Pollard - A Proms protest with a whiff of Weimar about it

Stephen Pollard
The Telegraph
04 September '11

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/8737692/A-Proms-protest-with-a-whiff-of-Weimar-about-it.html

The demonstration at the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra BBC Proms concert was against Jews, not the Israeli state.

Until Thursday night, nothing in the history of Proms broadcasts had forced a concert off air. Certainly not the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On the very night the tanks moved into Prague, the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was at the Proms with the USSR Symphony Orchestra. And he was performing, with intense poignancy, the Czech composer Dvorak’s cello concerto. I have a cherished recording of the concert. The audience was rapt and not a word was uttered.

When Chinese performers grace the Proms with their presence, there is not a word of protest about their government’s abuses of human rights. Nor should there be. They are musicians, not politicians.

But when the Israel Philharmonic played on Thursday evening, a band of around 30 thugs – none was wearing jackboots, but they should have been – launched into chanting and mock singing, disrupting the concert to such an extent that BBC Radio 3 decided it could not go on with the broadcast.

The corporation has come under attack for pulling the plug. Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP, called it a “disgraceful” decision. But I sympathise with the BBC. Why should a bunch of hooligans be given free rein on the airwaves to have their hooliganism validated with a broadcast? The real story isn’t the broadcast, but the behaviour of the anti-Zionists, which has opened many people’s eyes to their real agenda, and what really drives them.

As the IPO began Webern’s Passacaglia, a dozen people unfurled a banner reading “Free Palestine” and started to sing about “Israeli apartheid” and “violations of international law and human rights”. As the orchestra played over the disruption, the hooligans were removed by security guards. Then, as Gil Shaham, an Israeli violinist, prepared to play an encore after the Bruch violin concerto, another group began shouting and started to scuffle with audience members.

You can see videos of it on YouTube. They will remind you of something. It is inescapable. There is a chilling air to the so-called protests: an air of Weimar Germany, and the way Nazi party members broke up meetings.

(Uploaded by britishisraelc on Sep 1, 2011: The Audience at the Royal Albert Hall 
express their disgust as anti-Israel yobs disrupt Prom 62 featuring the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Yosef)


It shouldn’t need saying that protesting against the actions of the Israeli government is not the same as being anti-Semitic. Clearly not: this month, 250,000 Israelis joined rallies against their government’s economic policies. They could hardly be driven by anti-Semitism.



But Thursday night’s events can only be understood in the context of anti-Semitism. When have there been similar protests against “violations of international law and human rights”, as was chanted on Thursday, by any other country? And this in the middle of the Arab Spring, when genuine protesters for human rights are daily risking their lives in Syria against a murderous dictatorship.

If, indeed, this was a protest against the actions of the Israeli government, rather than against Jews, where have been the similar disruptions of performances by Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Iranian or any number of other nations’ musicians? What about disruptions of British national companies, in protest at British human rights abuses? To pose the question is to answer it. There’s little doubt in my mind that this was an action motivated specifically by the fact that the performers were playing in the national orchestra of the Jewish state.

This should no longer surprise anyone. It seems to me that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) long ago moved from legitimate protest for a legitimate cause – the rights of Palestinians to self-determination – to attacks on Jews for being Jews.

Last month, a St Andrews student was convicted of racially abusing a Jewish postgraduate. Paul Donnachie forced his way into the man’s room, rubbed his own genitals and wiped his hands on an Israeli flag in the room. With another student, Donnachie then jumped on the Jewish postgraduate and urinated into his sink.

Legitimate protest against the Israeli government? That appears to be the view of the PSC, whose director, Sarah Colborne, has attacked the conviction. The Scottish branch of the organisation demonstrated last week in support of Donnachie. No wonder the Board of Deputies, often pilloried within the Jewish community for its spinelessness, says that the PSC’s anti-Israel rhetoric is “infused with anti-Semitism” and its members engage in “racist conspiracy theories”.

In July, Ellie Merton, the chair of Waltham Forest PSC, wrote that Anders Breivik’s massacre in Norway was “an Israeli government-sponsored operation”. The PSC is happy for her to continue in her role.

But it is far from all doom and gloom. The sheriff who tried Donnachie refused to allow the Scottish PSC to turn the trial into another vehicle for its venom and found that the student’s identification with Israel is part of his Jewish identity, so that to attack him on those grounds constituted a racially aggravated offence.

As for the Proms hooligans, there is one big difference from the Weimar audiences. Far from being afraid of the thugs, the Proms audience turned almost as one on them. They chanted “Out, out, out”. As one of the men fought with security guards, a woman can be heard shouting “Shut your mouth”. In fact, their violent, thoroughly illegitimate tactics did nothing but harm to their cause. Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minister, was in the Royal Albert Hall for the concert. As he tweeted on the night: “Demonstrators seem to have turned [the] entire audience pro-Israel.”

Stephen Pollard is editor of 'The Jewish Chronicle’

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