Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 47

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Angelina Jolie or Bono are key representatives not to say the icons. Certainly, Daniel
Barenboim, like the latter, is not a member of the political elite, but does not adopt
the same kind of conduct in the public sphere. Although Barenboim, one of the most
media-effective classical musicians alive, is meeting the first criteria (“megaphone diplomacy”),
his friendship with high-ranking political representatives such as Felipe
Gonzáles, the former Spanish Prime Minister (1982–1996) and initiator of the Middle
East Conference in Madrid 1991, or Joschka Fischer, German Foreign Minister
within Gerhard Schröder’s coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party
(1999–2005), did not result in any noticeable shifts of agenda setting in national or
international politics. It is also worth noting that Barenboim�despite the presence
of the German Federal President Joachim Gauck and, even more important, despite
the fact that the Federal government covered more than €20 million for the construction
costs�did not allow any speeches by government officials during his threehour
opening concert of the new Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin on March 4, 2017.
When Public Action Becomes Political
However, this presumed demarcation from politics causes ambiguities. His interventions
in public debates, and especially his philosophical conception of music, establish
some links with the political sphere.
Barenboim does not hesitate to take public positions, especially by regularly condemning
the policy of colonization implemented by the Israeli Government. Israel must
recognize the right to the political existence of the Palestinians (Barenboim 2013b), a
claim he mobilizes even by referring to the declaration of independence of Israel itself.
Thus, during the reception of the Wolf Foundation Prize in 2004, Barenboim delivered a
speech at the Knesset in which he calls for the initial duties of the Israeli state:
I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements,
ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence
promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea
and the realities of Israel?
Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people
fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence
of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other?
Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering
and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the
rights and suffering of a neighboring people?
Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological
end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one
based on social justice? (Barenboim 2004b)
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