The trivialization of terror and terrorists, the Met and where it's taking us

...We were going to offer some words of condemnation of the chain of decisions that led to the show going on. But they are already all over the web today. Instead, we want to point out how the trivialization of terror and terrorists works and where it takes us.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
21 October '14..

The New York Metropolitan Opera, in a co-production with the English National Opera, began a run of John Adams' 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer last night in Manhattan with a standing ovation and mixed reviews. Death is an artistic interpretation of the actual murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jew of 69, confined to a wheelchair, who took a cruise with his wife in 1985 on the Achille Lauro in celebration of their wedding anniversary. Armed Palestinian Arab terrorists in the service of the Palestine Liberation Organization hijacked the ship as it sailed between Alexandria and Port Said, Egypt. In pursuit of their Palestinian liberation, the Arabs shot the disabled Jew at point blank range in the forehead and chest, and then hurled the body, along with the wheelchair, into the Mediterranean. Wikipedia provides a summary of the opera's culturally-uplifting contents, entertaining narrative and delightful musical innovations.

Five years after Klinghoffer's murder, Mahmoud Abbas who succeeded Yasser Arafat as head of the PLO, explained that

the seizing of the cruise ship in 1985 was a mistake, and apologized for the killing of disabled U.S. passenger Klinghoffer. [CNN, April 24, 1996]

The US State Department rejected the Abbas statement.

An angry crowd, mainly of Jews, assembled outside the performance's opening last night at the Lincoln Center in New York City, holding placards and chanting messages reflecting fury at the glorification of terrorists and the trivialization of the murder of a helpless man. The late Mr Klinghoffer's children joined their voices to those of the protesters decrying the cruel and cynical exploitation of their father's murder.

This surprised the man who wrote it who offered this rather disingenuous comment to an interviewer:

“I expected there would be some pushback,” Mr. Adams said by phone recently. “But to see posters saying the opera is pro-terrorist, it’s really kind of shocking.” ["An Opera Under Fire", New York Times, October 16, 2014]

So lots of shock to go round. But really he's not that shocked. The opera has attracted criticism from the outset, most particularly because of the way it normalizes terrorists and attempts to understand them better. Or in the words of Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer, the way its creator "rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes" their father's killing. The show runs, by the way, until November 15.

There's a great deal of silliness on display about the protests (from this twit, for instance), much of it revealing something we learned to our sorrow more than a decade ago: most people (by far) fail completely to comprehend (a) how terror differs from other forms of sociopathic behaviour and (b) how real the danger that it constitutes is to their own lives.

(Continue) 

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Squandering humanity’s greatest treasure at the Metropolitan Opera

...We might someday be able to forgive the Met for decriminalizing brutality, but we will never forgive it for poisoning our music, for turning our best violins and our iconic concert halls into megaphones for excusing evil.

Leon Klinghoffer, 1916-1985

New York Times..
Opinion Page/Letters to the Editor..
22 September '14
H/T Israel Matzav




To the Editor:

Re “The Met Opera Stands Firm” (editorial, Sept. 20):

In joining protesters of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” I echo the silenced voice of our son, Daniel Pearl, and the silenced voices of other victims of terror who were murdered, maimed or left heartbroken by the new menace of our generation, a savagery that the Met has decided to elevate to a normative, two-sided status worthy of artistic expression.

We are told that the composer tried to understand the hijackers, their motivations and their grievances.

I submit that there has never been a crime in human history lacking grievance and motivation. The 9/11 lunatics had profound motivations, and the murderers of our son, Daniel Pearl, had very compelling “grievances.”

In the last few weeks we have seen with our own eyes that Hamas and the Islamic State have grievances, too. There is nothing more enticing to a would-be terrorist than the prospect of broadcasting his “grievances” in Lincoln Center, the icon of American culture.

Yet civilized society has learned to protect itself by codifying right from wrong, separating the holy from the profane, distinguishing that which deserves the sound of orchestras from that which commands our unconditional revulsion. The Met has trashed this distinction and thus betrayed its contract with society.

Israeli Media, the Met and the Murder of Leon Klinghoffer

...Attempts to rewrite history are ubiquitous, but here arguably the most important opera house in the world is participating in this anti-Semitic distortion...At the end of the day, though, perhaps we should thank the Met. Its actions serve as another warning bell to all as to what we should be doing to defend our country and our people.

Eli Pollak/Yisrael Medad..
Media Comment/JPost..
25 June '14..

On May 30, 2014, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), informed us of a rather disturbing story – disturbing, that is, for anyone who worries about the resurrection of blatant anti-Semitism.

It was based on an open letter published on the JNS website written by Myron Kaplan, a CAMERA senior research analyst.

The Achille Lauro, a Greek cruise ship, was hijacked on October 7, 1985, by terrorists, members of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Reem al-Nimer, widow of PLF leader Muhammed Zaidan, testified in 2013 that the hijacking was planned 11 months in advance. The goal was to hijack the ship, run it to Ashdod port and then kill Israelis.

Surprised by a crew member, the terrorists were forced to alter their plans. They then set out for Syria, demanding the release of 50 Arab terrorists held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the hostages held on the Achille Lauro. The Syrians did not allow them to take refuge in the Syrian harbor in Tartus. The hijackers then murdered an American citizen: wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer.

He was shot twice and the ship’s crew were forced to throw the body and the wheelchair overboard.

The PLO’s Faruq Qadummi denied responsibility and claimed that Klinghoffer’s widow, Marilyn, killed her husband in order to collect life insurance payments. It took over 10 years until Muhammad Zaidan, who eventually died in 2003 in American custody, finally admitted responsibility and the PLO reached a financial settlement with the family.

But this is only the background to our “story.”

In 1991, the librettist Alice Goodman, together with musician John Adams, created an opera titled The Death of Klinghoffer. It was backed by theater director Peter Sellars and choreographer Mark Morris. One of its five commissioners was the Brooklyn Academy of Music. John Rockwell, in a special report to The New York Times on March 21, 1991, gave it a rather positive review, predicting that the opera might reach greatness.

Indeed, the opera has finally reached the world scene. The New York Metropolitan Opera decided to present it to the public, not only as an opera at the Met but also to simulcast it in high definition to over 2,000 locations in 66 countries, all over the world.

So, what is so disturbing? The title of the Opera already says it all – the “death” of Klinghoffer. He did not “die,” he was murdered in cold blood. Adams’ libretto portrays the terrorists in a positive light, as idealistic freedom fighters. The opera includes blatant anti-Semitic statements as detailed by the Zionist Organization of America on its website.

It is an inglorious attempt to rewrite history, portraying the “bad guys” as the “good guys.”

A few more operas you won't be seeing at the Met

...That's why I'll wager that someone—perhaps John Adams, the composer of Klinghoffer—will come up with an opera that humanizes the Hamas kidnappers of the three Israeli teenagers (Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frankel, and Gilad Shaar) way before the topic suggestions I've outlined above even get considered. For when all is said and done, "The Death of Klinghoffer" is an opera for those who live in an echo chamber that shuts out any dissenting views.

Ben Cohen..
Pundicity/JNS/The Algemeiner..
23 June '14..




Here are three operas that won't get staged at the famed Metropolitan Opera (Met) in New York City anytime soon.

"Omar." The story of a young Iraqi man who was beaten and tortured by Saddam Hussein's secret police. Omar's experience, relayed in the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya's superlative book "Cruelty and Silence," exposes a world in which, as the lead character says, "Words can kill. Words are what got us in the end, not anything we did."

"A Persian Grandmother in Tokyo." Based on a short memoir published by a young Iranian writer in a collection entitled "Arab Spring Dreams," the opera relates the story of an Iranian family reunited in Tokyo, a city that provokes the grandmother to observe ironically, "these infidels have created their own heaven on earth."

"The Last Days of Hugo Chavez." Set in Havana, where the late Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez died of cancer, the opera focuses upon the exploitation of Venezuela's natural resources by the Cuban regime through its depiction of the relationship between Chavez and the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul.

These operas aren't coming to the stage of the Met, or any other prestigious venue, because, so far as I know, they haven't been composed. And even if they had been, who would dare stage them? Wouldn't liberal sensibilities be offended by a reminder of the grotesque violence inflicted by Saddam's regime, given that the Iraqi dictator was removed by the hated George W. Bush? Wouldn't efforts to lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba be compromised by a portrait of the dirty dealings of the Castro brothers? Wouldn't an opera that tackles the sensitive subjects of Islamism and Muslim identity result in the kinds of angry demonstrations brought about by the publication, in Denmark, of the infamous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad?

In any case, why is there a need for operas like these? After all, there already is an opera—"The Death of Klinghoffer"—which engages subjects like ethnic identity, terrorism, and the struggle of the voiceless to find a voice. Moreover, it does so on a terrain that is comfortingly familiar to the bearers of liberal angst in our time: that of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.

As readers doubtless know, "Klinghoffer," an opera that was first introduced to a New York audience in 1991, will enjoy yet another outing, courtesy of the Met. Most of the arguments around the opera now surfacing are, in fact, far from new. There is the accusation of anti-Semitism – shrugged off, as usual, by partisans of the work—in the way that American Jews are portrayed. There is also the misleading title—to speak of the "death" of Klinghoffer overlooks the unfortunate fact that this elderly Jewish man, a passenger on board the Achille Lauro cruise ship seized by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, was actually murdered, by dint of his being shot and then thrown overboard while in his wheelchair.

But few have asked the critical question: why does the art world, like so much of the media and human rights community, default to the Palestinians when it comes to exploring the overarching moral issues facing our civilization? What is it that gives the Palestinians unrivaled authenticity when it comes to such febrile issues as statelessness and terrorism?

When fighting terror is an outrage

Soccer Dad
24 February '10

After the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the United States attempted to capture the terrorist responsible by forcing the plane they were on to land on an American-Italian base in Sicily. However, Italy and Egypt were outraged and Italy refused to extradite the terrorists.

Jack Ohman the cartoonist for the Oregonian brillaintly captured the hypocrisy of the anger directed at the Reagan administration for trying to bring the killers to justice. His cartoon showed pictures of Hosni Mubarak, Bettino Craxi and Yasser Arafat; under each picture there was a caption: "Mr. Mubarak demands an apology"; "Mr. Craxi demands an apology"; "Mr. Arafat demands an apology."

On the right of the panel was a wheelchair draped with an American flag. The caption was "Mr. Klinghoffer has no demands."

For the all the outrage the three politicians expressed, there was no remorse that they had played a role in allowing terrorists to kill or escape. Things have not changed much. Arab terrorists still threaten Israel with the acquiescence of Arab states and European countries still enable them.

The Washington Post reports In a shift, United Arab Emirates may tighten travel rules after assassins' entry:

The use of forged European passports by assassins who entered Dubai and killed a Hamas operative may lead the United Arab Emirates to review the open border policies that have made it a commercial and tourist hub, a top UAE official said Sunday.

(Read full post)
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