Israelis losing all sense of decency – Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim giving a class in musical education to young Palestinians, May 2016
Barenboim says occupation is eroding all sense of decency in Israel
John Reed — Ramallah, Financial Times
June 12, 2017
Daniel Barenboim, the master conductor, has warned Israelis that they are losing “all sense of decency and humanity” because of their country’s occupation of lands earmarked for a Palestinian state.
The Argentine-born Israeli, who is a fierce critic of Israel’s rightwing leadership, also said calls from some Palestinians’ for the world to boycott Israeli state institutions were “absolutely understandable” because of the problems they faced.
“The occupation, of course, is catastrophic for Palestine — everybody knows that — but it is very negative for Israel too,” Mr Barenboim told reporters. “It has eroded all sense of decency and humanity and morality from people like me [Jews], who had been persecuted for over 20 centuries.”
Mr Barenboim was speaking in Ramallah, the West Bank city, after he performed at a concert on Sunday at a foundation supporting music education for young Palestinians he set up with Edward Said, the late Palestinian intellectual.
His comments came as the region marks the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, during which Israel captured Palestinian lands. The anniversary has prompted anguished reflections among Palestinians and leftwing Israelis about the occupation that shows no signs of ending despite US President Donald Trump’s promise to pursue the “ultimate” peace deal.
While he said he did not want to make an “equation” between the historic oppression of Jews and that faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation, he added that it was “something along the same lines”.
Palestinians revere Mr Barenboim for championing their cause overseas and for having co-founded the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, which brings together Israeli, Arab, and other musicians, with Mr Said in 1999. Mr Barenboim, who also holds Spanish and Argentine citizenship, lives in Berlin, and — a rarity for an Israeli — was granted Palestinian citizenship in 2008.
At Sunday’s concert, the Barenboim-Said Foundation’s “young orchestra” — some of them children so small their feet did not touch the floor when they sat — executed a spirited if patchy performance of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt.
After the interval Mr Barenboim, clad in a white linen shirt and trousers, led the foundation’s “advanced orchestra”, comprising older children and young adults, through a more polished rendition of Mozart’s 40th symphony.
He told the audience to rapturous applause: “Jewish blood runs through my veins and my heart bleeds for the Palestinians.”
Cultural events led by Israelis in the parts of the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority’s control are virtually unheard of as many Palestinians see co-operation with Israelis as a “normalisation” of relations in the absence of a peace deal.
Some pro-Palestinian activists who support a boycott of Israel have called for the West-Eastern Divan to be shunned because it has Israeli members, including some who have completed compulsory military service.
Asked about the “normalisation” debate, Mr Barenboim expressed sympathy for Palestinians who were “forced to fight” Israeli policies that affected them.
“I think every kind of boycott of the Israeli government is absolutely understandable,” he said. “Anything that makes life easier for Israel is, at this moment, not on.”
However, he added that it was “short-sighted” to boycott contacts with individual Israelis, many of whom he said were “disgusted by the Israeli government”.
Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Ramallah, August 2005. Photo by Mushir Abdelrahman/ MaanImages
This was Mr Barenboim’s first trip to the West Bank since 2008. He led European musicians in a “peace concert” held in the Gaza Strip in 2011.