Twelve years after the terrorist attacks on the WorldTradeCenter and with anti-Semitic sentiment once again on the rise around the world, terrorism is once more coming to New York City. But this time it’s been set to music and sold as art.
In a disgusting move, New York City’s Metropolitan Opera is staging a highly anti-Semitic, controversial opera composed by John Adams, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” based on the 1985 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. During the ordeal, the terrorists shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly, wheelchair-bound American Jew, before tossing him and his wheelchair overboard.
Adams argued that he didn’t write The Death of Klinghoffer to be controversial or provocative and was “appalled at how hot some of the response was” to the opera. He felt he was trying to show the humanity in the civilians and Jewish family on board as well as the terrorists and wasn’t picking sides.
“For all the brutality and moral wrong they [the terrorists] perpetrated in killing this man, they’re still human beings and have to have had reasons for doing so,” Adams claimed. Seriously? What next? An opera about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and an effort to humanize those terrorists? A tacit justification of their motives?
Richard Allen, founder of the Jewish Community Center (JCC) Watch, along with families and survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Catholic League and numerous other Jewish organizations are, “outraged at how the opera is callously glorifying the terrorists,” despite the Met’s objections to the contrary.
Allen said that the music and staging of the opera clearly demonstrate that the idea of moral objectivity in telling the story from both sides is a fallacy. He said the music when the terrorists speak “is as if one is going to heaven and yet when the Jews are speaking the music is dark and ominous,” the narrative clearly sympathizing with the terrorists in an attempt to humanize them to the viewers while giving a “false history of grievances” against the Jews.
Allen asked, “How is that not anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist, especially being staged in New York City, home to 9/11?” He and the families of those lost in the 9/11 “know what terrorists are and you can’t humanize them to us.” They “Do not forgive and do not forget.”
Therefore, the JCC Watch, the Jewish Community, the Catholic League and families who felt the effects of terrorism firsthand on 9/11, are hosting a peaceful rally tonight, September 22. Allen declared that, “Today is the day we stand and let our voices be heard in a peaceful and loud demonstration.” Their goal is to demonstrate their outrage and highlight not just the opera’s for its anti-Semitic message but the disservice it does to the memory of Leon Klinghoffer. They hope the rally will result in the play being pulled from production and not shown. “If this goes forward,” said Allen, “we will make sure the Met – a subsidiary of the city of New York – no longer receives funding at the city, state or federal level so that our tax dollars are not used to push the terrorist agenda.”
Tonight’s rally will take place in front of the Metropolitan Opera House on West 65th and Broadway at 4:30pm. It will feature speeches from 9/11 families including a survivor from the 29th floor of the North Tower, rabbis, congressmen, a representative and civil activist from the Catholic League and a letter to be read by the father of Daniel Pearl (a Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Pakistan back in 2002). The list goes on. Supporters are welcomed to join the protest tonight in hopes the numbers and demonstration will get the necessary attention and the outcry against furthering a terrorist agenda will result in this disgusting, vulgar, and anti-Semitic play being pulled from the Met’s schedule once and for all.
