---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
JCCWatch <info@jccwatch.org>Date: Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 6:08 PM
Subject: Klinghoffer Protest Rally at Met Opera Oct 29 at 5:30 PM
To: Robin Ticker <
faigerayzel@gmail.com>
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| | | | | | | | Met Opera Protest Rally
Wednesday Oct 29 at 5:30 to 7:30 PM
In front of Lincoln Center
West 64 Street and Broadway
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| NY Daily News Article: Klinghoffer Opera " Scenes of the Crime" | |
| | http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/editorial-scenes-crime-article-1.1986524
Anti-Israel propaganda set to music. After the opening night of "The Death of Klinghoffer," Metropolitan Opera head Peter Gelb asserted that protests were driven by propaganda, because many of his critics had never seen the work.
We had found Gelb guilty of staging a show whose anti-Israel prejudice bleeds into anti-Semitism. Our judgment was based on reading the libretto and viewing videos. For fuller perspective, we bought a ticket.
Review: Gelb's production was worse than we had imagined.
The sets and staging confirmed that composer John Adams, librettist Alice Goodman and director Tom Morris had far more in mind than a meditation on the murder in 1985 of New Yorker Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship.
Following a stroke, the elderly Klinghoffer got around in a wheelchair. The terrorists singled him out for being Jewish, shot him and dumped him overboard.
Rather than depict a clash of good and evil, the opera finds understanding for the killing in Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. It strives to explain the terrorists' actions as rooted in the Jewish state's alleged sins, starting with the country's establishment in 1948.
In the Met's showing, the creative team also perverted history in ways that only an audience member can see.
The opening scene called "The Chorus of Exiled Palestinians" characterizes early Israelis as brutally driving Palestinians from a land of sweetness and light. The events play out in front of years projected onto a screen: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1978, 1982, 1985, 1992, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2014.
A Met spokesperson said the chronology showed "significant dates in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict chosen to represent the passage of years between 1948 and 2014."
While the first six mark Arab-Israeli wars, it's unclear what the rest reflect. Left out were 1977 (Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem), 1979 (the Egypt-Israel peace treaty), 1993 (the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization Oslo accords), 1994 (treaty between Israel and Jordan), 2001 (start of Yasser Arafat's Second Intifada whose suicide bombers killed hundreds of Israelis), 2005 (Israel's withdrawal from Gaza). And so on.
By bringing the cavalcade up to the moment — covering the 29 years since Klinghoffer's murder — the production places the onus on Israel for the Palestinians' modern-day terrorism.
Strengthening the grotesque accusation, the show dresses the Palestinians in black, has the players wave green banners resembling the Hamas flag and places the cast in front of a replica of the security barrier that Israel began erecting in 2002 in response to the suicide bombings — 17 years after Klinghoffer's murder.
So, yes, Mr. Gelb, we saw "The Death of Klinghoffer" for the screed that it is. Outside, looking back through the Met's tall windows, we saw a memorial to another Jew who died in 1985, the great artist Marc Chagall, whose giant, exuberant murals face out on the Lincoln Center plaza.
For shame, for shame, we thought.
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Sincerely,
Robin Ticker
Activist emails sent to my list are L'Ilui Nishmat Yisrael ben David Aryeh ob"m (Izzy - Kaplan) and Howard Chaim Grief great activists and lovers of Eretz Yisroel, Am Yisroel and the Torah. Yehi Zichronum Baruch. May their memories serve as a blessing.
Most of these emails are posted on
Shemittahrediscovered.blogspot.com
Personal emails to individuals will not be posted to my blog.
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