Before we make up our minds about a book, we read it first. In like manner, we see an opera, especially a critically acclaimed one by one of America’s leading composers then we decide. Not before. That’s what we’re expected to do at the very least. But that’s not the way Israel’s fanatic supporters in the United States see it.
The opera in question is “The Death of Klinghoffer” staged against the backdrop of the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 that resulted in the killing by the hijackers, who belonged to the Palestine Liberation Front, of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish passenger in a wheel chair.
On the eve of its premier, the opera aroused incredible passions by Jewish groups, unmatched since the staging of the play, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”, also in New York, in 2006. Their gripe? The opera “glorifies terrorism,” is “inherently anti-Semitic” and its lyrics are “fascist in tone and content.”
Among these groups, to go for the jugular is not new. Any book that is critical of Israel, say like The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2007), by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two highly respected academics, was dismissed as being “Nazi diatribe.” Any film, say like Munich (2005), directed by none other than Stephen Spielberg, who tried to dig into the psyche of Palestinians involved in the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 172, and Israel’s subsequent “targeted killings” of PLO officials suspected of planning the operation, would come under withering assault.
And any play, say like My Name is Rachel Corrie, based on the diaries and e-mails of American activist Rachel Corrie who, acting as a human shield, was killed when she was deliberately ran over by an armored bulldozer operated by Israeli soldiers while she protested the destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza.
The play was first staged in London in April 2005 at the Royal Court Theater — without much ado — and went on to win several prizes. Drama critic of the London Guardian, Michael Billington, considered Britain’s “longest serving theater critic,” said the following in his review: “Theater has no obligation to give a complete picture. Its only duty is to be honest. And what you get here is a stunning account of one woman’s passionate response to a particular situation. And the passion comes blazing through in Corrie’s eloquent reaction to her father’s inquiry about Palestinian violence. As she says, if we lived where tanks and soldiers and bulldozers could destroy our homes at any moment, and where our lives were completely strangled, wouldn’t we defend ourselves as best we could?”
When the play arrived in New York the following year, the pressure by these groups was so intense that the producers decided that it should be “postponed indefinitely.” (It was later staged as a commercial production at the Minetta Theater in the Village.)
Even Jewish productions, by Jewish playwrights, staged at Jewish theaters, intended for Jewish audiences, could trigger the ire of these folks.
Consider what happened to the Admission, a play by Israeli dramatist Motto Lerner that was to be presented by Theater J at the DC Jewish Community Center in Washington last year. The Admission is Lerner’s fictionalized story, based on true historical events, of the killing of Palestinian villagers by Israeli soldiers during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. After strenuous, and quite vociferous, objections were raised by an ad-hoc group called Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art, Theater J scaled back plans for the production, downgrading it from a full run, 34-performance presentation to a “workshop” running 16 performances, and adding as a counterweight the saccharine play Golda’s Balcony, about the life of the Israeli prime minister.
And so it goes. Meanwhile, back in New York, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said that he “received threats” related to the production of The death of Klinghoffer.
“Although it deals with an act of terrorism, the opera is neither anti-Semitic nor a glorification of terrorism, which is what the organizers of the campaign to suppress it, would like people to falsely believe.”
The New York Times theater critic, Anthony Tomasini described it as a “raw, brooding work that in its brutal honesty provides a kind of tragic consolation.”
That did no mollify the protesters, who may be protesting in the street but they are not off the street. One of their leaders, Jeffery S. Wisenfeld, a trustee of the City University of New York, was quoted by the Times as hollering at one of their rallies, addressing the Met’s general manager: “Peter Gelb, before we are finished, we are going to be back here, everyone here and many, many more, every night of the Klinghoffer opera until the set is burned to the ground. You spent millions of dollars on that set to promote an opera, which celebrates terrorists and celebrates anti-Semitism. You will be made to destroy that set.”
Those are the lunatic extremes these fanatics would go to, and the raw passions they are willing to display, in order to prevent anything they deem critical of Israel from being expressed anywhere in the US.
