A large coalition of organizations came together Monday evening at Lincoln Center in Manhattan to protest the Metropolitan Opera’s inclusion of “The Death of Klinghoffer” in its Fall schedule.
Protesters began gathering at Broadway and 65th Street hours ahead of the demonstration and of that night’s gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera season.
“The Metropolitan Opera, led by its director, Peter Gelb, persists in presenting ‘The Death Of Klinghoffer’ this fall, despite the fact that incontrovertible evidence exists in the libretto by Alice Goodman, and in remarks made by Gelb and the composer, John Adams, that the opera supports sympathy for terrorists and hatred for Jews and Israel,” The Coalition Against the Met Terror Opera said in a statement.
Leon Klinghoffer was killed by PLO terrorists in 1985 on the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro. The handicapped New Yorker was shot and then thrown overboard in his wheelchair.
The opera has been widely criticized for its broad sympathy for the terrorists who killed Klinghoffer and for the anti-Semitic sentiments expressed by its characters, such as the lead character’s statement that “Whenever poor men are gathered, they can find Jews getting fat. You know how to cheat the simple…defame those you cheated, and break your own laws with idolatry.”
Among the rally’s dozens of sponsoring organizations and schools were AMCHA, Americans for a Safe Israel, American Friends of Ateret Cohanim/Jerusalem Chai, Catholic League, Lincoln Square Synagogue, Mothers Against Terrorism, One Israel Fund, Phyllis Chesler Organization, Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, and the Zionist Organization of America.
In a letter he wrote to be read at the rally, Judea Pearl, whose journalist son Daniel was beheaded by Islamists in Pakistan in 2002, stated that in joining the protest of the Metropolitan Opera, “I echo the silenced voice of my son…and the silenced voices of other victims of terror, including James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and including thousands of men, women and children who were murdered, maimed or left heartbroken by the new menace of our generation, a menace that the Met has decided to accept and orchestrate as just another activity of normative civilized society, just another phenomenon worthy of artistic expression. “
Civilization, he continued, “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 deserves our unconditional revulsion. The Met has smeared this distinction and thus betrayed their contract with society.
“I submit to you that choreographing an operatic drama around criminal pathology is not an artistic prerogative, but a blatant betrayal of public trust. We do not stage operas for rapists and child molesters, and we do not compose symphonies for penetrating the minds of ISIS executioners.
“What we are seeing here in New York today is not an artistic expression that challenges the limits of morality, but a moral deformity that challenges the limits of the art.
“This opera is not about the mentality of deranged terrorists, but about the judgment of our arts directors. The New York Met has squandered humanity’s greatest treasure – our moral compass, our sense of right and wrong, and, most sadly, our reverence for music as a noble expression of the human spirit.
“We might be able some day to forgive the Met for de-criminalizing brutal minds, but we will never forgive them for poisoning our music – for turning our best violins and our iconic concert halls into mega-phones for excusing evil.”