Flanders Festival Ghent says it made decision over lack of ‘clarity’ about incoming conductor Lahav Shani’s views.
While Shani had spoken in favour of “peace and reconciliation” in the past, his attitude towards the “genocidal regime in Tel Aviv” was unclear given his role as the chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the festival organisers said.
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
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.
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.