60 Minutes - 8/19/2018: War Crime, Saving a Generation, Second Act

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

Last year -- civilians in Syria were victims of a deadly gas attack -- prompting a 59-missile response from the United States. A rare video of the attack recently surfaced. Scott Pelley reports. Throughout the country -- young children are being put into the custody of their grandparents -- because their parents fell victim to opioids. Bill Whitaker reports. Holly Williams sits down with famed pianist and conductor Daniel Barenborn -- as he takes the stage for the second act of his career. Those stories on tonight's "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over seven years of civil war, the Syrian government has repeatedly bombed its own civilians, as we see here outside Damascus. Incredibly, it has also continued to use chemical weapons on civilians, not just a few times, but reportedly 200 times. And tonight in our story, you will see the awful proof. We have the big crater. Siren was released. Around 100 people were killed.

More than 200 people were affected, mainly children and women. Who's using the siren? Only the Syrian government. More than one million American children now live with their grandparents, primarily because of their parents' addiction to opioids and other drugs. Grandparents are putting off retirement and plowing through savings to rescue their grandchildren from dangerous situations. We can't not do it.

They're our grandkids. They're our family. Of all the orchestras Daniel Barenboim leads around the world, this might be the one that moves him the most. Is it surprising that if you bring very good Arab musicians and very good Israeli musicians together, that they play together, they make music? Of course it is surprising because from their education and where they come from, they are taught that others are monsters. I'm Steve Croft.

I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Holly Williams. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4.

New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has committed just about every war crime under international law. His worst atrocities involve banned chemical weapons. This past February, we brought you this story about one of those massacres. It is hard to watch, and it's not for small children. But the story is important to see because chemical assaults have now become routine in Syria, with 200 reportedly occurring over seven years. In November,

Syria's ally, Russia, shut down the United Nations investigation into who was responsible. But our investigation continued. We found a number of witnesses to a nerve gas attack that happened on April 4th, 2017. We'll begin with video from that deadly morning. The images were shot by a Syrian civil defense volunteer. So many victims fell at once. First responders used fire hoses to wash them. There was a chance, a small one, that stripping contaminated clothes and dousing the skin might save a life.

These are the people of a small farming town called Khan Sheikhoun. They fell after a warplane dropped a bomb nearby. They're civilians. There's no military target here. But the village does lie in territory held by rebels fighting against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. What is striking is the number of children. Inhaling just a hint of the gas overwhelmed their nervous systems. All of their nerves fired at the same time. Muscles seized and paralyzed lungs left their last breath stuck in their throats.

The civil defense worker with the camera is repeating the name of the village, Khan Sheikhoun, Khan Sheikhoun, as though he feared the atrocity itself might be washed away and forgotten. Very early in the morning, between 6.30 and 7 o'clock in the morning, on the 4th of April, airplanes were flying around and over Khan Sheikhoun. Edmund Millett led the investigation of chemical attacks in Syria for the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. We have these airplanes flying, these bombs launched.

More than 100 people were killed, more than 200 people were affected, mainly children and women. The emergency response was coordinated by the famed White Helmets, civil defense volunteers supervised by Mustafa Al-haj Yusuf. Some people were fainting, he told us, completely unconscious. There were cases of trembling and convulsions, foam coming out of the respiratory tract and mouth. Some people appeared to be already dead.

He counted the bodies of more than 30 children. There were young children, he told us. I was treating them, but it was already over. The doctor who was with us there said, leave them, they're dead. Young children,

three months, four months, five months, some two years old. The day before the attack, warplanes bombed local hospitals, ensuring a longer trip to medical care. White helmet volunteers loaded those still gasping onto a truck with 30 miles to go to reach one of the nearest surviving hospitals where Dr. Abdulhai Tanari was working. There were patients who had lost consciousness, he told us. Patients suffering from shortness of breath, people were doing CPR. There were many children, women, the elderly, every age. From the very first minute we were

positive that the gas that was used was sarin. Sarin nerve gas was invented in a Nazi program. In 1997, sarin and other chemical weapons were banned by international law. Tell me about some of the patients from that day that are still in your mind. The case that affected me the most was one where there were two girls who were five and six years old, Dr. Tanari said. They seemed to be sisters. They were brought to the hospital, and I started doing CPR right away, but it was clear that the two girls had died hours ago.

Dr. Mamoun Murad told us, a boy arrived gasping for breath with foam coming out of his mouth and with pinpoint pupils. We washed the boy. We washed and we washed and we washed. We gave him what treatment we could and tried to resuscitate him, but he didn't make it. Weren't you concerned about being exposed yourself? The situation is more desperate than I can describe, he said. There are no words. It was like Judgment Day, the apocalypse. You just can't even describe the scene, can't even begin to scratch the surface of explaining

what happened. We didn't have any protective equipment for gas. You're feeling the effects of this even now. Yes, my voice, he said. Do you hear my voice? The Khan Sheikhoun attack drew immediate retaliation from the Trump administration, which fired 59 cruise missiles into a Syrian airbase. But only hours later, according to doctors and witnesses,

the Syrian dictatorship dropped another banned chemical weapon, a chlorine bomb. The worst of the chemical attacks came in 2013, when 1,400 civilians were killed by sarin near Damascus. In response, the U.S. and Russia pressed Syria to hand over its chemical weapons. 1,400 tons of poisons were destroyed. So the attack on Khan Sheikhoun should not have been possible. The head of the U.N. investigation, Edmund Millett, told us the Syrians had an explanation. The Syrians have been claiming since the very beginning that this incident in Khan Sheikhoun was staged.

It was something that was created by the opposition, by the rebels, by the terrorists, in order to blame the Syrian government. They claimed that the bomb that created the crater was an IED, an improvised explosive device that was placed on the surface of the road, of the asphalt. That morning, the IED contained sarin, and that's how it was released, but it did not come from an aerial bomb. Evidence at Khan Sheikhoun was gathered by the White Helmets. Chemical attacks have become so common that advanced equipment and training are being provided

by an international charity called Mayday Rescue. We collected samples from the body of the missile and a soil sample, Mohamed Keal told us. We also took a sample from the clothes of the affected, as well as animal samples, a cat, a pigeon. We took hair as well. And the samples were all positive for sarin. Why was it so important to you to document what happened in the village? Our job is to be humanitarians, he said.

The goal of the strike was to target civilians. It didn't target fighters on the front. We must document a chemical strike such as this one so we can show the entire world. We spoke to the UN's Edmund Millett about three hours before he lost his job. This meeting of the Security Council is called to order. Russia, the Syrian dictatorship's chief ally, ended Millett's investigation with a veto in the Security Council. Russia called his investigation's results very disappointing. Who's using the sarin?

Only the Syrian government. How do you know that? Well, the investigations we have conducted have proven that the sarin that has been used in Syria has come from the original stockpile that was produced and created and distilled by the Syrian government some years ago. We have been able to determine and compare what has been used in the field recently in Syria with the original stockpile, and they match completely. Does anyone else in that theater of war possess sarin gas, to your knowledge? No, no, nobody else, because it's so difficult to produce. You need very sophisticated and big laboratories to do that.

The manipulation of the sarin is extremely complicated. It's extremely volatile. One single drop here right now would be killing everybody in the studio immediately. So it's not anybody that can do that. One question not answered by the U.N. investigation was, why? Why resort to a war crime? To find out, we traveled into the province where Khan Sheikhoun is located, Idlib province, largely controlled by an Islamic extremist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Here we found the dictatorship had used conventional bombs against hospitals and schools, in addition to the nerve gas in the neighborhoods. So what's the point of using the world's most grotesque weapon on civilians, on children? This is a refugee camp in rebel-occupied territory inside Syria, and there are hundreds of them. They dot the landscape. Millions of Syrians have been forced from their homes. The Assad dictatorship is essentially clearing out any part of the country that it cannot control. Bombing the hospitals kills the here and now. Bombing the schools kills the future. And dropping sarin suffocates whatever might have been left of hope. We found Abu Hassan in a refugee camp with his family, at least what remained of his family. He lost two adult sons and a grandson in the gas at Khan Sheikhoun.

My son, he told us, they brought him to a hospital in Turkey and he died. His brother, who came to rescue us, well, he got dizzy, collapsed, and he died. My grandson also died. His wife, Umm Hassan, told us, My sons were young and these are their children. What was the fault of these children to live without a father? What was their fault? How do you explain this to these children?

What can we tell them, she said. This one was injured with us. I told one, your father is dead. He said, don't tell me dad is dead. Don't say that dad is dead but what can we tell them how can they understand we have a neighbor poor woman her children her grandchildren all 12 in the house died not a single one. This is a crime against humanity, using chemical weapons.

If we allow this to happen in Syria, this might happen somewhere else. And if impunity prevails and people can carry out doing these things without any consequences, this might give ideas to others. And I've said this to the Russians. This will happen in many of your own republics in the future if you don't help to put an end to this right now. But impunity does prevail. Bashar al-Assad will soon win the war. He may remain president or step down in the course of negotiations, but either way, victors never face judgment. Still, even without a war crimes trial, the evidence will remain indelible. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

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Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck.

Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The growing opioid crisis has been declared a public health emergency. It sparked a parallel crisis you rarely hear about, the impact on children neglected by addicted parents. More than one million American children now live with grandparents, primarily because of their parents' addiction to opioids and other drugs, crack, heroin, meth, and alcohol. As we first reported in May, grandparents are putting off retirement and plowing through savings to rescue their grandchildren from dangerous situations. To see how widespread this is, we went to one of the healthiest states in the country, Utah.

Tonight, we'll reintroduce you to a few families around Salt Lake City we went to one of the healthiest states in the country, Utah. Tonight, we'll reintroduce you to a few families around Salt Lake City and meet children raised in the wreckage of the opioid crisis getting a chance at a normal life. Nine-year-old Cheyenne Nunn and her seven-year-old sister Lila have never been happier. Until recently, they lived with their mom and her boyfriend. The couple, addicted to heroin or meth or both, says the girl's grandmother, Cheryl Nunn. To see Cheyenne and Lila now secure in their grandmother's home outside Salt Lake City,

it's hard to believe they once moved from home to home to homeless. You remember being homeless? A little. Where would you go? Under trees. Like camping? Yeah. The times they did have a roof over their heads, they didn't have much else. Did you have enough food? Sometimes, but not always. I hid it under my bed. What would you hide? Top ramen, something easy to cook. How old were you? Five, six.

How did you know to step up and take care of your little sister and cook? I knew that she needed it. So I decided to be what something I'm not. and take care of your little sister and cook? I knew that she needed it. So I decided to be what something I'm not. Which is? A grown-up. You decided to be a grown-up. Yeah, I tried to be a grown-up for Lila. Because of her daughter's drug addictions,

Cheryl told us she knew her granddaughters were in danger. To keep track of them and to prove in court her daughter was exposing them to drug dens and dealers, Cheryl gave her daughter a van with a hidden tracking device. It would record on Excel spreadsheets her going from meth house to meth house to meth house. Cheryl said her granddaughters were in that van. She knew she had to save them from her own daughter. Well, the grandchildren are young and innocent. They are basically captives of a parent. Someone has to look out after them, and that person had to be me. After providing tracking records of her daughter's drug-filled nights,

a judge named Cheryl, guardian of Cheyenne and Lila. Can you forgive your mom? Not until she gives it up. Do you think she's going to stop using the drugs? No. Cheyenne and Lila haven't seen their mom in more than a year. Well, I'm not really happy about it, but I know that I have another mom right here. Down the road in Salt Lake City, Alexia Ansley told us she too had to step up to be a parent for her younger brother and sisters as their mother spiraled down into drug and alcohol addictions. She was never there.

If we wanted to get food, we had to get it ourselves. I think she forgot she had kids some of the time. So you took care of them? I would change their diapers. I would feed them, feed them baby food. When you first started stepping in to be the mom, how old were you? Younger than 10. When their mother was around, Alexia said she'd take the kids on excursions to pilfer in the neighborhood. If we saw somebody with this big giant snow globe and snowman, we'd go over there, unplug it, deflate it, put it in the wagon.

We would take things. Would you actually go up on people's porches? If they had something on their porch, yeah. Your mom would go sell these things? Yeah, she'd sell them, and then she'd go buy drugs. And if she had any money left, she would buy us candy for helping her or she'd steal us candy. And we're kids. Candy's everything. When Alexia filled in as mom, she managed to give her younger siblings candy thanks to a sympathetic shopkeeper. Sometimes I would gather up some couch change

and when I tried buying them a candy and the guy at the register would let us take the candy if I didn't have enough change. He knew. I heard about couch hopping. What was that? So we were homeless at a point in time. We would go to my mom's friend's house, just some of her random friends, and we would sleep on their couch for a couple of days. And then once they kicked us out, we'd go to another couch. We mostly stayed at crack houses and just slept on their couches. Couch hopping ended five years ago

when the children were legally taken in by their mom's mother, Beth. Alexia is now 16. Brayden is 13. Mackenzie, 11. And Ember, 8. All pitch in at grandmom's house. It's now home. What's better about living with grand Grandma than living with your mother?

We get regular food, and we get, like, nice clothing. We have stuffed animals. We don't have a bathroom filled with dirty clothes up like a mountain. And we always know that we're going to have a decent meal that will fill us up so we're not sleeping hungry. Mackenzie, I heard that you would sleep on the stairs. Yeah, because so my mom, she would like leave in the middle of the night and go who knows where and then not come back for sometimes it would be a couple days.

I thought that maybe if I slept on the stairs, she would be scared to step on me, and so she wouldn't leave. Did that work? Sometimes. Sometimes she would skip that step, and she would still go out. Some nights, their grandmother Beth would secretly park down the street from where her daughter and grandchildren were staying at the time to keep watch all night. It always made me feel safer that she was out there because we knew that if anything were to happen, we could like get a hold of her really quickly. She's like your guardian angel. Yeah. Being a guardian angel has taken a toll. Beth told us she has wiped out her savings. Alexia got a job to help with the bills.

And sometimes I can't pay my electric bill and I'll have to wait. And I go to the food bank a lot. You know, if I buy them things that are used, I wash them and put them in a box and give them to them. And they've never, they don't complain. What has your grandmother had to sacrifice to take care of you guys? Dating. She says it all the time. All the time.

I haven't dated in years. She's had to sacrifice almost everything. She had to change the whole way that she lived because our mom decided to do drugs. In Salt Lake City, home of the Mormon church, finding a beer used to be a challenge. Now, drug use is out in the open. Stoked by the opioid crisis, 21,000 children just in Utah live with their grandparents. Everyone tell me your names. Bacall Hinks runs a non-profit organization called Grand Families

that helps grandparents and grandchildren adjust to new family arrangements. There's a growing demand for its services because of the opioid crisis. Unfortunately, opioids is a very hard addiction to overcome. So the likelihood of these parents actually overcoming their addictions and coming home and being able to parent is very low. Hinks introduced us to the families we interviewed. She told us, like Alexia and Cheyenne, young children of addicts often assume the role of parent. I'm what we call parentified.

Parentified. Yeah. How do you deal with that? I do my best to help them feel like a child again. And Grandma and Grandpa are there to take care of them now, and they don't need to worry about the safety of their siblings because that's someone else's job. That's the adult's job.

I like myself because of me. Grandfamilies has separate groups for young children, older children, and grandparents and brings the generations together for holiday parties. Bacall Hinks said it's important for them to see many others are in the same boat. They're able to connect with others who are in similar situations and have friends and don't feel so isolated and alone anymore. We found people that went through the same type of thing and it was really helpful to actually express what was happening to us

and they could relate to what was happening. Ellie Kligman, her brothers and grandparents were all aided by grandfamilies. The kids moved in with their mom's parents after their family fell apart. First, their dad abandoned them. Then, they say, their mom descended into opioid addiction and they ended up homeless. One day, the school bus left them at a stop at this gas station. Their mother never came to pick them up. Eliana called and said Grammy were sitting here waiting and you know my mom

hasn't come. Cindy sent their grandfather Michael to bring the kids home. They both thought they'd only have them a few days. And then a few days turned into a few weeks, and a few weeks turned into months, and here we are. How many years now? Two and a half, almost three. Two and a half, almost three. Had you been planning for retirement? Yes, we were going to do tiny house, simplify life, and then travel.

As it worked out, it didn't work out that way. We became parents instead of grandparents. The kids said with their mother often sleeping or out of the house they could do whatever they wanted but their grandparents insist on rules. It sucks having girls and chores but it has to happen for us to actually grow up and be a responsible adult and take charge of our lives. Michael, you are fighting cancer. That's true. I have a terminal cancer.

So has this been especially tough on you? Yeah. I have good days and bad days. I worry that I'll miss something. And it's Karen I have. You do well. They say being parents again has strained his health, their marriage, and their bank account. So what has this done to your savings? Yeah. I work full-time and then two part-time jobs.

Their daughter, they told us, has been in rehab. This isn't the retirement they had expected, but... But we can't not do it. They're our grandkids. They're our family. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more accomplished musician than Daniel Barenboim, a celebrated conductor and distinguished concert pianist who grew up in Israel and for the last seven decades has been performing with the great orchestras of the world. For many maestros, all that would be enough.

Not for Barenboim. At 75, he's still at it and he's embarked on a second act, starting his own orchestra for young musicians from Israel and the Muslim world, and taking on a subject that's as contentious as it gets, the conflict in the Middle East. His work has earned him Palestinian citizenship and charges of treachery from some of his fellow Israelis.

But as we first told you this spring, controversy hasn't slowed Barenboim down. He seems to thrive on it. Of all the orchestras Daniel Barenboim leads around the world, this might be the one that moves him the most. Some of the young musicians on stage at this summer concert in Berlin are Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian. Others are Israelis, all playing in perfect harmony. Even as their governments threaten to destroy one another. It's called the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. MUSIC

Is it surprising, really, that if you bring very good Arab musicians and very good Israeli musicians together, that they play together, they make music. Of course it is surprising because from their education and where they come from, they are taught the other is a monster. It was an idea he hatched 20 years ago with his friend, the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said, to find young musicians from across the Middle East, bringing them together for two months out

of the year and giving them an opportunity to play on the world's most prestigious stages. Some of the musicians here risk punishment from their governments for performing with Israelis. Others are living in exile. Nadeem Husni is a violist from Damascus, Syria. He hasn't been back to see his parents for eight years. Whenever my phone rings, you know, I'm every day waiting for some bad news about my parents. I have no idea who is calling and why. That's because swaths of his country have been levelled in a seven-year civil war.

Israel still remains Syria's greatest foreign enemy. Had you ever met an Israeli before that? No, no, no, no, never. I had no idea what to expect, how to talk to these people, you understand. They were just foreign creatures. Coming face to face with the enemy is the whole point of the divan. You play... But Baron Boehm has no illusions about what he can accomplish.

The orchestra has been very often described as an orchestra for peace. Of course, it isn't an orchestra for peace. This orchestra is not going to bring peace. Then why do it? Because in the orchestra we have equality. So when you create a situation in which there is a Palestinian clarinet player who has a difficult solo, and you have the whole orchestra wishing him well and accompanying him.

It's the only place where a group that includes so many Israelis wishes the Palestinians well, and vice versa. Except, of course, the Middle East is not an orchestra. People there are not musical instruments, they're not even musicians, and there is no conductor there to tell them what to do. I know, I know. But I'm a conductor, I'm not a politician. I'm a conductor and therefore I do what I feel I can do. There's not much Baron Boehm hasn't done in the 70 years since he made his concert debut as a child prodigy in Argentina.

At the age of 10, his family moved to Israel, and soon after, he started conducting. He's been classical music royalty ever since. When 60 Minutes first met Daniel Barenboim 20 years ago, correspondent Bob Simon found that he was a maestro in perpetual motion. I've been following you around for almost a week now. I'm exhausted. Yeah, you look tired, yeah.

And anyone who spends a week with Daniel Barenboim will discover that he's not only a musical genius, but a 56-year-old child. At 75, this older Barenboim is a more sober character than he used to be, more political. He's still giving recitals as a concert pianist, and he has his day job as music director of the State Opera in Berlin. But recently he also opened the Barenboim Said Academy,

a conservatory built in this redesigned warehouse in downtown Berlin, which, just like his orchestra, the Divan, brings together students from Israel and across the Middle East. Violist Sajra Fayaz studies at the academy and plays in the Divan. He's from Iran, a sworn enemy of Israel. As a kid, he grew up buying black market videos of Baron Boehm's concerts. And then we watched them until we know every gesture by heart. So when we have them, we are so happy,

because it's even not in our imagination that someday, actually, we're going to meet them. We cannot even see them in concert. And so you grew up in Iran Iran watching DVDs and videos of Daniel Barenboim, an Israeli conductor. Yes, sure. We don't even know that he's Israeli. It's all about the music. They are accomplished young musicians who get to practice and perform in a new concert hall designed by architect Frank Gehry. But the music is only part of what Baron Boehm wants them to learn here.

Do they also discuss politics? Do they argue with each other? Oh yes, all the time. All the time. And I don't expect them to agree on the politics. I expect them to agree on the music. Are there also love affairs? Do some of the Israeli players... I'm not supposed to know about that. I'm sure you do, though. Does it happen? It must be very exciting

to fall in love with the enemy. You should try it maybe one day. There's chemistry in the rehearsal rooms, too. Just listen to this ensemble. That's Sadra, the Iranian violist, a Palestinian violinist and an Israeli on clarinet, Miri Sadon. What's it like as a musician, as an Israeli musician, playing alongside Arab musicians or Iranian musicians?

I mean, sometimes I have this moment of like, oh, my God, we are Palestinian and Iranian and me. Just sometimes I remember that, you know, each of us is from such a different background, but we are actually in a lot of things very similar. Last summer, Baron Boym took us to a fault line in the Middle East conflict, the Palestinian city of Ramallah on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he has another musical project.

It's just a few miles from Jerusalem, but sealed off behind a long security wall that snakes its way across the Palestinian countryside. The occupation is horrific for the Palestinians, but it's not good for Israel. Those can be provocative words in Israel, but Barenboim goes even further. After years trying to build bridges here,

he says the wall only serves to deceive. I mean, this makes many Israelis feel safe in their own homes. But they're not. They're not. So it's a lie? I wouldn't say it's a lie. It's a make-believe. It's a make-believe. Israel will kids from cities, towns and villages in the West Bank Many of them wouldn't normally have access to classical music It's a demanding program. Always the same mistake. Which brings in professional

musicians from all over Europe to teach around 100 kids. Natalie's 9 and Sona's 11. They've been studying here for more than two years. What's your favourite piece of music to play? In the Hall of the Mountain King. In the Hall of the Mountain King. What does it make you think of? Does it sound a bit sort of magical, like it's from a faraway place? Yeah.

For many of the kids in the Ramallah school, that's exactly where music takes them, to a faraway place. Katia is a 17-year-old Palestinian. She's been studying for 10 years and practices three to four hours a day. How do you feel when you pick up your violin and start playing? I feel relaxed. I feel like I'm safe now and I can do whatever I want. I think music takes me into another world and I can do whatever I want there with no one controlling me. But not even a conservatory

for children is immune to the rancor of this region, especially when someone like Barenboim is involved. There are some Palestinians who object to it simply because you are an Israeli. Yeah, and they call this normalization. In other words, we Palestinians suffer under Israeli occupation, and therefore we were in no contact with Israelis. I mean, on the other side, there are Israelis who say, why are you devoting your time and resources to the Palestinians? But maybe those Israelis and those Palestinians should get together. I think I have more or less equal proportion of admirers and detractors, both in Israel and in Palestine. So something of what I do must be right. Perhaps, but when Baron Boehm accepted Palestinian citizenship ten years ago, some Israelis considered it treachery.

It sounds as if you quite enjoy angering people. No. You quite enjoy being controversial. Not at all. Not at all. I couldn't care less. I do really... I have... If I am happy about something, it's that I have arrived at the stage

where I can do what I feel is right. The kids in Ramallah rarely have the opportunity to play for Baron Boehm in person. Some of the younger ones weren't even totally sure who he was. But Baron Boehm demanded as much from these minor maestros in the making as he would from any other musician who shares his stage. You can't play ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta because you have to play another down bow.

For some of the older ones, there was an even bigger opportunity. Baron Boehm had flown in members of the Divan Orchestra to perform alongside the kids and their teachers. Parents, grandparents and local dignitaries turned out for a rare event in Ramallah, a classical concert featuring their very own, taking the stage with a legend. Baron Boym couldn't pass up an opportunity to speak his mind. Jewish blood runs through my veins and my heart bleeds for the Palestinian cause.

But the night belonged to the kids and to the music, Mozart, which spoke for itself.