I AM A TOTAL REALIST when it comes to the question, “Can there be peace in the Middle-East?” My idealistic heart might say in a daft moment, “possibly, in some kind of a muddled manner”, but my experienced head says, “No, because there are too many forces which have a vested interest in keeping the whole conflict going ad infinitum”. I would share what and who those forces are but that is not what this piece is about and I do not want that to override what I am going to say in the paragraphs below. You already know anyway.
However, my main purpose here is to share with you a rather remarkable experiment which has proven that when there are no vested interests to keep a conflict going ad infinitum, there are no longer any “sides” to engage in any conflict. I am referring to the subject matter of the 2006 documentary, “Knowledge is the Beginning”. It tells the story of the Arab-Israeli orchestra — the East-Western Divan Orchestra — founded in 1999 by the Argentinian Jewish-Israeli internationally-renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian-American academic, Edward Said.
When it was founded in 1999, the East-Western Divan Orchestra had no permanent base and its first workshop was opened in Weimar, Germany, after the organization had received over 200 applications from Arab music students. Many people just think that Arabs from countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Palestine are aggressive uncultured peasants wandering about a sandy landscape in hijabs and flipflops. But this documentary shows the lie behind that notion. When you see the standard of musicianship in this orchestra, you will be astonished. Barenboim has been the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin State Opera, the Orchestra de Paris and La Scala, Milan. Yet, to close your eyes and listen to the East-Western Divan Orchestra playing Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, you could easily believe that it was an international ensemble on a par with those great orchestras. It was interesting to discover in the documentary that the great cellist Yo-Yo-Ma was also intimately involved with the founding of the orchestra and he still plays with it to this day.
In 2002, the Regional Government of Andalusia, Spain, and a private foundation provided a base for the ensemble in Seville, Spain. Young musicians from Spain now also take part in the orchestra. So you have Israelis, Arabs from many nations and Spanish participating.
Outside of musical sessions, there is often discussion and debate among the Israelis and Arabs who are in the orchestra. The young Israelis in the orchestra were interviewed and said things like: “I never realised there was such a thing as a cultured Palestinian. I thought they were all animals. That’s what I was brought up to believe”. Palestinians said things like “I never realised that Israelis could be non-aggressive nice people”. One of the Palestinian members of the orchestra said to Barenboim, “You are the first thing I have met from Israel which isn’t a soldier or a tank”. That brought tears to my eyes. Yes, music is a great healer. Yet, Barenboim has been completely defamed by the Israeli elite and accused by others of being a traitor, as you will see in the documentary, during one extraordinary scene in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) when the conductor is receiving a prize for his work and is then savagely denounced at the event by the Israeli Minister of Culture because he used the occasion to quote Israel’s own constitution in contrast to its behaviour against its neighbours. That took Barenboim some chutzpah to do that. Traitor? No. Hero? Yes. Frankly, I’m surprised that he is still alive.
Here is the rub: There are vested interests in Israel and elsewhere which do not want Israelis to discover that Palestinians are not all just a bunch of hate-filled terrorists. Those vested interests want to keep the Big Lie going that the only thing which all Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians want is for all Israelis to be dead. This is classic war propaganda. One has to demonise the enemy in order to render them as non-human and thus worthy of killing, even if they are in their infancy. Barenboim’s orchestra cuts completely across that propaganda and shows that given the right medium and the complete lack of interference from politicians (who are mostly corrupt), people can begin to disenslave themselves from their prejudices and thereby begin to mature and, above all, free themselves from being manipulated by politicians and other power-players. Music, especially classical music, is the perfect medium for this.
There will be some elements in this documentary which will move you deeply. Unless you are made of stone, you will no doubt shed a few tears. The climax occurs at the end when the orchestra somehow works a way to play a big concert in Ramallah, the city in the West Bank which is the administrative capital of Palestine. Israeli citizens are legally prohibited from entering the major West Bank cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nablus without a special permit from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Yet, somehow, the orchestra managed to pull this off through such things as being given a Spanish Passport by the Spanish authorities. The Arab members had to be shipped in via Amman, Jordan, and then a bus trip into Ramallah. The Israeli members of the orchestra then had to be specially shipped in from Israel by diplomatic vehicles in a very dramatic manner. The concert took place without incident and the aftermath — when all the orchestra members were hugging before the Israeli members were about to be shipped back into Israel — is made even more moving by having the noble music from “Nimrod”, from Elgar’s Enigma Variations (which had been part of the concert), dubbed over the scene.
Of course, one must not imagine that the whole world is going to be galvanised into peace by this orchestra. As Barenboim himself said,
“Our project may not change the world, but it is a step forward. Edward Said and myself see our project as an ongoing dialogue, where the universal, metaphysical language of music links with the continuous dialogue that we have with young people, and that young people have with each other”.
The East-Western Divan Orchestra is just a drop in the ocean of the kind of warmongering that makes up a major part of ‘politricks’, as it has done for decades. But I believe that it is a most significant drop of saline solution (which has disinfectant properties!). It demonstrates not only the gargantuan power of music, that great gift from God (and, yes, music is metaphysical), but it also proves that when one excludes politicians and other power-players from the scene, then a certain freedom to grow is enabled to develop.
Today, the orchestra is still going strong. This summer, 2026, it played concerts in Berlin and at the prestigious Lucerne Festival in Switzerland. It now has a permanent annual Festival just for the orchestra established in Berlin, where it will play ten concerts this November beginning in the Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall. This really is an amazing achievement, which began 27 years ago with young people from amateur ensembles across Israel and the surrounding Arab nations.
As a result of Barenboim’s initiative, other similar projects have been inaugurated, such as the “East-West Chamber Orchestra” (the “Orchestra-For-Peace”), “Cross-Border Youth Orchestras” (e.g., the “San Diego and Tijuana Youth Collaboration” in the USA, uniting Mexicans and Americans), “Arab and Jewish Teen/Youth Orchestras”, and the “Silk Road Ensemble” founded by Yo-Yo Ma. So, the idea has spread. In a bellicose world such as this, one has to be impressed by the honesty and courage of these young people, not to mention the astounding perseverance and intrepid valour of Daniel Barenboim and his friend Edward Said.
This very well-made and extraordinary documentary can be found at this link on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX7beRaixdA . May it encourage you in some little way in the midst of this volatile and wayward world which, from all accounts, seems to be hellbent (literally) on a downward slide into tyranny and chaos. Music can bring order to that chaos if it is permitted to do so.
Love and Blessings from me…
