He has been called "a real Jew hater" and a "real anti-Semite" by former Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat. However, few musicians have done as much for peace between Israelis and Palestinians as Daniel Barenboim, the noted Argentine-born Israeli orchestra conductor. It will be only through efforts like his that peace can eventually be reached in the Middle East.
On May 3, Barenboim conducted a concert in the Gaza Strip. The orchestra included musicians from Germany, Austria, France and Italy, who played the concert "as a sign of our solidarity and friendship with Gaza's civil society," Barenboim said in a statement released by the United Nations, the concert coordinator.
In 1999, together with Palestinian-American professor Edward Said, one of the most prominent Palestinian intellectuals worldwide, Barenboim founded the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, a youth orchestra based in Sevilla, Spain, with musicians of Egyptian, Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese-Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian background.