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Music festival in Belgium cancels concert over Israeli conductor
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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He is an Israeli citizen and music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. I'd say he can be seen as representing Israel (Israel, not necessarily the current regime) on a cultural level. Russian athletes can be barred from international events - why is it too much to ask to distance himself from the atrocities in Palestine?
People think this is a personal attack. It's not (unless this guy actively supports his government). It's sad that people suffer because of their government actions? Yes. Is it necessary? As a symbolic act of protest against a regime you don't support, also yes.
I personally don't understand the logic of this symbolic act of protest, but I often don't understand how protest is supposed to function. It did pull more attention towards gaza, and attention is everything.
Would a better protest be to keep the invite, but plaster the space with material about the genocide? Let the person quit if this offends them (which would probably be a more sympathetic headline and just as newsworthy) and make a story out of the performance if they don't (which should be very photogenic).
The logic is telling Israel "your country is not welcome here, we don't agree with you", which is different from saying " your people are not welcome here", because only representative are affected
Look at how they never answer your question. It's incredible how there is people still defend israrl in anyway or shape
Russian athletes are allowed to compete as neutrals in international events, as long as they do not openly endorse the war in Ukraine.
In this particular case, he is not conducting as a representative of Israel or any Israeli organization. These acting as a representative of the Munich Philharmonic.
This is strictly about his national origin and ethnicity.
Such half-assed, predictable, lazy moving goalposts here.
"All Jews now..." (extraordinary statement from you)
"Well no, how about because he's a citizen of the country perpetrating a genocide, crime of all crimes?"
"Yeah exactly, in this specific case they're targeting him cuz of his national origin!" (roughly an entire galaxy away from your original claim)
If you're being disingenuous (my assumption) - go fuck yourself. If you're actually just this bad at thinking and argumentation, strongly consider sticking to reading the comments of others.
If you're a U.S. citizen should you have to publicly denounce Trump's fascism or else get banished from the sane parts of the world?
Even when talking about completely different subjects?
And if so, how often? Do they need a precursor on every post?
Tens of millions of US citizens voted in a pedophile. So yes, I'd say you'd have to publicly announce you're not part of the majority that supports a rapist.
So why aren't the posts here full of such denials?
I mean, respectfully, what the fuck are you talking about? An enormous amount of content on the fediverse in general, not just here, is literally public disavowal and complaints about our regime.
Yes, but individuals don't state their political affiliation regularly when talking about something non political. And besides, it's a much bigger thing in real life when you're not hiding behind your anonymity.
"Well then why aren't the posts here full of [thing]?"
"What? Here specifically is literally full of [thing]"
"Yeah I know, but [different argument]"
This is what you sound like lol
'Here' is not the fediverse, but this thread and these comments.
did you ask?
More moving goalposts. Is he banished from the sane parts of the world? Or did he just have a concert canceled?
Let's look at your question phrased like you're arguing in good faith instead! Goes like this:
It was a shitty "gotcha" in the first place, but boy is it worse when it's accurate. No wonder you resorted to hyperbole.
It's not meant to be a gotcha, it's just to try and help people see things from different perspectives.
And sure: how about your version of the question? And extend it to sports coaches and players, movie producers, directors and actors? Store owners and employees?
It would be fully righteous to go hard core here, but probably too inconvenient for most. And many would say that such politics don't have a place in ... whatever they don't want to deal with the repercussions of having politics have a place in.
There's also a component of self preservation. It might be unsafe to publically go against one's own government or it might at least be very bad for one's career. So damned either way and better to stay apolitical.
At your job do you make a point of stating that you hate Trump and think he's a moron. Or is that likely to get you unemployed so you keep quiet?
He's in a position of leadership at a national organization bearing the name of the country doing the genocide. And it's too much to find out what he thinks about it before allowing him to perform at an event they themselves organized?
That's a bullshit argument - this story is about one guy, and your attempts to generalize it into something that applies to everyone are dishonest.
All of this protracted benefit of the doubt you're giving him, this moralizing, bleating "but he might be secretly a good person!" - why?
Your answer doesn't matter. I know why, and the rest of us do too. Goodbye.
As a us citizen, yes.
How often? I don't see it on any posts here, and I suspect most are US citizens.
At least once, and you must not be paying close attention then. Trumps fascism is regularly denounced, denigrated, and mocked all over here.
But not on unrelated topics. When talking about music, do you always state your political convictions?
Viewing my online presence makes it perfectly clear what my convictions are. They didn't say "he didn't submit paperwork disavowing genocide when the performance was scheduled", they said his views on the genocide were unclear. If he does strongly disavow the Israeli government's genocide, now is a time to speak up.
I'm not sure what you're trying to drive at tbh, but I don't think i care anymore.
As a US citizen and seeing what's happening to this place, yes, I would recommend everywhere find out where a given American stands on various issues when deciding to allow them in or not. Easy question.
So do you check the political views of orchestra conductors of every concert you go to? The coaches of each game? The producers and directors of movies you watch? And by that I mean do you insist they definitively make public statements against Trump, not just that they don't publicly support him?
This habit of asking questions that you incorrectly believe have obvious "gotcha" answers, and which don't really relate that closely to the issue at hand...really not providing the rhetorical weight you're hoping for.
The folks running that festival have every right to curate who they invite to perform. That really has nothing to do with what I choose to consume, but yes, I do consider the people behind whatever entertainment I might want to enjoy, as well as where I'm willing to shop. We all should, to whatever degree we can manage. Stupid question.
Finally - these folks are in the business of hosting musical performances, that's the thing they are there to do, and cancelling one is precisely the opposite of their business model. You understand that right? Don't you think ANYONE in that position would reach out to the guy and give him the chance to clarify? Don't you think they did exactly that, and ended up discovering he's probably a fuckin Zionist?
Anyway, your arguments are too bad to continue to rebut. See ya later.
Yes, it's about his national origin and ethnicity.
Asking him to denounce the atrocities his country commits is a very reasonable question. Refusing to answer this already tells me enough.
They would ban everyone supporting genocide, it doesn't matter at all what they're representing or not representing at the time.
I
Idf soldiers are allowed to compete
The only reason Russia and Belarus are banned is that basically the entire West was calling for it. That did not happen with Israel. Just looking at the Olympics, the only ones calling for Israel being banned were the Palestinians. Nobody else, not even from fellow Arab countries could get up and complain at the IOC. No wonder nothing happened. Same is unfortunately true for other countries like Myanmar, which is currently also committing a genocide. The West really does not care about that one though. Either way that is.
I don't care about their thought process. At this point Israel should be treated as Nazi Germany. Germany as a whole was banned from participating in the Olympic Games in 1948 for example
They were banned for at least some time though.
The article says that he has previously spoken out in favor of peace and reconciliation. Did you read it?
Even countries who sell arms to isrsel claim to want peace
Yes. But that does not mean, "every jewish person" gets treated like this. They might (because antisemitism is on the rise), but this case is not a good example for that.
And he may have strongly opposed the Netanyahu regime and the article may have watered it down as "in favor of peace and reconciliation" or he may have been paying lip service or whatever. I don't know that. And yes, this can be a slippery slope: how much is enough "clarity"? Who gets to decide that? And in what cases (Gaza isn't the only place where atrocities happen)? But people can also think "This is too much. You need to speak up or don't want to work with you." without it necessarily being antisemitism.
Iirc the decision to ban Russian athletes wasn't on grounds of what putler is doing, rather the widespread doping that they were engaged in that the IOC simply couldn't pretend they were all individual failures, but rather a systematic engagement of all Russian athletes in doping, and not their support of the regime.
So the analogy of precedence you propose isn't very relevant.
As the Olympics was set up to involve all nations and races regardless of background and beliefs, I think a discussion on whether the Israeli athletes or representatives should participate in specific such international events (music, sport, etc) should be included or excluded on basis of their regard (or lack thereof) for human rights.
Despite the complete disregard for human rights that Israel is exhibiting today, the Olympics for example, might consider this not grounds for expelling them, whereas a music festival promoting human rights may choose to expel them instead.