[Marxism] Israeli pianist Barenboim takes Palestinian passport

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

Israeli pianist Barenboim takes Palestinian passport 
13 Jan 2008 13:33:43 GMT 
Source: Reuters




RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan 13 (Reuters) - 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 honour 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  
organise 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 U.S. 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.  
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.  
For the past decade, Barenboim has promoted Arab-Israeli cultural  contacts, 
notably alongside the late Palestinian-American writer Edward  Said.



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