have to “look hard” at all.
This “anti-semitism” nonsense gets too boring. Somebody criticizing certain policies or actions of the state of Israel is not anti-semitic.
Just like somebody criticizing the Japanese government for killing Whales is not anti-Japanese, but maybe just against killing Whales?
Will this neurotic ‘anti-semitism’ hyperbole ever stop?
Anti-Semitism is something else.
If the accusations of antisemitism boring, think how we feel about the antisemitism itself.
Ah, welcome to the world of divisive identity politics!!! These labels were all fashioned by its adherents.
I’m sure that I’m the only one who noticed that you didn’t address my point. Don’t worry; your secret’s safe with me.
You do know, that the first creator and adherent of the term ‘anti-semitism’ was a Jew, right?
The term itself is highly imprecise, but the real problem is not the term but what it represents.
Please post links to what I’m sure must be the many, many pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
After all, we wouldn’t want people thinking you a hypocrite.
Jeffrey, petty arguments over semantics aside, bottomline the death toll in this conflict is about ten times higher on the Palestinian side. This conflict, when peace can’t be found, is a lose-lose situation. But let’s not ignore the facts either.
I mentioned nothing about semantics. If someone objects to Israel’s protecting its citizens, but not to that from which they are protecting their people, that person is a hypocrite. Or worse.
Building settlements in the West bank by breaking international law has nothing to do with protecting citizens. People who say otherwise are hypocrites.
Stop playing the victim card.
It’s today and there delusional.
I’ve opposed the settlements since the very first ones went up; that’s a different issue than the calls for Israel to unilaterally end the occupation, which would be suicide.
Not sure what you are trying to say. It seems to be the mainstream opinion in international politics, that nobody asks Israel to give up anything inside its 1967 borders. Only Jerusalem is a more blurry issue. Even extremist Hamas lately appeared to move toward that position. Yet pathological ideologists and supremacists like Bibi et al still want ‘Greater Israel’.
…And Hamas’ website has a map of “Greater Palestine”…which includes all of Israel.
At Israel’s narrowest point, it is only 9 miles wide, from the West Bank to the sea. In 1967, Jordanian artillery shells landed in Tel Aviv, on the coast. It would take a hostile army only about an hour to cut Israel in two; had the 1972 war started from the 1967 borders, Israel would have been destroyed. To insist on a return to those borders without the Palestinians’ not just saying but demonstrating that they accept Israel’s right to exist is to demand that Israel commit suicide.
By the way, still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
Would it? Not obviously. Many “progressive” Jews feel the compulsion demonstrate their anti-Israeli virtue. So helpful in dinner parties.
Woody Allen’s ‘self-loathing Jews’!!
Maybe they just achieved to put their real human identity over their constructed pseudo-ethnological sub-identity, which is the way it should be for reasonable people that are not brainwashed with ideological nonsense and hatred.
“He now seems reluctant to accept that the 1967 war was a matter of survival for Israel and speaks of it instead as a prelude to occupation.”
Both causes are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true.
If you are saying that Israel fought that war in order to become an occupier for over half of a century, you must be hallucinating. The only goal was and remains the same – survival.
M2N2K – absolutely agree with you. Anything else belies facts.
It’s amazing how the people who decry the occupation are so noticeably quiet when it comes to suggestions as to how Israel might end the occupation without exposing its own civilian population to increased attacks.
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Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, and terror attacks from that area skyrocketed.
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And, for those who were wondering, this seeming disregard for Israeli lives is why people assume that the motivation is antisemitism.
Yes, “seeming” and “assuming” do tend to go hand in hand.
Hoofbeats.
Horses.
Zebras.
OK – is Mr. Lebrecht or anyone here objecting to Mr. Barenboim working with the young Palestinian musicians?
I like that D.Barenboim came to such conclusion. But occupation started at 1948 with UN given right to establish state of Israel by vote manipulation. 6 day war without declaration was continuation to expand and make greater Israel. Napalm was widely used. It’s described well in 2 books:”10 myth about 6-day war”by John Perach, “Assault on the Liberty” by James M. Ennes, jr.
Well… no. The UN voted to give Israel land which was, and had been for millennia, majority Jewish, and to give to the Arabs (at the time, “Palestinian” was as likely to be applied to a Jewish resident of the region as to an Arab) land which were, and had been for hundreds of years, majority Arab. Until then, the Mandate had been administered by the British, and before that, it had been part of the Ottoman Empire. There has never been an autonomous Arab nation there.
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Jerusalem was to be an international city, but the day after the vote, the Arab League laid siege to the city, eventually destroying a Jewish community which had been there for thousands of years – yes, the Arab claim to Jerusalem rests entirely on “We killed you all 70 years ago.”
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Six months after the vote, on the day both countries were to come into existence, 5 Arab countries invaded Israel with the stated goal of destroying it and killing every Jew. When that didn’t work out as planned, instead of allowing Palestine to become a nation, Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan (which had been carved out of the Mandate 20 years before, to be the Arab homeland) occupied the West Bank.
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Folks, this didn’t happen in the Stone Age. It was amply covered by every newspaper, and those accounts are available in your local library.
“The UN voted to give Israel land which was, and had been for millennia, majority Jewish.”
Not true. The Jews were not the majority since about the 3rd to 5th century AD anymore.
And during the British mandate era, leading up to the foundation of the state of Israel, about 80% of the people living in and on the land were Muslims.
The area that was to become Israel was majority Jewish. I clearly did not say that the entire region was.
Seriously, as I pointed out elsewhere, this was all thoroughly covered by contemporary newspapers.
No it wasn’t. The private land in those areas might have been owned mostly by Jews. But they were not the popular majority. Check your sources.
Seriously, as I pointed out eI’m write merely by going to the librarylsewhere, this was all thoroughly covered by contemporary newspapers. You can see I’m write merely by going to the library.
You like (certain) newspapers very much, eh? There are enough serious historical scholars and literature that covers the subject extensively. Journalists in average are not the best bearers of truth and objectivity.
Eyewitness accounts of people who were actually there don’t support what you’re certain *must* be true. Got it.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
stop the nonsense. I don’t have to express my outrage over all atrocities against mankind at any place at any time similarly when pointing at a certain issue.
So childish.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present
As far as the numbers are concerned, Jews were not the majority over the last two thousand years. Even in Jewish stronghold cities like Haifa, only in the 1940s, due to the WWII exodus from Europe, did Jews gain the majority of the population after two thousand years of minority status and diaspora.
https://citiesintransition.net/fct-cities/haifa/
Further proving you wrong: There was only ONE district in the Mandate territory in 1946 that actually had a Jewish majority, Jaffa, greater Tel Aviv.
All the other territories, also those given to Israel by the UN, were to a HUGE majority populated by Palestinian semites.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story574.html
Actually, you do, if you don’t want to come across as a hypocrite. You’re criticizing Israel for defending its civilians, while denying that they’re doing that, and pretending that they have no reason to defend them.
It calls into question everything you say.
So… still waiting for links to your posts of outrage over Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.
I keep saying, specifically, that Jews were the majority in the lands that were allotted to Israel, and you keep pretending that I’m saying that Jews were the majority in the entire region.
If you have to lie in order to make your point, your point is not worth making.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
Jeffrey, please read my links. You are wrong. End of story.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story574.html#sthash.arG2bkki.dpuf
Yet every contemporary newspaper account, and the UN’s records, say that I’m right.
It’s long fascinated me, the way many liberals behave, when the topic is Israel, the way conservatives behave when the topic is anything else: refusal to read the history and insisting that what they’re certain *must* be true is so.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
Can you read?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Palestine_Distribution_of_Population_1947_UN_map_no_93%28b%29.jpeg
The official UN data says you are wrong.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
Jeffrey, it’s not final judgement day and you are not God. Let it go or you look ridiculous.
I don’t have to state every time when saying that Kathrin Jenkins is a bad singer, that Andrea Boccelli is a bad singer too. You show heavy symptoms of a false dichotomy.
Nope. You’ve condemned Israel for defending itself, yet refuse to condemn the Palestinians for putting Israel in the position of *needing* ro defend itself. Until you do so, and show that you’ve done so all along, I will continue to remind other readers that you’re a hypocrite and that whatever you say need not be heeded.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
No Jeffrey, I haven’t condemned Israel for doing so. All that is only happening in your – obviously – hallucinatory mind.
Pretty sure, by the way, that every major newspaper in the world did not lie about the UN debate, in which their criteria were openly discussed.
Well said, B.K.!
DB does not say that the War was a “prelude to occupation”, though if he did, he would hardly be wrong. Israel was entitled to occupy the West Bank under international law. What has not been mentioned here is the issue of the settlements, and the creation of those is most decidedly something Israel is NOT entitled to do under international law. Those settlements are now by far the overarching issue, for their purpose is to preclude a two-state solution. Many Israelis are critical of this and other policies of the present Israeli Government. Many Jewish people such as I outside of Israel are similarly critical of them. The consequence is the non-Jews who speak against the settlements are reflexively labelled anti-Semitic, and we who are Jewish labelled ‘anti-Semitic Jews’. It has all long been beyond constructive discussion, all hope of dialectical debate, and the indiscriminate throwing around of the term ‘anti-Semitic’ has debased it that term. If you think a Jew in or out of Israel is anti-Semitic for criticizing certain Israeli policies, you make it increasingly difficult to identify and battle against real anti-Semitism when we are faced with it and should confront it.
Whether you are Jewish or not, if you keep criticizing and demonizing Israel because of its policies toward Arabs while never condemning most of Israel’s many Arab neighbors for their much harsher discriminatory policies toward Jews, then there is no other reasonable choice but to call you anti-Semitic.
And when people demand that Israel take actions which even a cursory reading of verifiable fact shows would be suicidal… ditto.
As I wrote about the settlements, I must think that you regard those who oppose them, distinct from the occupation, on which I made myself clear, anti-Semitic. That would encompass a chunk of Israeli citizenry, for a start. Like the ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ you make a rather odd claim about, you just keep banging away at the same point: “What I tell you 327…328…329 times is true”. Also, M2’s sudden reference to Israel’s “many Arab neighbours” is another ignoratio elenchi, trying to change the terms of a debate not going well for either of you. That one was a major mistake, for, ‘Semitic’ being defined only as language group, both of you could equally be accused of being anti-Semitic. But as I wrote earlier, this loose chucking about of the term debases it and renders it meaningless eventually — perhaps already has done, indeed.
About the term, see my comment above here from June 15.
As for my mentioning the neighbors, that is not changing “the terms of a debate” at all but simply trying to put various events in proper context. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and it is not possible to evaluate behavior of the participants in the region without taking into account geopolitical realities of the entire neighborhood.
And, M2, those geopolitcal realities might include, as you attempt to account for behaviour, the fact that the Palestinians do not have their own homeland, yes? They haven’t for 69 years, and being in that appalling situation would likely affect my behaviour. At least the Palestinians have not descended to the level of blowing up a main hotel, as occurred in 1946, and killing 91 people because the extreme-Right Israeli terrorists in the wee incident were getting impatient.
They attacked British military headquarters, which happened to be in the south wing of the King David Hotel. No civilians were targeted (despite your implication), and the British were warned ahead of time, yet declined to evacuate because, in the words of the British commander, “I do not take orders from Jews.”
If you have to lie in order to make your point, your point is not worth making.
That argument about Palestinian Arabs not having “their own homeland for 69 years” (!) is my favorite.
Jordan was carved out of the Mandate, in the 1920s,to be the Arab homeland. They could have had their second homeland in 1948, just by doing… nothing. Instead, they opted to try for all or nothing, and now,somehow, it’s Israel’s fault for not allowing itself to be destroyed.
It’s long fascinated me, the way many liberals behave, when the topic is Israel, the way conservatives behave when the topic is anything else: refusal to read the history and insisting that what they’re certain *must* be true is so.
And yet, you do exactly the same. See above your claim of Jewish majorities in districts that were allocated to Israel by the UN. I gave you lots of evidence that you are wrong about it. Yet you close your eyes and ears and scream “BAAABAAABAAA you are lying” like a little child.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
Wouldn’t want people to t̀¶h̀¶ì¶ǹ¶k̀¶ know that you’e a hypocrite.
I don’t like Kebap. Do I have then to state also, that I don’t like spinach? Enlighten me, Jeffrey!
Nope. If you’re telling Israel it shouldn’t protect itselves, you have to prove that you’re not in bed with those who make it necessary for Israel to protect itself.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s.
Jeffrey, I never said Israel shouldn’t protect itself. Please take your pills.
Do I also have to prove, that I’m not in bed with a pink unicorn? I mean, who knows if I am, could be…
Question: If I wanted to state, that you are obviously an idiot, would I have to state that Sarah Palin is an idiot also, just to not being called a hypocrite? Please let me know.
If you’re criticizing those whom the pink unicorn has been threatening to destroy for 70 years, yes. I’m trying to figure out what youthink you’reaccomplishing by pretending not to understand the point.
Still waiting for you to post links to the pages on which you’ve expressed your outrage over the thousands of incidents of West Bank based terrorism targeting Israel civilians, going back as far as the 1920s. – See more at: https://slippedisc.com/2017/06/watch-daniel-barenboim-on-the-west-bank/?replytocom=163335#respond
Stop, stop, stop. This is getting too political, personal and endless. Should we not start a debating blog about history, parallel to music?
Although this is a music blog, the political antagonists who wish to debate Israel appear to have taken it over rather than to have their ‘discussions’ on more suitable forums. Although I as a Jerusalem-based Israeli Brit with a lifetime of music behind me, enjoy the cut and thrust of debate on matters musical, I do not come to Norman’s blog to be assailed by the likes of those who have swallowed vast gobs of propaganda.
Please desist and return to either discussing music or otherwise remain silent. I firmly believe that no-one entering this site is eagerly anticipating your next calumny concerning the State of Israel.