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Newsletter : 1fax0607.txt
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>JN June 7, 2001, Vol. 9, No. 94
Israel Accused of Expelling 4 Lebanese Asylum-Seekers
By VOA News
Lebanese police said Israel expelled four Lebanese asylum-seekers who slipped into the Jewish state late Tuesday.
They said an Israeli military jeep dropped off the four men in a deserted region just outside the disputed Shebaa Farms where they were seized by Lebanese police.
Police said the men, who came from the Druze village of Hasbaya, were former members of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army.
CIA Director Meeting with Mideast Leaders
By Meredith Buel (VOA-Jerusalem)
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency arrived in the Middle East Wednesday to support a fragile cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians.
George Tenet is making a brief visit to the region for security-related meetings with Israel and the Palestinians. Tenet, who last visited the area in October, has played a key role in helping both sides cooperate to work out security arrangements.
Such cooperation is critical to maintaining the current cease-fire designed to end more than eight months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
Before Tenet's arrival, Israel announced a partial easing of its closure on the Palestinian territories. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said food, fuel and other supplies will be allowed in to the West Bank and Gaza. The defense minister says the moves were taken because of a significant reduction in the number of attacks.
Israel continues to maintain a blockade around Palestinian cities and towns. The closure was imposed after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed 20 Israelis.
As Israel prepared to retaliate for the bombing, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat announced support for a cease-fire. Passions and tension are continuing to run high in the region.
In an English-language interview with a Russian television station, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lashed out at Arafat, calling him a murderer and a liar. "Arafat, one must understand, we speak about a murderer. He is a murderer and a pathological liar."
The statement was Sharon's strongest attack against the Palestinian leader since taking office earlier this year. Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Sha'ath responded by saying the Israeli prime minister's remarks were not conducive to peacemaking.
Wagner Music: A Sensitive Subject in Israel
By Jenny Badner (VOA-Jerusalem)
A recent controversy in Israel is serving as a reminder how sensitive the country remains about anything that can be linked to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The organizers of the Israel Arts Festival recently announced that they would not go ahead with plans to perform the music of Richard Wagner. Though the German composer died in 1883, his music is for many Israelis forever linked with Hitler and the Holocaust.
The music, from the opera "De Walkuere" by 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner, was supposed to be performed in July at Jerusalem's Israel Arts Festival.
It was going to be a private concert performed by world-renowned conductor Daniel Berenboim of the Berlin Philharmonic and soloist Placido Domingo. Recently, the concert was called off because of public outrage.
More than 50 years after the end of World War II, the music of Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, remains a sensitive subject in Israel.
The festival's director, Yossi Tal-Gan, says the public outcry against the performance forced the board of directors to reconsider their decision to perform Wagner's music at Israel's most prestigious music festival.
Since the creation of Israel, there has been a de-facto ban against performing anything by the composer whose music, during the Nazi-era, accompanied nearly every public appearance by Hitler.
But that taboo seemed to be fading. In the past decade, Wagner's music has been played on state radio, and last year, a small local Israeli orchestra performed one of his operas for the first time in the country's history.
Tal-Gan said that like a growing number of Israelis, he saw no problem with the performance, especially since Richard Wagner was not the only anti-Semitic musician, and he died 50 years before Hitler came to power.
"There were many anti-Semitic musicians and artists [throughout] history and that is why we said we have to separate the artist from his art," he said. "And even when people raised the fact that Beethoven's music was heard in the camps, not Wagner's music, but Beethoven. Strauss lived in the Nazi period and he was an active Nazi, so we said, why are they kosher and Wagner is not?"
But opponents say Wagner is different, no other composer is as closely linked with Hitler. They say the symbolism of playing his music in Jerusalem, with a Jewish-Israeli conductor and a German orchestra would have been insensitive to aging Holocaust survivors.
Walter Zvi Bacharach is a German-Jewish Holocaust survivor who lives in Israel. He is also an emeritus professor whose branch of study is the roots of anti-Semitism. He says Richard Wagner did more than write music. He was the first to formulate the ultra-nationalist German ideal that included exterminating the Jews.
Berenboim has said he understands why some people oppose listening to Wagner, but argues they should not stop others who want to attend a performance.
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