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Evgeny Kissin in his Own Words:
A letter which was never sent: "This letter
was written at the beginning of 2007 and has never been sent to the addressee for the reasons stated in its first paragraph
and because in the end I came to the conclusion that she simply would not understand it. Nevertheless, as years went by, I
thought that it might be interesting for those who love my art and want to know more about me as a person: what I believe
in, what motivates me, and what is "most important and dear for me in life and death". . . . . Evgeny Kissin
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T* I have been having doubts whether I should send this letter
to you or not, I have been writing it for 4 days and have re-written it several times. The first reason for all of this was
that in principal one cannot but agree with what you say about the meaning of friendship. The other reason was my understanding
that when you were writing about your having been "hopelessly in love" with me in the past, your "genuine care"
for me in the present and willingness to "always be there" for me if I need you in the future, you were really believing
it, and it feels somewhat awkward to reply to such statements with what I have to say to you, especially since you are a woman.
Nevertheless, I have decided to go ahead and try to explain to you certain things - for the sake of truth and for what is
most important and dear to me in life and in death.
First, I will reply to some of the statements in your last letter. It seems to me that you simply
aren't realizing what you are saying: "I'm sorry, T, but the absurdity of these words is obvious - those who
can afford to buy arms for 425 billion pounds cannot possibly be poor. Your accusation that the West is being "SO hypocritical"
for selling those arms to "the poor" is just as absurd (sorry, but I can't think of any other definition): as
everyone knows, demand begets offer, not the other way around, and those who rule entire countries are not innocent and inexperienced
teenagers who can be persuaded to buy (and use) drugs. Your statement
that "we control everybody" is equally absurd after 9/11, 3/11, 7/7 etc. As for oppression - NO, THE WEST DOES NOT
OPPRESS ANYBODY; THIS IS AN OBJECTIVE FACT.
True, hypocrisy is not always alien to the foreign policy of some Western countries. A striking
example of that is the European Union's constant demands that Israel return to its 1967 borders - demands which it continues
to make, in spite of the fact that none of its members has ever returned any territories it conquered in a war to any of its
other members. However, as we all know, in order to have the moral right to accuse others of something, one has
to be free of those faults oneself; otherwise, it's the very hypocrisy we're talking about. Years ago, you wrote to
me that capital punishment was not acceptable to you, even though many people found it justifiable. Now; in Israel, there
is no death penalty, whereas Arafat practised it in his Autonomy even for such a "crime" as selling land
to Israelis. In spite of that, you supported Arafat in his fight against Israel and called that bloody dictator a "poor
man"! Excuse me, T, but this is sheer hypocrisy, and if you show hypocrisy yourself and at the same time accuse others
of being "SO hypocritical" - this is already a DOUBLE HYPOCRISY!
Yes, there are many things of which
the West can be justly accused - and nevertheless, Winston Churchill was 100% right in his famous statement: "Democracy
is the most horrible system in history - except all the others." And I shall repeat again and again what I wrote to you
many years ago: "WITH ALL ITS FAULTS, THE WEST IS THE BEST SOCIETY THAT EXISTS ON OUR PLANET". The best proof that
can be made in our debate is the fact that in spite of all your anti-Western tirades, you continue to live here and don't
move to Cuba, North Korea, Iran or Gaza! With your idealism (albeit channelled in a wrong direction) and your contempt for
the Western "wealth", the obvious reason, is that, as you admit yourself, "we are all free in the Western world
to think, say and do whatever we fancy (provided, of course, that we don't make trouble for the society we live in)";
that here you can freely and without fear take part in rallies against the local governments' policies, whereas in the
above-mentioned places ... as the old Soviet joke, when an American said: "I can freely shout in front of the White
House: 'Down with Reagan!' " - a Russian replied: "Big deal! I can also freely shout on Red Square: 'Down
with Reagan!' " !
Now
I shall come to the most important point - and to make it clearer, I shall draw a parallel. At the time when the bloody tyrant
Milosevic (who had come to power through rigged elections) was practicing ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians and the terrorist
KLA (whose sole goal was Kosovo's independence, not destruction of Serbia) were killing Serb civilians in Kosovo (only
in Kosovo!), you justly wrote: "Milosevic is a nasty piece of work, the KLA are also a nasty piece of work ... I am convinced
that the cause of the Balkan problems is much more complicated than Milosevic the madman". A little over a year after
those events, in July 2000, the democratic state of Israel offered to Arafat (a professional murderer who had devoted his
entire life to DELIBERATE killings of civilians - Israelis, Lebanese Christians and others - and whose organization's
goal had always been destruction of Israel), 90% of the so-called West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the whole of Gaza
and 3% of the Negev Desert for the purpose of establishing an Arab Palestinian state on those territories. To that unprecedented
offer of compromise for the sake of peace Arafat responded with an antiradar - a new terrorist war against Israeli civilians,
including children, on the territory of Israel in its 1967 (and even 1948) borders. Having come to the conclusion that territorial
concessions to Arafat were only provoking more war, the overwhelming majority of the Israeli people voted for Sharon in the
elections that took place a few months after the Camp David talks (the fairness of those elections has never been questioned
even by Israel's most malicious enemies). Although the Sharon landslide crushed Bark in those elections, he formed a government
of national unity and invited his crushed adversaries from the Labour Party to join it; in particular, the well-known Shimon
Peres became the Foreign Minister in that government. Once formed, the Israeli government of national unity headed by Sharon
started defending its citizens against Palestinian terrorists and NEVER TARGETED A SINGLE PALESTINIAN CIVILIAN in their defensive
operations (although many Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli bullets - not only because civilians inevitably die
in any war, no matter whether they are being targeted or not, but also because Palestinian terrorists were using their own
civilians, including children, as human shields). After all of that, in April of 2002, you declared to me in our last phone
conversation that the West had to remove Sharon from power in order to achieve peace in the Middle East, that Arafat was a
"poor man", whereas Sharon -"a criminal".! Such statements, T, OBJECTIVELY not only exclude the possibility
of the person who pronounces them (or just thinks this way) being my friend, they also make him/her MY ENEMY - mine, as well
as all the Jewish people's; this is a fact of the objective reality, like summer is hot and winter is cold, the sun shines
and stars twinkle. You say that I don't have the flexibility to accept other people's ideas - yes, I do and to a high
degree (all my friends know that), but everything depends on the idea, and indeed, there are ideas which all of us don't
(and shouldn't!) have the flexibility to accept. I can't accept the idea that Haman was a poor man, and Mordechai
a criminal; I can't accept the idea that Hitler was a poor man, and Anelevich, a criminal; nor can I accept the idea that
Arafat was a poor man, whereas Sharon was a criminal. Those who hold such "ideas" are MY AND MY ENTIRE PEOPLE'S
OBJECTIVE ENEMIES.
In
1999, at the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, you refused to believe the Western media and went as far as saying that
"the so-called "democracies" of the West and its media have succeeded in brainwashing the population".
In 2002, you didn't bother to think independently and believed the most obnoxious, the most filthy anti-Israel propaganda
that was being disseminated in some of the Western media! When I suggested to you during that phone conversation of ours that
Israel should be supported, your reaction was : "How can one support Israel when one and a half million people are homeless?!"
You didn't
even bother to think that it wasn't Israel who was keeping those people homeless; that it was the duty of the rulers of
the countries where Palestinian refugees were dwelling in camps to absorb them dozens of years ago, in the same way as Israel
absorbed 800000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran (and in the same way as Arab countries absorbed the 30000
Palestinian refugees whom Kuwaitis threw out for supporting Saddam Hussein when he invaded their country!); that the cynical
and cruel Arab rulers were deliberately keeping generations of their own people in refugee camps in order to have international
pressure exerted in Israel! I can understand those "outsiders" who tend to believe that both sides are equally guilty
in the Arab-Israeli conflict; this is a natural way of perception for those who observe conflicts between other peoples, and
with such people I can certainly have a good and friendly relationship, even though our views differ. I myself don't think
that Israel has never done anything wrong throughout its history: naturally, that would be impossible, since nobody is perfect
and Israelis are also human beings with their faults. But those who support the Arabs in this conflict are MY OBJECTIVE
ENEMIES.
I know that you believe what you're saying when you write about your feeling of love, friendship
and care for me - but those subjective feelings can have different forms and specific meaning in different situations. Needless
to say, the example I'll give you now should in no way be taken as a comparison, but those Christian fanatics who for
thousands of years were persecuting, torturing and massacring my people sincerely believed that they were doing all that out
of their genuine love and care for the Jews in order to save them from the eternal fire in Hell! It is obvious, that you loved
not me but some kind of figment of your own imagination which you identified with me - and which in reality had nothing to
do with me whatsoever. Those who love me love my people and hate its enemies: Arafat's Hamas' and Jihad's gangsters,
Ahmadinejad and his ilk, all those barbarians, two-footed beasts, subhumans, excrements of the human race who, like Nazis
in 1930/40's, while killing Jews, are aiming at the entire Western civilization!
Yes, T, in the end we'll all die and our bodies will
all rot or be cremated - but we'll enter history according to our deeds, words and beliefs (in certain situations, a word
is also a deed - and a very important one.). All the persecutors and butchers of my people from the Pharaohs to Andropov have
already entered history as monsters, whereas all those who helped Jews in hard times are being recognized as heroes and righteous
people. More and more people are realizing now that your fellow leftists who marched in the so-called "peace demonstrations"
during the Cold War were naive puppets of the Evil Empire, whereas Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul the 2nd and their allies
(whatever one may think of the other aspects of their policies) liberated hundreds of millions of victims of Communism and
saved the entire mankind from the red plague. Likewise, all the Arafats, Nasrallas, Hanives, Ahmadinejads and their ilk will
remain in history as monsters; you and your co-thinkers - as their native puppets; whereas Jean Kirkpatrick and Oriana Fallaci,
Nonie Darwish and Brigitte Gabriel - all those wonderful people with brilliant minds and courageous hearts will enter history
and remain for ever as heroes.
AM
YISRAEL KHAY VEKAYANM - THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL LIVE AND WILL LIVE!
Zhenya
(The initial of my addressee's name has been altered)
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The Artist as Citizen : Pianist Evgeny Kissin Speaks Out Against Anti-Semitism
Author:
Ilona Oltuski — Published:
3rd March 2010
Source
"I just felt that it was no longer possible
to remain silent and not protest," world-renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin said about his open letter to BBC Director General Mark Thompson, criticizing the media
giant’s alleged habit of on-air favoritism.
"I don’t know what my letter has accomplished, if anything, but my motivation
to write it came from the dramatic increase of anti-Israel bias and slander in some of the prominent British media in general
and the BBC in particular in the last few years," Mr. Kissin explained to me when I asked him about the reactions to
his outrage relating to a BBC report in December, 2009.
 The report and the arguments that followed had centered on Israel’s alleged harvesting of Palestinian organs and blood
for future transplants, which Kissin regarded as biased reporting. He accused the organization of having lost "its position
of truth and responsibility," the very virtues he, as a young pianist growing up behind the Iron Curtain during the cold
war, had admired and come to regard as a "model of democracy and human rights."
It was a remarkable outcry by the Russian-born pianist,
and – since 2002 – UK citizen, who is not known to be an extrovert, but usually makes headlines by playing sold-out
concerts worldwide.
"Yes,
I do believe it is right to describe my letter as an ‘outcry’, both on a humanistic level and from a Jewish perspective,"
Mr. Kissin said, confirming his position as a defensive opposition against the political tendencies he perceives as injustice.
He further sways political influence on his audience by posting a selection of political books, articles, and transcripts
of selected speeches by renowned intellectuals and writers like George Orwell, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
Joseph Brodsky, Yelena Bonner, Oriana Fallaci, Walid Shoebat, and Salma Abdallah in the library of his fan club’s web site.
 Ever since his debut in the west in 1987, when he performed
Tchaikovsky’s "First Piano Concerto" with the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan at the Berlin
Festival, Kissin - then hailed as a ‘wunderkind’ - has continued to shine in unusually memorable performances,
such as the 1997 first-ever piano-only recital at the BBC proms. Today, 23 years after his Berlin debut, the 39-year-old pianist
still has critics around the world raving about his mastery.
To Read the Full Document : Click Here
Open
letter to the Director General of the BBC
From: Evgeny Kissin
Dear Sir,
I first came to live in this country thirteen years ago and
became a British subject seven years ago, having grown up in the Soviet Union. I was inspired and proud to belong to the country
of Winston Churchill, who famously said "There is no anti-Semitism in England because we do not consider ourselves more
stupid than the Jews". Above all, the BBC and especially its World Service had always been a beacon of light, of truth
and objectivity to those of us behind the Iron Curtain, in the Evil Empire. Reaching out to far corners of the world, it was
the voice of a country which for us was a model of democracy and human rights.
Since a long time now, I receive verified
reports on an almost daily basis of the BBC's slander and bias towards Israel, painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet
anti-Zionist propaganda. This culminated with the BBC's Persian Service's blood libel concerning Israel's alleged
harvesting of Palestinian organs and blood for future transplant. It beggars belief that the British taxpayer should be funding
an organisation which is aligning itself with Iran's despotic leader in its anti-Semitic propaganda.
Other print media, like the Guardian, which erroneously printed
this libel, propagated by Israel's enemies, have since apologized. I am not aware of any such retraction from the BBC.
Is it not high time for
the BBC to return to the values for which is was so much respected before it finds itself in the garbage of history together
with Pravda, TASS, Volkischer Beobachter and Der Angruff?
Yours faithfully,
Evgeny Kissin
Source
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Man Bites Dog in Music . . .
By Jay Nordlinger
Friends, I can’t tell you how unusual this is: A classical musician — a very famous
one — has spoken out on behalf of a very unpopular cause: Israel. For a story, go here. I am speaking of Evgeny
Kissin, the 38-year-old pianist. He was born and raised in the Soviet Union, and in 2002 became a British citizen. He was
a child prodigy. When we first knew him, he played in his red Young Pioneers scarf. He ditched that scarf long ago.
Kissin sent a letter to the BBC — a phenomenally eloquent one — blasting the organization for its "slander
and bias" against Israel. He said that, listening to the BBC, you could hear echoes of "the old Soviet anti-Zionist
propaganda." When he became a British citizen, he explained, he was "inspired and proud to belong to the country
of Winston Churchill," whose contempt for anti-Semitism was total. He quoted a Churchill line: "There is no anti-Semitism
in England because we do not consider ourselves more stupid than the Jews."
A profound comment, to be reflected
on.
Click here to
read full article
Stand for Israel
Blog
We like his tune!
January 8, 2010
Pianist
Evgeny Kissin
It’s no secret
that many believe that the news division of the BBC, the UK’s prestigious broadcasting network, is wildly biased against Israel — sometimes to the point that it lacks credibility.
Unfortunately,
the arts and media industries tend to follow the elite conventional wisdom (which, ever nuanced, goes something like: "Israel
bad") and rarely provides any sort of balance. So we were delighted to hear that Evgeny Kissin, 38, a child prodigy in
his native Russia now widely regarded as one of the greatest living pianists, has accused the BBC of "slander and bias"
against Israel, broadcasting material he describes as "painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda."
Kissin,
who became a British citizen in 2002, said he intends from now on to speak out against media
bias against Israel, which he sees as both fueling and being fueled by anti-Semitism.
H/t: The Jewish Chronicle’s ever-interesting Miriam Shaviv
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for all those who love the genius and extraordinary talent of Evgeny Kissin. This is a non-profit site maintained voluntarily. Photographs/content found herein remain
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