Boycott statement has been signed by over 200 artists, including Jennifer Tilly, James Schamus, Tony Kushner, Harold Prince and others.
World-renowned architect Frank Gehry and the legendary pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim joined Tuesday the international campaign in support of the Israeli actors' refusal to perform in the new cultural center of Ariel, according to the website of Jewish Voices for Peace.
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"...and the legendary pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim..."
ReplyDeleteOh my, will this be enough to redeem Barenboim in the angryarab's eyes?
<p><span><span>With what he said about Palestinians, it's not enough to redeem him in my eyes either. I'm not impressed or encouraged by these late showing of artists expressing their displeasure with the occupation. It has taken them 43 years to come to this sudden realization that the occupation is wrong and I'm finding it somewhat phony and maybe cultish.</span></span>
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</p><p><span><span>As to Barenboim, it's more of the same show business. I get the feeling the artists are feeling the international heat provoked by Israel's incessant oppression much more than having found their souls after 43 years. </span></span>
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Ah...better late than never, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteAs the Israeli playwright explains in the video I posted above, they're doing it to save Israel's image which is in tatters..They couldn't care less for the Palestinian's condition..I found those guys while doing the right thing in boycotting the settlements have their consciousness in their backsides..
ReplyDelete<span>As the Israeli playwright explains in the video I posted above, they're doing it to save Israel's image, in tatters in the eyes of the world..</span>
ReplyDelete<span>Just in case we could think they're doing it out of concern for the Palestinian's condition..
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<span><span><span>Walid sayd: "With what he said about Palestinians, it's not enough to redeem him in my eyes either."</span></span></span>
ReplyDeleteWhat did he say about the Palestinians?
Who cares? If you're waiting for all actions and motivations to be aligned the way you wish them to be, you'll be waiting an eternity.
ReplyDeleteRaymond Deane wrote an esssay on this last December in Jews Sans Frontières:
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http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/12/deane-disses-dodgy-daniels-divan.html
Taken from the Deane piece:
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<p><span><span>In the midst of Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead”, the onslaught on Gaza beginning in December 2008 that led to the killing of some 1400 Palestinians, Barenboim wrote a newspaper article that, while critical of the carnage, similarly repeated a number of Zionist propaganda tropes.[8] Hamas is “a terrorist organisation”, rather than a legitimate resistance movement, and must “realise that its interests are not best served by violence”, although this offensive followed the Israeli breach of a ceasefire long maintained by Hamas. The war in Palestine is “a conflict between two peoples who are both deeply convinced of their right to live on the same very small piece of land”, not a brutal colonial assault by a powerful state on a virtually imprisoned civilian population. Of course “it is self-evident that Israel has the right to defend itself”, a truism that, except possibly for the 1973 “Yom Kippur” war, has never had any bearing on Israel’s relentlessly belligerent actions against its neighbours.</span></span>
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</p><p><span><span>This article almost certainly played a role in causing the cancellation of Barenboim’s projected attendance at an opera performance in Ramallah in July 2009, lest it be disrupted by demonstrations. Once again Amira Hass had her finger on the pulse: “The bulk of dissent across Ramallah was not just over the performance, but over the very existence of the Barenboim-Said Foundation”.[..</span></span>
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and another piece from it (couldn't post the whole thing)
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<p><span>Already in 2004 Barenboim stated that “[a]n hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get people interested in music. But an hour of violin lessons in Palestine is an hour away from violence and fundamentalism…”[10] This insulting formulation led the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) to decline any further funding from the Foundation.</span></p>
This whole 150-artists boycvotting the Ariel theatre is counterproductive to the BDS movement. On the surface, we all cheer to have people such as these artists on our side but it is detracting us and world attention from more serious crimes being committed by Israel.
ReplyDeleteAriel had a university center with a student population of 11,000 coming mostly from within Israel. Last year, this center became a full university with plans to increase enrolment to 18,000 and to build a residential community for the teaching staff and to attract more residents from within Israel. This will give rise to the further expansion of Ariel under the bogus alibi of building only to meet natural growth requirements and increase the already existing facts on the ground. You'll remember from earlier this year how this university was disqualified from a competition in Spain because it's built on stolen land. All this brouhaha about performances being held at a theatre there is diverting everyone's attention from the university's illegal presence and expansion.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) had more to say about what Barenboim was doing to the boycott campaign this past March and TGIA commented on it at the time; all that glitters is not gold and this also applies to those who on the surface appear to be siding with the BDS movement:
ReplyDeletehttp://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2010/03/pacbi-explains-its-position-on.html
In explains in much better words than mine what I tried explaining in my words about the 150 artists boycotting shows at Ariel.
Too dogmatic for me. I would welcome all people of goodwill who are willing to do something...even if they do not buy into everything.
ReplyDeleteAs for Deane, sorry, I'm a little wary of anyone who spouts this nonsense:
"In truth, I have always been a little wary of Said’s veneration for the eighteenth/nineteenth century canon of European classical music. I look in vain in his writings on the subject[1]Culture and Imperialism. for a historical and political contextualisation of music comparable of that to which he so perceptively subjected literature in his indispensable...."
blah, blah, blah.... In other words, he is disppointed Said did not go into how all the great composers were simply tools of Western imperialism and unrepentant orientalists.... No thanks.
OK, so Deane that's a musician doesn't like Barenboim and is disparaging him but what about the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) that also issued a scathing comment (in the above-posted link) on Barenboim that in nutshell is saying that Barenboim and such people are indirectly working against its efforts to highlight injustices to the Palestinians. People like Barenboim will probably be eventually decorated by Israel for having helped it camouflage its actions. If the Said Foundation has come out against Barenboim for what he's doing against the Palestinians, what's there to say in his defense?
ReplyDeleteI understand what you (and PACBI) are saying, Walid. I just do not agree. As I said, too dogmatic for me.
ReplyDeleteWhen all the smoke is settled and some resolution is reached, those two peoples will have to co-exist. There will need to be people on both sides who have some understanding of the other. I think Barenboim is a decent man who, in his limited way, is helping to do that.