Simon Hewitt Jones - The Violin Blog

Dec

23

The Politics Of Everything

Filed Under Travelblog | 

Visiting the Taybeh brewery brought home how political most things are, and that especially in a place like Palestine, a simple business (like theirs) or cultural program (like ours) can take on many subtle meanings. However, the most basic point is that by simply doing something, there’s a kind of inherent solidarity.

The Taybeh delivery drivers leave up to two days before their bottles are due at hotels, shops and other stockists in Israel (and in some of the further parts of the West Bank too), because they know their wait time at checkpoints can be indeterminable. Soldiers often make things very difficult for traders bringing goods into Israel, and even when deliveries succeed, they can be massively time-consuming. Therefore, just the act of trying to deliver the beer becomes a gesture of defiance.

I am always uncomfortable to hear programs I am involved with described as political, and would be nervous to accept a description of a concert series such as ours as ‘pro-Palestinian’, for fear someone might interpret that - wrongly - as ‘anti-Israeli’. So you try to minimize any overtly political gestures. But at the same time, it cannot be denied that a strong culture and a strong economy are part of a successful state, therefore any attempt to contribute towards such basic parts of society - whether it is a cultural or economic contribution such as performing a concert or making beer, or whatever else - is an attempt to provide more positive steps in the direction of a stable and developing society, be it deliberate or not.

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