Last night I went (with 60 000 of my closest friends) to see Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd) at Neve Shalom (the Oasis of Peace). It was a very interesting experience. The concert was originally meant to be in Tel Aviv, but some Palestinian groups kicked up a fuss, saying that Roger is pro-Palestinian, so he shouldn't be having a concert in Israel. There was talk of the concert being cancelled, but instead they moved it to this place. It is still Israel, quite clearly, however Neve Shalom is a Jewish/Palestinian village where they all live happily and grow hummous (obviously this is a simplified version of the truth...). So Roger bought a hummous field (as you do) to have the concert in (and a few more for parking), so that Jews and Arabs would come to the concert, which they did, clearly.
It was one of those crazy concert days which starts with queues in the desert heat at 4pm and ends with burgers at 4am. The concert itself was great. Well known Israeli artists Mashina and David Broza played before Rog, and they were both pretty good ... the sound system wasn't so crash hot though. 'Rogers Water', as a few confused Israeli's dubbed him, played pretty much everything I wanted to hear, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, Another Brick in the Wall, Comfortably Numb, the ENTIRE Dark Side of the Moon album!! We have a hunch there was a fair bit of lipsyncing going on, coz when he spoke his voice sounded pretty broken... but who knows.
There were a few moments where he was quite preachy which kinda annoyed me... like who the hell are you to come to Israel and think that you know how to solve this conflict. You sing pretty songs Roger, go back to that. He sung a new song about a Lebanese family that was nice to him in the 80s, and it was a bit like... dude, standing up and saying 'but I know nice Arabs' isn't going to change anything... and also I though it would have been pretty patronising to the Arabs in the audience. Plus ask any Palestinian Arab what he thinks of Lebanese Arabs or Jordanian Arabs or Egyptian Arabs... they're gonna tell you it's like apples and oranges. I know he was making a big anti-Bush statement as well, but I just didn't think it was the time or the place. His last comment on the matter was alright though I guess... can't quite decide... he said (and I quote) 'I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, but I think it's time for this generation of Israelis to break down the walls'. I don't know if he was talking about Israeli Jews AND Arabs though... I'm guessing probably just the Jews... hmm...
Anyhoo, what struck me the most though was the crowd. I've been to a fair few concerts, including quite a few in Israel, but I've never been to anything of this size here. I found it really interesting to watch how a crowd behaves. Now this one was in full rock-concert, don't-care-who-I-step-on-to-get-to-the-front mode, but there was something distinctly different about it. I think the best example of what I'm trying to say here is the way in which people tended to react if someone stands in front of them or in their way. In Australia the standard procedure would be to point and bitch about them, and then try to 'inadvertantly' elbow them while you're dancing. Here though, it seems that the best thing to do is to tap them on the shoulder, explain how and why they've done the wrong thing and then find a viable solution to the problem between the two of you. If this doesn't work, then you generally just push them out of the usurped area. And even then, there doesn't seem to be any hard feelings. I didn't see any real aggression the whole night I don't think. Even 'evil giant man and his bitch wifey', our nemeses (plural for nemesis... anyone? This is the second time I've had this problem in 2 days!!), offered their bottle of water to Mel's friend Marnie when she was feeling sick in the middle of the concert. Don't know what exactly this says... but it's nice.
Anyway.... all's good with me otherwise, Gem was here for a week and a bit which was amazing, looking foward to some more people coming to play over the next coupla months... will have some new photos up shortly... Shabbat Shalom peoples
xx
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