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The orchestra and the Clash of civilizations

After being held like a little child by the beautiful palestinian people and their culture. I am back in the western world.

As soon as you cross the checkpoint, you enter the west again. Feelingwise, here you don't constantly greet people. Here there's a different level of hygiene.
Here people are more in the heads and less in their bellies. In Palestine children are everywhere on the street, here it is quiet.

You could say the ageold conflict of jerusalem is culturally going on. Although in a different jacket with a different story. Like samuel huntington's clash of civilizations describes. In Jeruzalem you can feel it.

Crossing the checkpoint you can feel the muscle of the israeli's. It is similair to our european borders, if you don't have the right passport.
They make you feel that you have less rights by being palestinian, you have to make an extra mile by stepping out of the vehicle and walking trough the checkpoint.

Today i got the conduct the woodwinds here in the orchestra project. Our orchestra is made out of many nationalities, but no israeli's.

Because our project is palestinian led, they don't want to contribute to what they call normalisation.

Palestinians don't accept the status quo, so they don't feel like pretending like everything is allright when they are spending time with israeli's.

I think it is missed opportunity, especially when we are doing beethoven 9! It is going to be hard to sing "alle menschen werden brueder" with conviction. But both sides here are very polarized, and they are looking forward to the day the other side shows weakness so they can take back what they think is theirs.

Both israeli's and Palestinians have deep wounds. Palestinians are being colonized since generations by ottoman's, english and now israeli's.

The deep wounds of the israeli's we all know, the wounds of the palestinians date back to the moment their land was stolen. In every family this happened at another time.

For the english and the americans the israeli's are the perfect tenders of this colony. Because they are so strict and on guard, with their background. So it is important to understand that this has been a colonial project for a long time, and the israeli's with their tragic story are tendering it now. But they were not the first.

So at some point you will have to find this blog without going on the facebook. Because people's phones are being checked by the border police. And i do want to be able to return to Israel and Palestine. So if you find my blogs erased on the facebook you know why.

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