Then there are several indefatigable grass roots players who have been involved in pro-Israel activities for decades. People like Dr. Marvin Belsky, Dr. Paul Brody, Beth Gilinsky (who practically single-handedly forced the New York City to come to grips with the anti-Jewish animus surrounding the Crown Heights riots in 1991), Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans For a Safe Israel, terrorist victim and now rights activist Sarri Singer and Liz Berney, a trusted deputy of Zionist Organization of America’s executive director, Mort Klein.
There are others, a growing number of them, who would comprise the PKJ chorus.
The polar opposites of the PKJs would also have to be cast. These would be referred to, in short-hand, as the Anti-Klinghoffer Jews.
TERRORIST-HUMANIZING KLINGHOFFER JEWS
Peter Gelb, of course, is the man responsible for bringing the Klinghoffer opera to the Met, and the man who has thus far successfully convinced his board members that the Klinghoffer opera must be staged. He will have a starring role as one of the sinister bad guys. Every one of his lines will contain the words “artistic freedom” and “art as insight,” as if glorifying murderers of old disabled Jews is akin to speaking truth to power. It is Gelb and his cronies who have retreated into the would-be-laughable-if-not-so-offensive stance of guardians of the First Amendment for refusing to “censor” the opera.
No one has asked the Met to criminalize the words used in the opera, no one is suggesting that Adams or Goodman be jailed for lionizing the villains and ridiculing the victims. Rather, the Met has been asked to refrain from glorifying terrorism. And Gelb et al have refused.
In 2005, the Toll Brothers luxury homes builders took over from Texaco as the corporate sponsor of the Metropolitan Opera’s international radio network. The Toll Brothers are Jewish, and the executive director, Robert I. Toll, sits on the Met’s managing board. The Annenberg Foundation is another major corporate sponsor of the Met’s radio network, and Leonore Annenberg, the former chair of the Foundation, was also on the Met’s managing board.
While Gelb decided to pull the live streaming of the Klinghoffer opera (but only well after it was already in the lineup and only after the initial wave of criticism), it is difficult to imagine that major funders of any part of the enterprise could not have made their views known – and had an impact – on Gelb’s grinding in his heels about staging this opera.
MEEK KLINGHOFFER JEWS
The final major type to be cast is one that, sadly, has the widest pool of potential players. This type is called the Meek Klinghoffer Jews. These are the ones who really probably wish there was no Klinghoffer opera, but who are too uncomfortable raising their voices at all about anything, including anti-Semitism, but most especially when that anti-Semitism is dressed up in fancy clothes. Like at the Metropolitan Opera.
While the grass roots activists began organizing against the Klinghoffer opera last spring, it wasn’t until September – September! – that the mainstream official Jewish organizations finally got around to saying anything publicly about the travesty.
What they came up with is a good letter in terms of calling the opera what it is. For example, it mentions that the “opera’s juxtaposition of terrorists and their victims on the same moral plane is gravely inappropriate,” and pointing out that “anti-Jewish attacks and expressions of hatred against Jews have reached frightening levels around the globe, and innocent American journalists have been cruelly beheaded by radical Islamists.”
But, undoubtedly because the letter-writers were aiming for as broad a group as possible, the letter reads like more of a “oh, this is too bad” letter, rather than a “this is unacceptable!” letter.