A DAY IN THE LIFE OF COEXISTENCE
By Seth J. Frantzman, sfrantzman@gmail.com

Jerusalem Post
Sep 24, 2008 22:02
Israel

In its book review section on August 23, the Economist included two
books by the late Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. Although the review
was ostensibly about music, which the books are also ostensibly about
(Everything Is Connected: The Power of Music by Barenboim and Music at
the Limits by Said) the article was titled "Friends across the divide"
and included the cliche "working together from opposite ends of the
Israeli-Palestinian divide."

The article thus claims that Barenboim and Said are practicing
"coexistence" and "learning about the other" when they discuss music
and discuss politics. Thus Barenboim’s West-East Divan Orchestra
which he founded with Said in 1999 is part of this coexistence. The
article once again reminds us of the how most coexistence is really
just about two people who already agree masquerading as coexisting.

It was the same story with a BBC article on August 28, entitled
"Summer camp sows seeds of peace," which is ostensibly about the
Seeds of Peace organization which sends young Palestinian and Israeli
teenagers to the Maine woods for summer camp where they learn about
"the other" and practice coexistence. The BBC showcases two girls
who are practicing this coexistence, Nadia Tibi, the Israeli, and
Majdoline Shahed, the Palestinian.

But Tibi and Shahed are both Arabs – and presumbably both Muslim –
the only difference being that one is from Israel and the other from
the Palestinian territories.

Then there is the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker
non-profit, whose "Profiles of Peace: celebrating 40 years of Israeli
and Palestinian peace builders" ostensibly provides profiles of Jews
and Arabs who are practicing peace. But the only Jews selected seem
to be the most extreme anti-Israel voices and most of them are only
Israeli in citizenship, they were almost all born in the United States
or elsewhere. They include Jeff Halper, who recently went to Gaza
illegally to campaign on behalf of Palestinians, and Amira Hass,
who lived in Gaza for the better part of a decade reporting only
on Palestinians.

The Palestinians, such as Jad Issac, practice peace by doing the same
thing the Israelis do, working with Palestinians and encouraging
Palestinian nationalism. This coexistence project doesn’t involve
people who are coexisting at all, they all agree on their condemnation
of Israel and they all focus exclusively on the rights of Muslim
Arab Palestinians.

RETURNING TO Barenboim and Said, it is worthwhile examining just how
much of a charade it is to claim they are different in any way. Both
were born to wealthy families. Both enjoy the music of Richard Wagner,
the famous anti-Semite who inspired Hitler, and they both condemned
Israel at every opportunity to the extent that Barenboim even holds
Palestinian citizenship, just like Jeff Halper.

But Said’s masquerading as a Palestinian Arab is almost as comical as
Barenboim’s attempt to masquerade as an Israeli Jew. Said spent less
than a few years of his life in Jerusalem and this was not because
he was barred from going there. He spent his childhood at one of his
parents’ multiple homes in Egypt and Lebanon, living with servants,
and later immigrated to the US. His father had American citizenship
because he had volunteered to fight in World War I, and Said spent a
few of his youthful summers in the Maine woods at camp, perhaps the
same camp where Seeds of Peace is now located.

Said was an Anglican Christian, and his English was better than his
Arabic. His parents were disdainful towards the culture of the Middle
East and made fun of the idea of an "Arab general" leading the Arabs
against Israel in 1948. Said’s early experience at coexistence with
others was with his family’s Jewish female servants and his Greek and
Armenian drivers. His house was located in a posh area alongside the
houses of Europeans who resided in Egypt, and he rarely even met the
Arabs he would spend his life defending.

He was so ensconced in European culture that on one summer holiday
in Jerusalem he was taken to a photo studio in the Old City where he
dressed up in fake Beduin clothes alongside his sister and had his
photo taken by an Armenian photographer, much as many Europeans used
to do at that time (dressing up like Lawrence of Arabia) and much
as Americans do in Tombstone, Arizona when they dress up as cowboys
and play the part of Billy the Kid. Said captions this photo in his
autobiography Out of Place, "traditional Palestinian dress" but his
wealthy Arab family never dressed this way and no wealthy Jerusalemite
Arab family did either. Later Said would term this portrayal of the
romantic Arab world of Lawrence of Arabia, "Orientalism," a term that
applied, ironically, as much to himself as those he critiqued.

But just as the Argentinian-born Barenboim plays the Israeli, a country
he has rarely resided in, to claim that he is somehow critiquing
his country, Said played the Palestinian. Neither had anything to do
with Israel or the Palestinians in their daily lives and neither was
ensconced in the everyday culture of a place such as Jerusalem. They
aped the culture and recalled a few youthful moments spent in the
country to weave a tale of coexistence and Arab-Israeli conflict into
their writings and professional lives as an academic and a musician.

Together they symbolize the extent to which coexistence more often
than not means two people who have everything in common pretending
that they are from different backgrounds to make themselves more
interesting to the outside world.