Report: Iran cancels Israeli conductor’s Tehran performance
Iran says it will not allow Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to perform at a Tehran concert.
According to a report by German newspaper Der Spiegel cited in the London Jewish Chronicle, the Iranian culture minster is canceling the Berlin Philharmonic concert because Barenboim is an Israeli citizen.
A spokesman for the ministry was quoted as saying that “Iran does not recognize the Zionist regime and will not co-operate with artists of this regime.”
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Report-Iran-cancels-Israeli-conductors-Tehran-performance-413615
= new reply since forum marked as read
......just goes to show no matter ones politics you are screwed either way .
My favorite quote from a speech he made :
"I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice?"
Loved his comment about George W. Bush to :
Israeli Pianist Daniel Barenboim Takes Palestinian Citizenship
Vocal critic of Israeli policies says his rare status could serve a model for peace between Israel, PA.
News Agencies Jan 13, 2008 12:00 AM
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," he continued.
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 19th-century composer Richard Wagner - whose music and anti-Semitic writings influenced Adolf Hitler - and vocal opposition to Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.
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..........
Along with the late Palestinian academic Edward Said, he co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of young musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/news/israeli-pianist-daniel-barenboim-takes-palestinian-citizenship-1.237152
