How should we respond to the crisis in Gaza? There are many valid answers to that question. In 1999 Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-East Divan Symphony Orchestra. Based in Seville, it brings Israeli, Palestinian and Spanish musicians together in an experiment offering some alternative model to the cycle of violence.
On Friday 11th June at 8PM you are invited to bring some piece of writing or music with a bearing on this question, or some picture or photograph, (& possibly some wine) to the room upstairs at Wild and Homeless Books (12 South Street, Bridport). We’ll make it up as we go along. Entry is £6 and all proceeds will be donated to the West-East Divan Symphony Orchestra. (http://www.west-eastern-divan.org)
The spirit of the occasion we envisage is well expressed in an essay of the late Edward Said and Barenboim: ‘History is a dynamic thing, and if we expect Israeli Jews not to use the Holocaust to justify appalling human rights abuses of the Palestinian people, we too have to go beyond such idiocies as saying that the Holocaust never took place, and that Israelis are all, man, woman, and child, doomed to our etermal enmity and hostility. Politicians can talk all their usual nonsense and do what they want, and so can professional demagogues. But for intellectuals, artists, and free citizens, there must always be room for dissent, for alternative views, for ways and possibilities to challenge the tyranny of the majority and, at the same time and most importantly, to advance human enlightenment and liberty.’
