Daniel Barenboïm as Pharisee

Have our ears had enough hammering with noise about “pro-Palestinian” or “pacifist” Jews in the style of Daniel Barenboïm?

Le Monde, on its front page of November 21–22, 2004 (continued on page 12), carries an article by D. Barenboïm entitled “The Autocrat is dead, long live the Palestinian people!” In it, the conductor writes particularly:

I know that within the Palestinian population there is a broad current aspiring to a third way: the democratic Mubadara Party of Mustapha Barghuti. – This current seeks a solution that will acknowledge the right of the Jews to return to their country [!!!] and respect the suffering of the Jewish people after the Holocaust, whilst at the same time it defends the rights of the Palestinians by means of a non-violent resistance. However, these people were no longer represented by Yassir Arafat. […] There cannot be peace if the Palestinians deny the Holocaust. But there cannot be peace either if the Israelis do not assume a share of responsibility in the conflict with the Palestinians.

D. Barenboïm and his like are against a Palestine on its feet (albeit reeling) as was the Palestine of Arafat. They are in favour of a disarmed Palestine facing an excessively armed Jewish state. They especially want a Palestine which, subdued and on its knees, would avow its faith in “the Holocaust”.

Since the alleged “Holocaust” is the sword and shield of the State of Israel, this would amount to the Palestinians declaring: “Above all, we do not want to strip the State that oppresses us of its sword and shield.”

That would be absurd; but it is possible that some day Palestinian or Arabo-Moslem officials will be driven to such extremes. The religion of “the Holocaust” is going from strength to strength. No country today can join the great military, political or economic entities like, for example, the European Union or NATO, without swearing allegiance to this religion and, consequently, paying homage to the Jews. What is true of the states of Europe, including the Vatican, and of a good number of other Western countries may soon extend to the Arabo-Moslem countries whose people rebel but whose rulers, à la Qadhafi, bow in obedience.

Arafat’s successors are disoriented. D. Barenboïm has sensed that now is the time to tell them: “Acknowledge the truth of the Holocaust of the Jews!”

“The friend of the Palestinians” has thus unmasked himself. Aware of his “friends’” precarious situation he has, like Shylock, seen an opportunity to benefit and demands still more of them. Neither “peaceful” or “pacifist”, nor a true friend of the Palestinians, it is confirmed that D. Barenboïm has all along just been fully Jewish and a Zionist.

[D. Barenboïm is an orchestral conductor (Staatskapelle of Berlin and Chicago Symphony Orchestra). With the late Edward Saïd (1935–2003) he created the foundation that bears the two men’s names. The article in Le Monde is the fruit of a conversation in German with Axel Brüggermann and had appeared in the Welt am Sonntag of November 14, 2004 (“Der Autokrat ist tot! Es lebe das Volk!”)]

November 22, 2004