AJC: Shame on the Metropolitan Opera for Staging "Death of Klinghoffer"

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Oct 20, 2014, 05:33 ET

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC is delivering a firm message tonight at a demonstration outside the Metropolitan Opera to protest its staging of the "Death of Klinghoffer." Rabbi Noam Marans, AJC Director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations, is reading the statement on behalf of AJC Executive Director David Harris, who currently is traveling overseas.

The full text of the David Harris statement follows:

Dear Friends,

I'm very sorry I can't be with you in person today, as I am currently traveling overseas.

I applaud you for gathering together. In an attempt to downplay the importance of this gathering, some have sought to dub you "extremists". Nothing can be further from the truth.

Today is a sad day.

An otherwise great, indeed iconic, New York institution, the Metropolitan Opera, has chosen to stage a series of performances of a production that gives voice, even humanity, to terrorist murderers.

They most certainly do not deserve the prestigious platform the Met's stage offers them.

Let me be clear.

I do not question the Met's right to stage what it wishes.

I do, however, question its judgment.

For starters, the giveaway is in the title, as I wrote in The New York Times.

Leon Klinghoffer, wheelchair-bound and elderly, did not just die on the Achille Lauro. He was murdered in cold blood as a Jew, the reason for which he was targeted in the first place.

That's not a matter of debate. Four hijackers were found guilty.

Why, then, the title "The Death of Klinghoffer"?

Because both the composer and librettist didn't just set out on a journey of so-called artistic discovery and expression.

Their writings reveal their anti-Israel animus.

That, too, is not a matter of debate, though the Met's management has tried to suggest otherwise.

Yet the words of John Adams and Alice Goodman are on the record and have never been repudiated.

Moreover, the Met did something especially revealing.

It chose to incorporate Israel's security barrier -- built to prevent terrorist attacks against Israelis after more than 1,000 civilians in pizzerias, discotheques and Passover seders had been killed -- in its promotional material and on stage.

Why?

The barrier was built 20 years after Leon Klinghoffer's murder -- again, not death.

What in the world does the security barrier have to do with him?

And, in any case, what does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to do with Leon Klinghoffer?

He was a handicapped American tourist on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean -- nothing more.

In addition, when AJC pointed out to the Met's general manager that the troubling image of the barrier was totally uncalled for, he personally pledged to me that it would be removed.

It obviously has not been.

Some argue that it's important to "hear" all sides in such a highly politicized performance.

Really?

Is this to be the new norm for the Metropolitan Opera?

What's next?

"Rigoletto," "La Boheme," and "Aida" -- stand aside and make room for what?

For "9/11 in 360-degree technicolor"?

For "ISIS beheadings: Legitimate or not?"

For "The 'death' of Daniel Pearl"?

No, some acts are so bestial and barbaric, so indefensible, that the last thing needed is to give sympathetic air time -- and so-called "artistic expression" -- to the murderers and their demented views.

In this city, where we continue to mourn the nearly 3,000 victims of Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda henchmen....

At this time, when we witness the depravity of ISIS legions and their jihadist brethren killing, crucifying, kidnapping, and enslaving Americans, Brits, Christians, Yazidis, and fellow Muslims with whom they disagree...

And now, when, as President Obama has said, there is a "rising tide" of global anti-Semitism.

New York's Metropolitan Opera has chosen to stage this production.

There's only one word to express it all:

Shame!

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SOURCE American Jewish Committee