Barenboim Calls for 'New Paths' for Peace after France Attacks
Israeli-Argentinian conductor Daniel Barenboim, a tireless campaigner for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, said Wednesday "new paths" for peace are needed after last week's attacks in France.
Barenboim, 72, who is renowned for his attempts to make peace through music, added that the situation in the Middle East is "much worse" now than when he set up a "peace orchestra" known as the East-West Divan orchestra with Palestinian scholar Edward W. Said in 1999.
"This is why any project that could encourage young people to seek contact with The Other is important," he told a news conference where he will perform on Saturday.
"We should look for new paths after what happened in France, and be inspired by nations where Jewish and Muslim communities live in peace," he told a news conference in Madrid where he will perform Saturday.
"We should look for another way to live and ask ourselves why these types of things happen," he added.
The goal of the East-West Divan orchestra is to help bring about reconciliation in the Middle East between young Arabs and Israelis by having them work together on music for which they have a common passion and hopefully break down assumptions that they have about one another.
Barenboim has been tipped by many admirers as a future recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize but in Israel he is a controversial figure due to his vocal opposition to its occupation of the West Bank, where he has performed on several occasions.
He criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for telling French Jews after the attacks in France last week that "the state of Israel is your home".
Four of the fatalities in France's three-day wave of violence were Jews killed in an attack on a kosher supermarket hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath on Friday.
"Such remarks are comparable to anti-Semitic statements. That is what anti-Semites say. That Jews are different, that they will never be French or German or Argentine," said Barenboim, who holds Argentine, Israeli and Spanish citizenship and took honorary Palestinian citizenship in 2008.
Source: Agence France Presse
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