Roger Waters wrote:

"Over the new year 2009-2010, an international group of 1500 men and women from 42 nations went to Egypt to join a Freedom March to Gaza. They did this to protest the current blockade of Gaza. To protest the fact that the people of Gaza live in a virtual prison. To protest the fact that a year after the terror attack by Israeli armed forces destroyed most of their homes, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings, they have no possibility to rebuild because their borders are closed. The would be Freedom Marchers wanted to peacefully draw attention to the predicament of the Palestinian population of Gaza. The Egyptian government, (funded to the tune of $2.1 billion a year, by us, the US tax payers), would not allow the marchers to approach Gaza. How lame is that? And how predictable! I live in the USA and during this time Dec 25th 2009-Jan3rd 2010 I saw no reference to Gaza or the Freedom March or the multi national protesters gathered there. Anyway I was moved, in the circumstances, to record a new version of " We shall overcome". It seems appropriate.

Roger Waters

Many thanks to G.E Smith: lead guitar and Thor Jonsson, drum programming and whatever. Thanks guys!!!

PS. 3rd June 2010

And now piracy!!!!!!!

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMMHepfYVc

By Nathan Guttman

Washington - It was a feather in the cap of pro-boycott activists, but for Israelis, a major setback.

With battle lines drawn across concert halls and stadiums hosting rock bands, the decision by mega-star Elvis Costello to cancel his planned concerts in Israel is being viewed as a game changer.

In a statement posted on his website, Costello described his decision as a "matter of instinct and conscience." Israel's culture minister, Limor Livnat, responded by saying that Costello "is not worthy" of performing in Israel.

The movement for a cultural boycott of Israel has increased its activity in recent years, strategically targeting selected artists who are scheduled to perform there. Until recently, the campaign has had limited success. It failed to dissuade musicians Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen from giving concerts in Israel, but took pride in positive responses from several authors and poets.

Both Sides Now: Paul McCartney (1) played before Israeli audiences, and Elton John (3) still is scheduled to perform. But Elvis Costello (2) and Gil Scott-Heron (4) have joined the cultural boycott of Israel. Carlos Santana (5) canceled a large concert in Israel due to 'unforeseen scheduling conflicts.'

But Costello's action is the first open endorsement of the boycott movement by an A-list artist in protest of Israel's policies in the occupied West Bank and of its siege of Gaza. In a detailed statement, the performer argued that he could not perform in Israel because by doing so, "it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent.

"One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament," Costello wrote in his statement.

He suggested that his decision had been complex and difficult. "I must believe that the audience for the coming concerts would have contained many people who question the policies of their government on settlement and deplore conditions that visit intimidation, humiliation or much worse on Palestinian civilians in the name of national security," he wrote. "I am also keenly aware of the sensitivity of these themes in the wake of so many despicable acts of violence perpetrated in the name of liberation.

"I offer my sincere apologies for any disappointment to the advance ticket holders as well as to the organizers."

In reaction, a music industry insider confirmed that the winds could be shifting. The music executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in light of his ongoing business ties with artists, said that in recent months he had approached more than 15 performing artists with proposals to give concerts in Israel. None had agreed. The contracts offered high levels of compensation. He called them "extreme, big numbers that could match any other gig."

Another successful boycott campaign was directed at poet and performing artist Gil Scott-Heron. Shortly after announcing his plan to perform in Tel Aviv on May 25, Scott-Heron, who is known for his political activism, was blasted by supporters of the boycott movement, who called on him to cancel his visit. Scott-Heron's April 24 concert in London was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, and at the end of the show, he announced the cancellation of his Tel Aviv tour.

A letter sent to Scott-Heron by more than 50 pro-boycott groups and artists praised the decision as a moral one. "You have chosen to stand on the right side of history," the letter stated.

Scott-Heron's progressive views and his outspoken political stands have made him a prime target of the boycott movement. Organizers explained that they have been focusing on artists who they believe could be open to the idea of culturally boycotting Israel. "Obviously, we can't target everyone, so we single out those who we think will be more responsive and open to the issue," said Hannah Mermelstein, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel.

But the groups are also going after other performing artists whose planned concerts in Israel are expected to sell tens of thousands of tickets.

Currently, the focus is on singer Elton John, who is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on June 17. A video clip circulating on the Web shows a takeoff on Elton John's 1976 hit "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word." The parody replaces the song's original lyrics with a call to cancel the planned show: "Always seems to me that boycott seems to be the hardest word."

The song criticizes Elton John for performing in South Africa during the apartheid era and claims that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using gay tourism to Israel as part of the country's rebranding campaign. The clip urges John not to "let Bibi use you as his gay Band-Aid."

Other high-profile artists being targeted are Bob Dylan, who plans to give a concert in Israel at the end of May, and Joan Armatrading, who is scheduled to give two shows in the first week of June.

But in the battle over public opinion, many other names have also been thrown into the debate. These include artists who either scheduled concerts in Israel or indicated their wish to perform there, but who later withdrew without providing reasons for their decisions.

Such is the case of guitar legend Carlos Santana, who had planned a stop in Israel as part of his tour of Europe and the Middle East. Thousands of tickets to the concert, which was scheduled to take place in a large soccer stadium in Jaffa, had already been sold before Santana and his group announced that the concert had been canceled due to "unforeseen scheduling conflicts." The Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot quoted unnamed sources from the Israeli production company organizing the concert as saying that Santana had been under "pressure from anti-Israel figures" to cancel the visit.

Another no-show is rapper Snoop Dogg, who pulled out of a planned performance in Israel due to "contractual difficulties." It is not clear in this case whether the decision was a response to pressure to boycott Israel or the result of slow ticket sales.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists, however, have included these artists in a list of musicians who declined to perform in Israel, hinting that their decision to cancel was driven by political considerations.

Mermelstein, the Adalah-NY spokesperson, said that even when artists officially cite logistical reasons for canceling their shows, it could still be a sign that they are responding to boycott calls. "Most mainstream artists are not yet making public statements in support of BDS, but the movement is becoming a consideration, and artists are thinking twice before performing there," she said.

Some artists have come out clearly in support of the boycott and have declared their refusal to appear in Israel. These include mainly poets, authors and scholars rather than performing artists. Indian writer Arundhati Roy, British novelist John Berger, poet Adrienne Rich, director Ken Loach, and author and activist Naomi Klein are among them.

BDS activists in the United States stress that by calling on artists to boycott Israel, they are following demands from Palestinians on the ground who believe that this is an effective way of pressuring Israel. The movement also has supporters in Israel. Ofer Neiman, a Jerusalem activist, said the purpose is to show that occupation "has a price tag attached." He rejected the notion that having leading artists come to Israel in order to express their disagreement with the government's policies would be more effective than boycotting. "How many people have taken [rock musician] Roger Waters' anti-occupation statements to heart when he played here in 2006? The main thing people remember is that he performed here," said Neiman.

Despite recent successes of the boycott movement, Israelis still face a full slate of concerts and performances this summer. Elton John, Rod Stewart, Rihanna and the Pixies are among those confirmed to play in Israel. Also in the works are plans to host MTV's annual summer party, one of the music channel's top productions, in Tel Aviv.

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com

Source: Forward

It Is After Considerable Contemplation...

It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July.

One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament.

Then there are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent.

I must believe that the audience for the coming concerts would have contained many people who question the policies of their government on settlement and deplore conditions that visit intimidation, humiliation or much worse on Palestinian civilians in the name of national security.

I am also keenly aware of the sensitivity of these themes in the wake of so many despicable acts of violence perpetrated in the name of liberation.

Some will regard all of this an unknowable without personal experience but if these subjects are actually too grave and complex to be addressed in a concert, then it is also quite impossible to simply look the other way.

I offer my sincere apologies for any disappointment to the advance ticket holders as well as to the organizers.

My thanks also go to the members of the Israeli media with whom I had most rewarding and illuminating conversations. They may regard these exchanges as a waste of their time but they were of great value and help to me in gaining an appreciation of the cultural scene.

I hope it is possible to understand that I am not taking this decision lightly or so I may stand beneath any banner, nor is it one in which I imagine myself to possess any unique or eternal truth.

It is a matter of instinct and conscience.

It has been necessary to dial out the falsehoods of propaganda, the double game and hysterical language of politics, the vanity and self-righteousness of public communiqués from cranks in order to eventually sift through my own conflicted thoughts.

I have come to the following conclusions.

One must at least consider any rational argument that comes before the appeal of more desperate means.

Sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it.

I cannot imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, which is a matter of regret but I can imagine a better time when I would not be writing this.

With the hope for peace and understanding. Elvis Costello

Video link: http://vimeo.com/6630724

The hip-hop beats ringing through the muddy, unlit streets of the burnt-out Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared seem incongruous. But the rhymes are camp-grown - and courageous.

"I'm carrying worries / From inside a destroyed camp / I'm preparing an attack / Words that keep turning in my head / Nahr al-Bared is fenced-in with iron bars / In the newspapers they speak about suffering / Every word makes sense."

Farhan Abu Siyam, 21, is Nahr al-Bared's first and only rapper. Going by the name of MC Tamarrod (which translates as MC Rebellion), he grew up in the Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr al-Bared and Bourj al-Barajneh.

Abu Siyam knows that hip-hop has few takers within Palestinian society. "Many people don't like rap because they're against Western music and its elements like the beat." But he asks the community to give rap a chance, stressing that he does not sing in a foreign language, but uses Arabic. "I rap in our Palestinian dialect, in the language of the camps where I was born and grew up."

Abu Siyam says he is inspired by the hip-hop crews 'Katibe 5' and 'I-Voice' in Beirut's Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp and rap groups in Palestine such as 'Ramallah Underground' or 'DAM' which are regarded as the founders of Palestinian hip-hop and have a style that is serious rather than entertainment-oriented.

Palestinian rappers are usually inseparable from their origins, stress their marginalised or oppressed situation and use their words as weapons in their political and social struggles. Groups direct their rhymes at the discrimination that the approximately 250,000 Palestinians in Lebanon face as well as at their own society's establishment, accusing NGOs and the political parties of being corrupt and betraying the Palestinian cause.

Abu Siyam raps about the miserable post-war life in Nahr al-Bared. Together with the autonomous media collective 'a-films', he has produced a short video clip. Gesturing in front of a bullet-riddled wall in a burnt-out building, he revisits the camp's devastating war in 2007 and raps:

"Asking me what happened? / Those who hit have run / Those who passed by have looted / And some of them have burned."

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9uCX6XeS3c

Two and a half years ago, the Nahr al-Bared camp in Lebanon's north was totally destroyed in a war between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the non-Palestinian militant group Fatah al-Islam. Two-thirds of the camp's former inhabitants now live on its outskirts in damaged homes and temporary shacks. Abu Siyam says many people sing or talk about Nahr al-Bared, "but nobody speaks out about the war, the hopelessness and oppression."

Nahr al-Bared is still closed down and designated as a military zone by the LAF which mans five checkpoints around the camp. Access is restricted and journalists are not allowed to work freely. "We're surrounded and live like in a prison. In other camps people can come and go in a normal way," says Abu Siyam. The LAF's presence in and around Nahr al-Bared is one of the main topics Abu Siyam raps about:

"I'm Palestinian and don't submit to the rule of your army / Stop building this wall! / From the first time I saw you, I knew what you wanted / 'Hey you, give me your ID, where's the permit?'"

The Lebanese army states the checkpoints and permits are necessary to preserve the safety of the people "through preventing the infiltration of terrorists and wanted people, smuggling of weapons, explosives, and illegal material." However, many refugees in Nahr al-Bared feel humiliated and oppressed by the LAF. Abu Wissam Gharib, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Nahr al-Bared, says he understands that warfare required an army, "but once the war is over, why does the army stay?" Gharib wonders why he needs to have special permit to return home to Nahr al-Bared when he can travel everywhere else in Lebanon on his ID.

Abu Siyam records in al-Mukhayyamat studio in the Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj al-Barajneh, located in the suburbs of Beirut.

"The parties are two-faced / Their authority is silly / Fortified by lies / Their politics are sick."

Abu Siyam is aware of the power of his lyrics. "We're not against the Lebanese system, but they deprive us of our rights." Palestinian youth do not see a future in Lebanon and see emigration as a way out. When a delegation from donor states recently visited Nahr al-Bared, the residents of the temporary housing units did not ask them for more aid, but for visas allowing them to emigrate.

In Nahr al-Bared the slow reconstruction and the continued presence of the LAF have led to widespread unemployment. Charlie Higgins, project manager for Nahr al-Bared's reconstruction at the United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) describes the economic situation in the camp as "stuck," with the economy yet to regenerate and employment situation unimproved since the war ended.

Abu Siyam hopes that whenever Nahr al-Bared is rebuilt there will be a music studio where he might record his songs. He will have to drive to Beirut to record the two new rap numbers that he is currently working on.

Source: a-films

By Raymond Deane* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

As a classical musician involved in pro-Palestinian activism, I frequently encounter the assumption that I am an unconditional admirer of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO). My reservations on this score tend to produce shocked disapproval: How could I not enthuse about such an idealistic project, particularly since it was co-founded by the late Edward Said, a figure for whom I have frequently expressed respect and admiration?

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] for a historical and political contextualisation of music comparable of that to which he so perceptively subjected literature in his indispensable Culture and Imperialism.[2]

In his 2002 speech accepting the Principe de Asturias Prize, Said claimed that he and his friend the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim founded the WEDO "for humanistic rather than political reasons". This surprising dualism implies that music belongs to a utopian sphere somehow removed from the dialectical hurly-burly of hegemony and resistance.

The paradoxes of Said's position have been ably dissected by the British musicologist Rachel Beckles Willson.[3] She quotes her colleague Ben Etherington's critique of Said's tendency "to assert the intrinsic value of Western elite music without really exploring how that tradition escapes mediation." Paraphrasing Said's critique of literary scholars in his Humanism and Democratic Criticism[4] she convincingly claims that he "omitted to make 'a radical examination of the ideology of the [musical performance] field itself.'" (Willson's chain brackets).

Undoubtedly Barenboim has a less sublimated view of the classical repertoire than Said, and has been more broadminded than many of his superstar peers in his willingness to perform and advocate modern and "avant-garde" music. He has also displayed great independence and personal courage by criticising the Israeli establishment and repeatedly flouting Israeli laws to travel to the occupied West Bank - even bringing the orchestra to Ramallah in 2005.

In 2008, Barenboim accepted honourary Palestinian "citizenship" from the Palestinian Authority. The dissident Israeli journalist Amira Hass put this in context: "It could just as well have [been] said that the PA granted Barenboim citizenship of the moon, since the PA has no authority to grant citizenship... to anyone."[5] She tellingly points out the broader political implications of such an action: "The PA is seen as a 'state' with the sovereign right to grant 'citizenship.'" The illusion of Palestinian statehood, fostered by the 1993 Oslo Accords, has served to absolve Israel from its obligations as an occupier under the 4^th Geneva Convention. The gesture towards Barenboim, although empty, was pregnant with propaganda value for the Israeli state and its PA accomplices.

Barenboim's most recent book is confusingly entitled Music Quickens Time in the US and Everything is Connected in Europe[6]. Reflecting on the fact that Hitler loved classical music, he concludes that "there is not enough thought about music, only visceral reactions almost on an animal level." "Listening," he tells us, "is hearing with thought." The idea that an analytical approach to music is potentially an antidote to its instrumentalisation by fascistic forces is a radical one, but Barenboim goes a clumsy step further by repeatedly depicting musical processes as metaphors for social and political structures. Thus the failure of the Oslo process is linked to the connection between musical content and tempo: "the relationship between content and time was erroneous." "The education of the ear" - or "auditory intelligence" - is important "for the functioning of society, and therefore also of governments." "A nation's constitution could be compared to a score, and the politicians its interpreters" and can be "challenged and adapted" in a democracy, "becoming a kind of collectively composed symphony."

Unfortunately, while Barenboim professes faith in the axiom that "everything is connected", the score written by Zionism is premised on "estrangement and alienation", in the words of the anti-Zionist eco-socialist Joel Kovel.[7] Barenboim buys into the Zionist narrative all along the line. "The Arab population of Palestine had been unsympathetic toward Jewish immigration from the very beginning", he tells us, as if the indigenous Jewish population hadn't been equally suspicious of Zionist colonisation - to call it by its proper name. The totalitarian "military rule" imposed by Israel on its Palestinian minority during the early years of statehood was "abominable", admittedly, but "necessary for its self-preservation". The renaming of Arab streets after Israeli generals represents "at best thoughtlessness and insensitivity... and at worst an utter lack of strategy in dealing with the question of Arabs in Israel", rather than a symbolic linchpin of Zionist conquest and dispossession.

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.

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".[9]

This Foundation, which provided the Children & Youth Choir and theYouth Orchestra for the opera in question, was set up by Barenboim and Said shortly before the latter's death in 2003, when its administration passed into the capable hands of Said's widow Mariam. Hass quotes "[a] leading activist in the Palestinian movement for a cultural boycott of Israel" (PACBI) as stating that the Foundation "does not take any position against the Israeli occupation or apartheid policies. They talk about promoting mutual understanding and coexistence through dialogue, music, etc. This is an attempt to give a normal image to a very abnormal, colonial situation."

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.

The ESNCM is a department of Birzeit University with branches in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem. Without funding from the Foundation it is forced to exist on a shoestring, yet it provides a wide range of instruction in both western classical and Arabic music for young Palestinians regardless of class, creed, or gender, while running its own ensembles and an orchestra - The Palestine Youth Orchestra - which it hopes to expand to 100 members by 2010.

In her introduction to An Orchestra Without Borders, a collection of testimonies from WEDO members, Barenboim's assistant Elena Cheah claims that "[a]n orchestra is a microcosm of society."[11] In terms of the Middle East, it would appear that while the ESNCM strives, with explicit political determination and an almost total lack of encouragement from the West, to be a microcosm of the whole of Palestinian society, the WEDO represents the Israeli bourgeoisie and the more privileged sectors of Arab (including Palestinian) society. Barenboim's claim that "young musicians from the Middle East have the freedom of choice over whether or not to come to the West-Eastern Divan workshop", as if this option were available to young musicians from Gaza or from Lebanese refugee camps, displays an almost hubristic alienation from reality.

Alas, the testimonies from Israeli WEDO members collected in the book suggest that a "utopian" emphasis on human interaction with their Arab colleagues has done little to enhance insight into the political realities surrounding them.

For Daniel Cohen, Barenboim has "the power to help Israelis understand where they are living, and to help the Arabs to accept our existence in Israel as our right..." Clearly the young violinist doesn't see this as a somewhat lopsided combination.

Sharon Cohen describes an argument in which "The Arabs kept saying: 'You don't understand about the checkpoints and the humiliation,' and the Israelis kept saying, 'You don't understand about being in the army.'" Similarly, oboist Meirav Kadichevski expresses her understanding of the Palestinian sense of repression by evoking her own feelings "when I was in the army - I also felt repressed." Clearly for these former soldiers there is no incongruity in equating the oppressor's discomfort with the horror of being at the oppressor's mercy.

Yuval the trumpeter, whose attitudes are described as having been positively transformed by orchestra membership, opines that "Palestinians have to start feeling responsible for themselves..." instead of "always waiting for someone to recognise their pain." A lecture from the Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah criticising the "two-state solution" provokes his sharp reaction that "...some people are saying we should make one nation, and it's insane."

The impression ultimately gleaned from Arabs and Israelis alike is that the real glue binding these young people together is ambition: the WEDO provides an exceptional opportunity to gain experience under Daniel Barenboim, a famous and influential conductor, and hence is a stepping-stone to professional advancement. In itself, of course, there is nothing reprehensible about this - but it is a far cry from stylising the orchestra as an exemplary space of reconciliation and understanding.

In a letter to the New York Review of Books last October the actor Vanessa Redgrave (once a stalwart advocate of Palestinian rights), the screenwriter Martin Sherman and the artist Julian Schnabel dissociated themselves from opposition to the Toronto Film Festival's featuring of Tel Aviv in its "city to city" section. They closed their letter as follows:

"The year 2009 is the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Barenboim-Said West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. We hope that those who protest Israeli inclusion in film festivals will take note of this example of the power of art freely expressed and available to all, and reconsider their position."[12]

This is a sad and timely demonstration of how the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra can be enlisted to demobilise meaningful solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians. While it would be crass to dismiss the WEDO as merely "a bad thing", the reality is that it offers uncommitted Western liberals, for whom an uncompromising campaign of BDS is a step too far, a peg on which to hang their sentimental belief in an unpolitical reconciliation that costs nobody anything.

* Raymond Deane is a classical/music composer, also well known for his work as a political activist. He was a founding member and former chairperson of the Ireland–Palestine Solidarity Campaign..

Photo Credits:
Photo 1: Daniel Barenboim talking to a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra during rehersals

Photo 2: Palestinians run for cover from Israeli air strikes during the Israeli assult on Gaza. (Mohamed Al-Zanon/MaanImages - Photo courtesy of Electronic Intafada).

Photo 3: Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Photos courtesy of the West-Eastern Divan website.

Notes:

[1] Edward W. Said: Musical Elaborations (Columbia University Press, NY, 1991); Reflections on Exile (London, Granta Books, 2001); Music at the Limits (Columbia University Press, NY, 2007).

[2] Edward W. Said: Culture and Imperialism (Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1993; Vintage, 1994).

[3] Rachel Beckles Willson: Whose Utopia? (Music and Politics, Volume III, Number 2. http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2009-2/beckles_willson.html, accessed 7/12/09)

[4] Edward W. Said: Humanism and Democratic Criticism (PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, Hampshire and NY, 2004).

[5] Amira Hass: Honorary Citizenship of the Moon (Ha'aretz, 26^th January 2009)

[6] Daniel Barenboim: Music Quickens Time (Verso, London/NY 2008); Everything is Connected (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 2008).

[7] Joel Kovel: Overcoming Zionism (London, Pluto Press, 2007).

[8] Daniel Barenboim: The Illusion of Victory (The Guardian, 1^st January 2009).

[9] Amira Hass: Palestinian anger with Barenboim forces him to cancel Ramallah visit (Ha'aretz, 17^th July, 2009).

[10] Luke Harding: Conductor brings harmony to Arabs [sic] (The Guardian, 30^th November, 2004).

[11] Elena Cheah: An Orchestra without Borders (Verson, London/NY, 2009).

[12] Redgrave, Schnabel, Sherman: Let Israeli Films be Shown (New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 16, 22^nd October, 2009).

Above, from left, Suhail Khoury, Ahmad Al Khatib, Ibrahim Atari and Yousef Hbeisch performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington in March.

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

WISPS of mournful tunes from a cane flute mingled with the plucking, jangling arabesques of the zitherlike qanun, the oud and gentle drums. The sounds arose from a quartet of Arab musicians who call themselves the Oriental Music Ensemble as they shared a precious moment of togetherness in the Miller Theater at Columbia University in March.

Despite the cohesion implied by the word "ensemble," these four men are rarely in the same city, much less the same room. The politics of the Middle East confine them to four separate spheres and have turned them into a living metaphor for inescapable division.

"It's our story," said Suhail Khoury, who plays the traditional flute, or ney, and clarinet in the group. "It's like summing up Palestine."

The men are a cross section of the Palestinian experience in miniature: two Muslims, a Christian and a Druse. They live in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and abroad. The West Bank member cannot go to Israel because of Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinians. The Israeli Arab cannot go to the West Bank because of Israeli travel restrictions on Israelis. The one who lives in Sweden has a Jordanian passport but can travel to neither the West Bank nor Israel. And the one who lives in East Jerusalem said he is denied entry to Jordan for what he called "political reasons."

So when do they rehearse? Not very often. If they do, it is in places like Istanbul; New York; Bonn, Germany; or Morocco, where they are to perform at a festival in July. They gather in hotel rooms for intensive sessions before performances. When they go back to their homes, they exchange computer files of music, both written and recorded. The system is shaky; because so much of their music is improvised, rehearsal becomes even more crucial.

"Basically we have to get together in some place that has nothing to do with Palestine and Israel," Mr. Khoury said. "I just think how better we could perform if we were all the time together." He mused about what the simple act of gathering at his house in Jerusalem to jam would be like but sounded resigned that it might never happen. "Maybe this is it," he said. "This is how it gets energy."

The ensemble's artistic mission is intertwined with a more prosaic impulse: to make the case for Palestinian rights.

"We have to keep on," said Ahmad Al Khatib, who plays the lutelike oud and is the group's musical brain. "It's part of our identity, this cultural struggle."

The group started in 1997, when Mr. Khoury; Yousef Hbeisch, the percussionist; and Ibrahim Atari, who plays the qanun, were teaching at the recently founded National Conservatory of Music, now named after the Palestinian-American scholar Edward W. Said. Mr. Khatib replaced the original oud player in 2002.

The musicians gave a joint interview in a hotel room when they were in New York in March. They spoke further in April, in separate conversations. Mr. Khoury met with me in the Bethlehem branch of the national conservatory; Mr. Hbeisch, at a trendy seaside cafe in Haifa; and Mr. Atari, in his office in Ramallah, where he is director of another branch of the national conservatory. Mr. Khatib spoke by telephone from his home in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Their tale is the story of Palestinians in other ways. Mr. Khoury and Mr. Atari were politically active in their younger days, participants in the first intifada. Mr. Khatib grew up partly in a Jordanian refugee camp. Mr. Hbeisch feels the conflicting currents of Israeli Arabs. Mr. Khoury is a Christian; Mr. Atari and Mr. Khatib are Muslims; and Mr. Hbeisch is a Druse.

Though unabashedly political, they must walk a fine line in their music.

"We are playing classical instruments and music," Mr. Khatib said. "That's rare." For a performance to have honesty "it shouldn't be so connected to the political situation," he said. "Otherwise it becomes another form of music."

"We try to compose music that has a connection to the political situation but still sounds Oriental," he said. "Sometimes it succeeds. Sometimes it fails."

The classical forms in the Arabic music the ensemble plays generally do not use voices, so it is difficult to sing protest songs. But while the music sounds neutral, the group gives it a political cast in its program notes and discussions from the stage.

At the Miller Theater concert Mr. Khoury introduced a piece called "Oriental Tale," written by Mr. Khatib while Ramallah was under siege by Israeli forces. "From misery and darkness, sometimes a light, a flower has to come out," Mr. Khoury said. Then he took up his ney, inclining his head to the left, the ney extending to the right as he blew across its top from the right side of his mouth.

The final piece on the program was called "Atleet," after an Israeli prison where Mr. Khoury said he had been held for six months. There, he said, he fashioned a ney out of the plastic insulation for an electric wire by poking holes in it with a heated nail. He played music off in a corner, he added, out of the hearing of guards, as a few fellow prisoners listened.

Mr. Khoury, 45, the dominant extra-musical personality in the group, took the lead in the joint interview despite a quiet, almost motionless manner. He is a major presence on the Palestinian music scene, having helped found the national conservatory and now serving as its general director, in East Jerusalem. A composer, he also led other arts groups and served as an official in the Culture Ministry.

"He feels the burden of the occupation heavily, trying to run an institution in that situation and have it grow and expand," said Kathryn Habib, a former official of the American Near East Refugee Aid organization, who arranged the ensemble's American tours in 2006 and 2009.

Mr. Khoury was born to a music-loving family in Jerusalem, he said. He listened to Western classical music as a child and pretended to conduct. He studied clarinet, then picked up the ney. He spent two years at Birzeit University in the West Bank, where he became politically aware.

Then came clarinet study at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. In 1993, around the time of optimism for Palestinians after the Oslo peace accords, he and several fellow musicians opened the national conservatory.

Mr. Atari, 37, joined the faculty soon after and now runs the Ramallah branch. He studied music briefly at An-Najah National University, then catch-as-catch-can with various Turkish and Egyptian masters, learning both the Arabic and the Turkish forms of the qanun. (The Arabic qanun plays half-tones; the Turkish, quarter-tones, he explained.)

Mr. Atari, a burly, balding man, worked as an electrician to earn money, at first playing mostly at weddings, a major source of earnings for many Arabic classical musicians in the Palestinian territories. Then he joined the conservatory and built up the qanun program. He met his future wife, an Israeli Arab, in Ramallah, and the couple have two daughters. He cannot visit them in Israel because of the travel restrictions, but his wife can slip into the West Bank.

For Mr. Atari the ensemble is a source of comradeship. "We are not just a group, together just for performance," he said. "We are friends."

The youngest member is Mr. Khatib, 34. He produces many of the group's compositions and arrangements. His father, a poetry-loving amateur oud player, fled his village as a boy for Nablus in 1948. As an adult he went to teach in the Irbid refugee camp in Jordan, where Mr. Khatib spent the first 10 years of his life.

Mr. Khatib started studying the violin in school. He switched to the oud after three years, studying with an Iraqi teacher. Iraq at the time was a center of oud virtuosity. At Yarmouk University in Irbid, Mr. Khatib tried computer engineering.

"I couldn't do it," he said. "Music was much more appealing to me." So he changed to cello, which has fingering distances and shifts similar to those of the oud.

Mr. Khatib went to work at the national conservatory in Ramallah in 1998. He left the West Bank briefly in 2002, around the time he joined the group, after overstaying a visitor's permit, and because of a bureaucratic tangle and the denial of permission by the Israeli authorities, he has been unable to return. He found refuge in Sweden, which supports music in the Palestinian territories. He received a master's degree from the University of Gothenburg and now coaches ensembles and teaches theory there as well as leading oud master classes in Jordan and Sweden.

The long fallow periods between meetings of the ensemble put a strain on the music-making, Mr. Khatib said.

"We all need to generate energy and the ideas again from zero almost," he said. "You have to be so delicate. To be tight you have to play with the members a lot. It's not an issue of knowing what you want to do. It's playing, playing, playing. This is very difficult to do if you don't live in an easy situation, if you don't meet once a week.

"Every time we meet, we have to remember where we are. This makes the job very hard and not so satisfying musically. It's obvious we have a problem in communication musically due to where we live."

Mr. Hbeisch, 42, the percussionist, spends half the year in Haifa and half the year in Paris. In France he plays with an assortment of world music, classical and jazz groups. When in Israel, he occasionally slips into Ramallah to teach at the conservatory.

He was born in the village of Yirka, in Galilee, to a Druse family. Druse are an Arabic-speaking minority whose secretive religion is an offshoot of Islam.

His father would sing sacred Druse songs to the young Yousef. A brother began teaching him percussion, and he showed early expertise.

Mr. Hbeisch was drafted into the Israeli army but aggravated a spine injury in his first weeks of training. Surgery left one of his legs partly paralyzed, and he was forced to stay in bed for months. To practice he worked on complex rhythms by chattering his teeth, an art he demonstrated for me. Later he suffered macular degeneration, a loss of central vision, and he is nearly blind in his right eye.

"All these illnesses pushed me to go further and further," he said.

At 25 he went to the University of Haifa and studied philosophy and, later, music. He played in a rock band there.

Mr. Hbeisch's place in society is, in a sense, more complicated than that of his ensemble colleagues. He identifies with Palestinians displaced by the Jewish state but has the benefits of Israeli citizenship. At the same time, he said, he feels slighted as a member of a minority, the Druse. Mr. Hbeisch used to play for a mixed Jewish-Arab group, he said, but he came to see his presence in the group as tokenism, especially in the eyes of the audience.

"You see that they hate you, but they love it because you are playing with Jews," Mr. Hbeisch said. "They never invite you unless you are playing with Jews. It's pathetic."

With his Oriental Music Ensemble colleagues, the feeling is something else.

"I love this group and the music we are doing," he said. "It has a special character. There is something that unifies us on a personal level, and the experience we share together."

Source: The New York Times

"Assalamu Alaikum"; a nice song from a live performance by Hellmut Hattler that goes around Israel / Palestine conflict and presents "The Wall" as a sample of this conflict.

Peace!

http://bit.ly/17daok

Lyrics:

Mines in my soul blast if i only think of you
We never gonna bite one's bait - even if your story was true
Staring through my window pane - watch you digging on my ground
To post some flags and tanks - shows who's up and who's around

Let's get back to the minimum to get away from the minimal talk
Assalamu alaikum my little white gods
Why don't you raise your hands and burn that fence down
Better get back to the minimum to get away from the minimal talk
Assalamu alaikum my lazy white dove
Why don't you spread your wings to leave that zoo

Warriors of belief - or victims of the twisted word
We never gonna bite one's bait - rather gonna bite the dirt
Staring through my window pane: brandnew flagpoles on my ground
Funny last revenge: to lock me in won't keep me down

Let's better get back to the minimum to get away from the minimal talk
Shalom i like 'em - my little white gods
Why don't you raise your heads and pop that fence down
Better get back to the minimum to get away from the minimal talk
Assalamu alaikum my lazy white dove
Why don't you spread your wings to leave that zoo now

[Hat tip: Damian]

Song by The Dark Bob:

Embed code:
<embed src="http://blip.tv/play/3y_nuUMA%2Em4v" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="295" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

Michael Heart: We Will Not Go Down (Song for Gaza)

Also available at:
BlipTV: http://blip.tv/file/1652357
DailyMotion: http://tinyurl.com/8rr8jn

Michael Heart Music

Guns n' Roses
Album: Chinese Democracy
Song: Chinese Democracy (What is Chinese Democracy?)
Lyrics can be found here.

Dedicated to those fighting oppression (in collaboration with mondediplo.com, btselem.org and un.org/unrwa).

[Hat tip: Robin]

Here is a gift for President Bush who is visiting Occupied Palestine.

Enjoy the music (HT: Alan):

Punk rebel with a classical cause
Via: Haaretz

"...And today, I was really shocked when I saw the wall here. It's a new type of apartheid, barbaric behavior. How can you impose collective punishment and divide people from one another? We are all residents of the same planet. I would think that the world learned something from South Africa. And the world should boycott a nation that didn't learn. That's why I won't perform in your country.

"The concert tonight is very emotional," he adds, "because I am performing for people who are imprisoned, to give them two hours of fun and show them that the world has not forgotten about them."

Please circulate and forward widely

The following letter is addressed to the Rolling Stones who are planning a concert in Israel. At this point we are soliciting endorsements from artists, cultural figures, intellectuals and cultural organizations, and others who wish to lend their support.

Please send endorsements to info@boycottisrael.ps , with your name/name of organization, city and country.

Boycott Israel - Don't Play another "Sun City"!

An open letter to the Rolling Stones regarding their planned gig in Israel

18 May 2007

Dear Rolling Stones,

The Palestinian arts community received in disbelief media reports of your upcoming performance in Israel, at a time when Israel continues unabated with its colonial and apartheid designs to further dispossess, oppress, and ultimately ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland. If the news is accurate, we strongly urge you to cancel your plans to perform in Israel until the time comes when it ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and respects fundamental human rights as well as the relevant precepts of international law concerning Palestinian rights to freedom, self-determination and equality.

Performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era. We all remember how leading Rolling Stones musicians played a prominent role in enforcing a cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1980's, and participated in recording the timeless song, Sun City, which had a singular influence on raising public awareness about apartheid and its injustices. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Prof. John Dugard, and South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils have repeatedly declared, Israel has created a worse system of apartheid than anything that ever existed in South Africa.

Indeed, Israel's policies throughout its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, which have surpassed their South African counterparts, include house demolitions; Jews-only colonies and roads; uprooting hundreds of thousands of trees; indiscriminate killings of civilians, particularly children; incessant theft of land and water resources; denying freedom of movement to millions under occupation, cutting up the occupied Palestinian territory into Bantustans, some entirely caged by walls, fences and hundreds of roadblocks. Sixty years since the Nakba, Israel's planned campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, and 40 years into its military occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territory, Israel has consistently and relentlessly violated basic human rights and relevant precepts of international law with utter impunity. Moreover, Israel's war of aggression against Lebanon last year caused more than one thousand civilian deaths, not to mention massive destruction to infrastructure and decimation of entire residential neighbourhoods.

The resounding failure of the international community to date in ending Israel's occupation, collective punishment, and other forms of oppression was what prompted Palestinians to appeal to international civil society to bear its moral responsibility to put an end to injustice, just as it did against apartheid South Africa. To this end, Palestinian civil society has almost unanimously called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it fully complies with international law and recognizes the fundamental human rights of the people of Palestine. A specific call for cultural boycott of Israel was issued last year, garnering wide support. Among the many groups and institutions that have heeded the Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel are the Church of England; the US Presbyterian Church; a group of top British architects; the British National Union of Journalists in the UK; the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario; Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger; and Palme d'Or winner director Ken Loach. Is it too much, then, to expect conscientious artists like the Rolling Stones to similarly uphold the values of freedom, equality and justice for all by supporting the growing boycott against Israel?

We appeal to your moral principles and your record of standing up for human rights and human dignity. We sincerely hope that you shall cancel this ill-conceived and particularly harmful concert in Israel.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned:

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Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
www.pacbi.org
info@boycottisrael.ps