Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed recently hailed the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, composed of young players from Israel and Arab countries, specifically because it is one of three youth “orchestras with a big mission.”
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performs works of Mozart and Beethoven within the World Humanitarian Summit. OCHA / Islam Yakut ATTRIBUTION-NODERIVS 2.0 GENERIC
Indeed, that mission of universal humanity was tested like never before on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the most devastating slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, with thousands of terrorists from the Gaza Strip rampaging in southern Israel, murdering, raping, kidnapping, maiming and looting, targeting men, women, children and the elderly.
“There is no justification for Hamas’ barbaric terrorist acts against civilians, including children and babies,” wrote Daniel Barenboim, co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, shortly after the Oct. 7 atrocities. “Our musicians of the West-Eastern Divan, our students in the Barenboim-Said Academy, they are almost all directly affected. Many of the musicians live in the region, and the others also have many ties to their homeland.”
Reeling from the Oct. 7 events, Barenboim reaffirmed that “any moral equation we might draw up, must have as its core this basic understanding: there are people on both sides. Humanity is universal and the recognition of this truth on both sides is the only way. The suffering of innocent people on either side is absolutely unbearable.” He continued, “The images of the devastating terrorist attacks by Hamas break our hearts.”
Swed, however, failed to grasp the orchestra’s big mission. While the orchestra mourned and memorialized the Oct. 7 victims, the admiring Los Angeles Times reviewer engaged in a type of Oct. 7 denial.
Read the rest of this Dec. 18 Op-Ed in the Jewish Journal.