The New York Review of Books published this letter to the editor consisting of a statement concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Daniel Barenboim on February 26, 2009.
‘Please Listen, Before It Is Too Late’
To the Editors:
Your readers may be interested in the following statement by Daniel Barenboim and the list of those who have supported it.
Dina Haidar
Ilona Suschitzky
Emre Ülker
Paris, France
For the last forty years, history has proven that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be settled by force. Every effort, every possible means and resource of imagination and reflection should now be brought into play to find a new way forward. A new initiative which allays fear and suffering, acknowledges the injustice done, and leads to the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike. An initiative which demands of all sides a common responsibility: to ensure equal rights and dignity to both peoples, and to ensure the right of each person to transcend the past and aspire to a future.
Daniel Barenboim
Adonis, Etel Adnan, Alaa el Aswany, Dia Azzawi, Agnès B., Ted Bafaloukos, Russell Banks, Tahar Ben Jelloun, John Berger, Berlin Philharmonic, Bernardo Bertolucci, François Bayle, Idil Biret, Christian Boltanski, Pierre Boulez, Jacques Bouveresse, Alfred Brendel, Peter Brook, Adam Brooks, Carole Bouquet, Daniel Buren, Ellen Burstyn, Huguette Caland, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Carmen Castillo, Patrice Chéreau, William Christie, Paulo Coelho, J.M. Coetzee, Roger Corman, Jean Daniel, Régis Debray, Robert Delpire, Jonathan Demme, Plácido Domingo, Umberto Eco, Elliott Erwitt, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rupert Everett, Michel Faber, Carlo and Inge Feltrinelli, Ralph Fiennes, Filarmonica della Scala, Jodie Foster, Eytan Fox, Fab 5 Freddy, Bella Freud, Martine Franck, Mary Frank, Eduardo Galeano, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Gere, Gamal Ghitany, Amos Gitai, Edouard Glissant, Jean-Paul Goude, Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas, Michael Haneke, Donald Harrison, Milton Hatoum, Sheila Hicks, Bill Irwin, Steven Isserlis, Philippe Jaccottet, Elfriede Jelinek, Samih al-Kassem, Naomi Kawase, Ya¸sar Kemal, Rachid Khalidi, Edouard Al-Kharrat, Michel Khleifi, Gérard D. Khoury, Abbas Kiarostami, Stephen King, William Klein, Abdellatif Laâbi, Jacques Leibowitch, Jemia and J.M.G. Le Clézio, Stéphane Lissner, Radu Lupu, Yo-Yo Ma, Amin Maalouf, Claudio Magris, Issa Makhlouf, Florence Malraux, Henning Mankell, James McBride, John Maybury, Zubin Mehta, Waltraud Meier, Annette Messager, Duane Michaels, Anne-Marie Miéville, Marc Minkowski, Thomas Mitchell, Ariane Mnouchkine, Sarah Moon, Edgar Morin, Jacques Monory, Fernando Morais, Jeanne Moreau, Georges Moustaki, Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Nouvel, Kenzaburo Oe, Orhan Pamuk, Clare Peploe, Michel Piccoli, Maurizio Pollini, Christian de Portzamparc, Simon Rattle, Alain Resnais, Claudia Roden, Arundhati Roy, Moustapha Safouan, Walter Salles, Susan Sarandon, Fazil Say, Elif Şafak, George Semprun, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Pierre Soulages, Wole Soyinka, Ousmane Sow, Staatskapelle Berlin, Salah Stétié, Juliet Stevenson, Meryl Streep, Elia Suleiman, Peter Suschitzky, Tilda Swinton, Sam Szafran, Zeynep Tanbay, Uma Thurman, Desmond Tutu, Shirley and Charlie Watts, Abdo Wazen, Jacques Weber, Wim Wenders, Debra Winger, Daniel Wolff, Neil Young
A writer from Jews sans frontieres, an antiZionist blog of British fame, denounced the statement shortly afterward.
Famous people unite in cowardice
Daniel Barenboim got a bunch of really famous people, mostly artists, together, and they published a statement in the wake of the slaughter of Gaza that dishonors them.
I’m sure many of the undersigned have good intentions. But you know the saying about the road to hell. The statement is utterly boneless. Look at the list of signatures. So much talent. So little courage. “The face of the generation is the face of the dog.”
The Angry Arab was even more excoriating about its contents. For a start, where were these co-signatories during the Gaza massacre? And that’s just the first of many criticisms that takes us through injustices perpetrated against Palestinian people for the past 60 years, which generated nothing less than silence.
I woke up to see a copy of this piece of trash in my inbox. I can’t say that I was surprised because I saw the name of Daniel Barenboim on top, and never expected much from him. I never liked or trusted this man, and his friendship with Edward Said meant nothing to me. I never felt that I need to befriend an Israeli to complete my humanity or to prove my civility. I don’t understand why Barenboim dares on the heels of the massacres of Gaza to lecture to the Palestinian people. This statement is a proof that Barenboim and every person who signed this lousy statement has declared himself/herself an enemy of the Palestinian people and their historical resistance movement which began a century ago. Just look at the political premises of the statement: they basically imply that both sides are at fault, or that both sides are just, and that we need to move on. Move on?
Although tepid and somewhat concilatory, Barenboim’s statement just before the Israeli elections, is at least full of subtle warnings: will Israel listen?
