It’s important to stress that last week’s protest at New York’s Metropolitan Opera against the Met’s decision to showcase “The Death of Klinghoffer” coincided with the opening of the Met’s fall season rather than with the premiere of the opera itself.
In fact, “The Death of Klinghoffer” has eight scheduled performances, with the first set for October 20.
As The Jewish Press has been reporting, the opera has become the subject of bitter controversy and widespread condemnation because it seeks to explore the 1985 killing of a 68-year-old wheelchair-bound American Jew in terms of Palestinian resistance to Israeli “occupation” of Palestinian lands.
We think it crucial that more and even larger demonstrations take place in the run-up to the opera’s October 20 opening and its subsequent performances. No one with any sanity would dream of rationalizing or justifying the depredations perpetrated on the Arab world by ISIS. But conventions and standards seem to be different where Jews are the victims.
This phenomenon will not go away unless we come out en masse in full-throated protest, bringing as much pressure to bear against the Met as possible. No one will do it for us. And we know all too well where this sort of thing leads.