[Reader-list] A Pianist and a Passport: Daniel Barenboim, Palestine and Israel

[inder salim]

Dear All

Only the un-artistic will disagree with what Shuddha has written, but
the problem is that very few amongst us are privileged to declare that
they are artistic.  The fact is that either we all are artists or we
all are in the process of becoming artists.  What makes us un-artistic
is perhaps our inability to identify our vital drives of life.  That
is why we takes sides, often blindly, and discover our mistakes only
when our personal ( selfish )  interests come to harm. That still does
not make us artists, because we take another side to safeguard our
interests. People in general are not at fault for being so casual with
their choices, but the privileged amongst us are certainly playing a
dirty role that mislead and manipulate at the same time.  One only
wishes a revolution, but as we all know that now there will be no such
thing, but something else. Perhaps, that is why you wrote ' the ethics
of treason', and perhaps, why I am also reflecting that..

So, no wonder, that 'courage' is rare commodity….to say this or that
at appropriate time…Ghalib comes to my mind KAAY  WHO  NIMROD  KI
KHUDIYEE  THEE, BANDAGEE  MEIN  MAYRA  BALLA  NAA  HUVA. ( Now I
realize that it was a mistake to worship (the fascist) King Nimrod as
my God)

Indeed, artists have rarely danced to the national anthem under a
national flag.  But, if the times were, say, pre 1947
(pre-independence), it might have attracted a veritable artistic
expression. Shaheed Bhagat Singh is one such example, who had both
courage and vision. He too would have paid taxes in the present, but
one can only guess what he might have done to shake the dull and
corrupt imagination of our politicians. In any case he was the ideal
citizen who might have even asked for a Pakistani Pass port if alive
in 1947.

The question why one has the tendency to become an arrogant
Nationalist is perhaps because the nation-state mundanely castrates a
citizen to the extent that he no longer believes in his inherent
drives gifted to him by nature. So, the insecurity…  As you have
rightly said that there are good nationalists, good communists, good
Muslims and good Hindus but they are all in minority, because they are
simultaneously Artists as well, and therefore, minority within
minority. So more insecure, but ironically, it is the majority who cry
loudly about their so called insecurity.

Now imagine what an un-artistic hindu would do, if s/he suddenly gets
a free Hussain Canvas. Obviously it wont be confined to flames, rather
it would immediately changed into hard currency. An artistic Hindu
does not need a Hussain, because s/he can create an work of art
herself and hang it on the wall if needed.  Forget what un-artistic
communists,  did to Taslima in Kolkata, see what they did in Berlin at
the end of world war 2nd. They robbed all the museums and took the
treasures to Moscow. That includes a lot of stuff which had nothing to
do with communism. And as usual an artistic communist does not need a
stolen museum object for her/his home,  because s/he can create a work
of art as and when required.

Here, I must use the word Bourgeoisie, and I guess there is a little
bourgeoisie is each one of us. I believe, it is fine if the little
monster breathes within, but without any growth. But if it grows and
comes out and dominates the personality then nothing works. It then
grows terribly under the skin of ones gloss as we see in Wilde's
Portrait of Dorian Gray.
What I am then, or what a person like Shuddha is? Do we necessarily
need a word to  define the self? If suddenly  some of us decide not to
be part of that popular vocabulary which fits into this or that then
there should be some freedom for a person to be this or that. What eve
that be.

I recall, that there was a discussion on 'Archives..' by Mr. Arnab on
this list  recently.  Now then what is the significance of the memory
of a being vis-à-vis an individual who refrains from being identified
this or that. For a while let us say that such a person is RUNIS.
WE ALL ARE RUNIS. Ruins that contains the echo of a past, embedded
deeply within, which not only we need to retrieve spontaneously, but
also to become part of it.  I see all the runis reverberating until
they merge into each other to realize a collective hysteria.  A ruin
is naturally pregnant with shadow of a still that hides the form of an
existential core. I see, ghosts in the form of words coming and
going...

A city buried under the runis, as Freud would whisper…we think we
heard it, but he  perhaps, meant something else…

With love and regards
Inder salim

On Feb 8, 2008 2:30 AM, <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> for quite some time now, I have had an interest in what might be described
> somewhat roughly as 'the ethics of treason', or, the moral choices made by
> a person who is described as a 'traitor' by his own people. The word
> 'own'here is used somewhat thoughtlessly, because the kind of 'traitor' I
> am interested in is precisely the kind of person who refuses to let his
> conscience, or his acts be 'owned' by his 'own' people. He is the Hindu who
> is hated by Hindutva types, the Muslim harrassed by Islamists, the
> Christian anathemized by the church, the Communist who has no place within
> a Communist Party, the person who loves the land he or she lives in (not
> necessarily exclusively, but nevertheless passionately)  but who is hounded
> out by Nationalists.
>
> I believe (following a reading of the Italian-German writer, activist and
> politican Alexander Langer) that such 'traitors' (on all sides) are
> actually vitally necessary for the difficult undertaking of getting people
> caught in webs of animosity to learn to live with each other. I am learning
> how to be a traitor, an apprentice in treason.
>
> That is one reason why I am appending the text below (which was posted
> recently by Patrice Riemens on Nettime) . It is written by Daniel
> Barenboim, a person whose music making (he is an excellent classical
> Pianist) has occasionally given me some moments of solace when the weather
> on this list has been particularly heavy.
>
> He (Barenboim) shared with the late Edward Said a great love for music
> (Said was also a talented pianist) and a conversation that included dealing
> with the difficult destiny of being an Israeli in dialogue with Edward
> Said. (Said, as is well known, was a Palestinian exile). Being Israeli
> means being implicated in the tribulations of Palestinians, just as being
> Palestinian means an ongoing and difficult engagement (whether you like it
> or not) with the reality of the State of Israel.
>
> In the piece below, Barenboim spells out his reasons for accepting a
> Palestinian passport (an act for which he will no doubt be considered a
> traitor by many in Israel).
>
> While I personally would not invest a gesture like accepting or refusing a
> nationality  with meaning for myself(because I am not a nationalist, and
> accepting or refusing nationalities is in some ways meaningless to me). I
> do appreciate what it means for someone like Daniel Barenboim to do so. I
> am not saying this to offer some patronizing endorsement of Barenboims act,
> but as a token of my respect for some one who performs a manifestly
> unpopular act on the basis of his convictions about the conduct of his own
> nation-state. He accepts a Palestinian passport, because he values what it
> means for someone like him to be an Israeli. I view passports and
> nationalities, coldly, instrumentally. Barenboim probably does not, which
> is preciely why his position is interesting to me. His is a choice that I
> may not make, but I am compelled to value the ethical ground from which it
> arises. I am not religious, but I often respect the sources of religious
> action far more than I do the arrogance of people who are not religious. I
> am not a patriot, but in Barenboim, I see the kind of confllicted, but
> deeply passionate patriotism that even someone as indifferent as I am to
> the affects that tie people to land(s) must learn to respect.
>
> Barenboim's own dissent towards Zionism (which does not take away a jot
> from his love and passion for Jewish culture and traditions, and his
> passionate commitment vis-a-vis locating himself within the history of
> Israel)  and Said's dissatisfaction with Palestinian nationalism (and his
> lifelong commitment to fighting the good fight for justice for Palestinian
> people) makes both of  them the kind of people I have learnt to respect.
> Perhaps Barenboim's act could be seen in close proximity to the
> passionately (and some would argue, peculiarly Jewish refusal) of people
> like Hannah Arendt and Franz Rosenzweig to buy into the nationalist
> particularism of zionism.
>
> The more immersed I am in the vocabularies and cultures that are associated
> with the history of the landmass of the country called India, the more
> internally distant I become to the claims (constitutional and otherwise)
> made on me by the apparatus of the state called the Republic of India.
> Sometimes I think that an appreciation of a civilization must necessarily
> require one to abjure the grandiose perversion of its ideals that occurs
> within the civilizational travesty called the nation-state. This is
> especially true when nation states pretend to inherit for themselves the
> mantle of civilizations, rather than seeing themselves as being the mere
> accidents of history that they are.
>
> Accordingly, I pay my taxes scrouplously as a citizen, but I save my
> conscience through acts of ethical treason to the very entity I pay my
> taxes to. Inhabiting this paradox is one of the consequences of having to
> live here, now. And I will always quietly sit or walk away when a national
> anthem is played, or a flag is hoisted.
>
> Here (below) is the recent piece by Barenboim in the International Herald
> Tribune that I began by talking about and I offer it on this list with the
> hope that it may be of interest to some of you. I find Barenboim's candour
> and sensibility refreshing, and as full of light as his music making.
>
> regards
>
> Shuddha
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Israeli and Palestinian
> By Daniel Barenboim
>
> International Herald Tribune: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
>
> BERLIN: I have often made the statement that the destinies of the Israeli
> and Palestinian people are inextricably linked and that there is no
> military solution to the conflict. My recent acceptance of Palestinian
> nationality has given me the opportunity to demonstrate this more tangibly.
>
> When my family moved to Israel from Argentina in the 1950s, one of my
> parents' intentions was to spare me the experience of growing up as
> part of a minority - a Jewish minority. They wanted to me to grow up
> as part of a majority - a Jewish majority.
>
> The tragedy of this is that my generation, despite having been
> educated in a society whose positive aspects and human values have
> greatly enriched my thinking, ignored the existence of a minority
> within Israel - a non-Jewish minority - which had been the majority in
> the whole of Palestine until the creation of the state of Israel in
> 1948. Part of the non-Jewish population remained in Israel, and other
> parts left out of fear or were forcefully displaced.
>
> In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there was and still is an
> inability to admit the interdependence of their two voices. The
> creation of the state of Israel was the result of a Jewish-European
> idea, which, if it is to extend its leitmotif into the future, must
> accept the Palestinian identity as an equally valid leitmotif.
>
> The demographic development is impossible to ignore; Palestinians
> within Israel are a minority but a rapidly growing one, and their
> voice needs to be heard now more than ever. They now make up
> approximately 22 percent of the population of Israel. This is a larger
> percentage than was ever represented by a Jewish minority in any
> country in any period of history. The total number of Palestinians
> living within Israel and in the occupied territories (that is, greater
> Israel for the Israelis or greater Palestine for the Palestinians) is
> already larger than the Jewish population.
>
> At present, Israel is confronted at once with three problems: the
> nature of the modern democratic Jewish state - its very identity; the
> problem of Palestinian identity within Israel; and the problem of
> the creation of a Palestinian state outside of Israel. With Jordan
> and Egypt it was possible to attain what can best be described as an
> ice-cold peace without questioning Israel's existence as a Jewish
> state.
>
> The problem of the Palestinians within Israel, however, is a much
> more challenging one to solve, both theoretically and practically.
> For Israel, it means, among other things, coming to terms with the
> fact that the land was not barren or empty, "a land without a people,"
> an idea that was propagated at the time of its creation. For the
> Palestinians, it means accepting the fact that Israel is a Jewish
> state and is here to stay.
>
> Israelis, however, must accept the integration of the Palestinian
> minority even if it means changing certain aspects of the nature of
> Israel; they must also accept the justification for and necessity
> of the creation of a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel.
> Not only is there no alternative, or magic wand, that will make the
> Palestinians disappear, but their integration is an indispensable
> condition - on moral, social and political grounds - for the very
> survival of Israel.
>
> The longer the occupation continues and Palestinian dissatisfaction
> remains unaddressed, the more difficult it is to find even elementary
> common ground. We have seen so often in the modern history of the
> Middle East that missed opportunities for reconciliation have had
> extremely negative results for both sides.
>
> For my part, when the Palestinian passport was offered to me, I
> accepted it in the spirit of acknowledging the Palestinian destiny
> that I, as an Israeli, share.
>
> A true citizen of Israel must reach out to the Palestinian people with
> openness, and at the very least an attempt to understand what the
> creation of the state of Israel has meant to them.
>
> The 15th of May, 1948, is the day of independence for the Jews, but
> the same day is Al Nakba, the catastrophe, for the Palestinians. A
> true citizen of Israel must ask himself what the Jews, known as an
> intelligent people of learning and culture, have done to share their
> cultural heritage with the Palestinians.
>
> A true citizen of Israel must also ask himself why the Palestinians
> have been condemned to live in slums and accept lower standards
> of education and medical care, rather than being provided by the
> occupying force with decent, dignified and liveable conditions, a
> right common to all human beings. In any occupied territory, the
> occupiers are responsible for the quality of life of the occupied, and
> in the case of the Palestinians, the different Israeli governments
> over the last 40 years have failed miserably. The Palestinians
> naturally must continue to resist the occupation and all attempts to
> deny them basic individual needs and statehood. However, for their own
> sake this resistance must not express itself through violence.
>
> Crossing the boundary from adamant resistance (including non-violent
> demonstrations and protests) to violence only results in more innocent
> victims and does not serve the long-term interests of the Palestinian
> people. At the same time, the citizens of Israel have just as much
> cause to be alert to the needs and rights of the Palestinian people
> (both within and outside Israel) as they do to their own. After all,
> in the sense that we share one land and one destiny, we should all
> have dual citizenship.
>
>
> (Daniel Barenboim, a pianist and conductor, is music director of the
> Staatskapelle Berlin and principal guest conductor at La Scala Opera
> in Milan. He is co-founder with Edward Said of the West-Eastern Divan
> Orchestra, which brings together Arab and Israeli musicians.)
>
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