Half the Ramallah Orchestra, last Saturday night, at St Anne Church
The Ramallah Orchestra, an initiative of the music conservatory Al Kamandjati, was to perform a free concert at Saint Anne Church in East Jerusalem on Saturday night, 30 June. The concert was organized with the assistance of the French Consulate, and would have built upon previous, highly successful Al Kamandjati concerts at the church.
On the morning of the concert, Al Kamandjati was forced to cancel it.
Church door, with concert announcement
Approximately half of the international ensemble’s musicians are Palestinians. Israel, which militarily occupies East Jerusalem under a de facto annexation not recognized by international law, blocks these musicians from entering East Jerusalem unless it grants them a special permit. Despite every effort to follow Israel’s requirements, none of the Palestinians were given the permits, and so all were prevented from reaching the concert.
In consideration of the many audience members who could not have learned of the cancellation, the remaining musicians of the Ramallah Orchestra, along with conductor Diego Masson, nonetheless continued to Saint Anne Church.
At concert time, to welcome the seated audience, a string quartet comprised of four young Palestinians of 1948 (Palestinians of Israeli citizenship) performed Carlos Gardel’s Por Una Cabeza.
Three orchestra members then read aloud the following statement in Arabic, English, and French :
Good evening.
Tonight we had planned to play a fabulous program for you: the overture to Rossini’s opera ‘The Italian in Algiers’, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, and the great Eroica Symphony, the third symphony of Beethoven. But we are very sorry that we are unable to play our concert.
The four musicians that you just heard are Palestinians of 1948. The core of our ensemble, about half our musicians, are Palestinians from the West Bank. These Palestinians must secure Israeli permits to enter here, even though Israel’s de facto annexation of East Jerusalem is not recognized by international law. As of this morning, none of our colleagues’ permits had been granted. We are not an orchestra without these musicians, but we stand here tonight in solidarity with them.
We again express our deepest regret that we are prevented from playing our concert for you tonight.
Thank you, on behalf of all the musicians of the Ramallah Orchestra.
The PLO gets very little for collaborating with Israel and the US.as the following shows:
Israel sought $1 billion IMF loan for Palestinians
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, July 2, 2012 8:38 EDT
Israel sought a $1 billion IMF bridging loan for the Palestinian Authority earlier this year, but was turned down, an Israeli newspaper said Monday in a report confirmed to AFP by a seniorIsraeli official.
Haaretz reported that Israel’s central bank chief Stanley Fischerapproached the International Monetary Fund for the money after discussing the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis with Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.
Sometime after the IMF’s annual conference in mid-April, Fischer asked the body for the loan, which Israel would have taken on the Palestinians’ behalf.
Israel would then have transferred the money to the Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by president Mahmud Abbas, which would have repaid the money to the Israeli government.
Israel would have remained responsible for repaying the loan to the IMF, under the deal, but the institution eventually declined to make the loan available.
Haaretz said it turned the proposal down because it feared setting a precedent of making IMF money available to non-state entities, like the Palestinian Authority, which as a non-state cannot directly request or receive IMF funding.
A senior Israeli official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity confirmed that the details contained in the Haaretz report were accurate.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has been suffering a financial crisis for at least the past year, as pledged funds from Arab nations have failed to materialise, leaving the government unable to pay wages and bills.
While Israel has at times contributed to the crisis, Palestinian officials say, by suspending the transfer of tax and tariff revenues it collects on behalf of the PA, it is also eager to avoid the security deterioration that could accompany a financial collapse of the government in the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is interested in preventing a situation whereby the PA collapses financially, which is liable to have a very negative impact on the West Bank security situation,” an Israeli official told Haaretz.
On Sunday, Palestinian Authority labour minister Ahmed Majdalani told AFP that the West Bank authority faced its worst financial crisis since it was founded in 1994.
And he said the government would be unable to pay salaries for the month of July, when the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins, unless urgent action was taken to secure funds.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/02/israel-sought-1-billion-imf-loan-for-palestinians/
I wonder if they allow performances of Beethoven’s Fidelio in Israel. (Galina Vishnevskaya, the Russian soprano, says in her autobiography that, whenever the Bolshoi Company performed Fidelio, she and the other members of the cast regarded the performance as a protest against Stalin’s prisons.)
As a matter of fact, I have been troubled by the scarcity of performances of Fidelio in this country in the years since 9/11.
When Khameini says the zionist entity will vanish from pages of time (or whatever) I can only nod in agreement.
It’s pretty much bad news all the time from Israel these days, and it’s not just at places like MW. Such pettiness, such vindictiveness, *so* ugly, and on full display for the world to see.
Well we see it.
Keep this in mind the next time an Israeli official pulls the “anti-semite” canard when protesters in London, NYC or some other cultural capital disrupt the performance of an Israeli ensemble.
Speaking of Ramallah, evidence that Arafat was poisoned with polonium-210 has surfaced. Arafat Death Mystery Solved ? Polonium [210] Found on Personal Items.