Posted on 09/28/2014 4:45:16 PM PDT by Nachum
It was rather crowded outside Lincoln Center late Monday afternoon. While yours truly was at Kennedy Airport waiting to return to Israel for Rosh HaShanna, several thousand people gathered outside Lincoln Center to protest the Metropolitan Opera's glorification of a terror attack that took place nearly 30 years ago.And finally, from writer, Jack Kemp:Leon Klinghoffer had more integrity and American entrepreneurial spirit in his little finger than Peter Gelb has produced in his entire miserable life. And that's the truth.One of the lines in this anti-semitic opera is: wherever poor people are gathered they can find Jews getting fat. America is one big Jew. So who is this exploiter Jew, the one that Peter Gelb, the director of the Metropolitan Opera and himself a Jew whose father was a New York Times Managing Editor, allows to be denigrated on his stage?
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Leon Klinghoffer was born a poor Jew from the Lower East Side, a man who invented an electric mini-grill you could also wash in your sink, an early predecessor of the current George Forman Grill. I recall one of these mini-grills in my home as a child in the 1950s. From this, Mr. Klinghoffer was able to create jobs for a number of people in manufacturing and sales and to support his family..
Marty Peretz, writing in the New York Observer, states that:
This so-called opera is actually a sophisticated attack by wealthy, cosmopolitan Jews on a self-made New York Jew with limited education who had the audacity to make something of his life.John Adams can work his clunky, chunky music to his hearts content. And so I suppose can Alice Goodman work her poetry. Ms. Goodman was born a Jew. She is now an Anglican priest, serving the Church of England, first as chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge, latterly at a group of parishes near the university. The truth is that it is not Mr. Adams music that is at the core of the controversy. It is Ms. Goodmans words. She is no free spirit in this church, which has been fighting with the Jewish nation and the British Jewish community for decades.
I have said it before and I guess I will have to say it many times more.
This country has gone insane.
Wait’ ....this is an opera glorifying the murder of Leon Klinghoffer ?
Open anti-semitism has come to the Met...?
We have gone off the rails....
Yes.
Yes.
And sadly, Yes :(
I want to see captured ISIS jihadis tied to wheelchairs and pushed off a cruise ship deck by elderly Jewish women. Muzzie paradise denied!
If those ladies see this atrocity of a play, they’ll be lining up for the privilege.
Most cowered or hid. Leon stepped forward and proudly identified himself as both a Jew and an American. He probably saved the lives of many others in that category by doing so.
Disgusting.
From your link....
Controversy surrounded the American premiere and other productions in the years which followed. Adams, Goodman and Sellars (the evil ones who wrote this trash)** repeatedly claimed that they were trying to give equal voice to both Israelis and Palestinians with respect to the political background.[21][22] Some critics and audience members condemned the production as antisemitic and appearing to be ‘sympathetic’ to the hijackers.[23]
Lisa Klinghoffer and Ilsa Klinghoffer, the daughters of Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer, anonymously attended the 1991 world premiere of the opera in New York City. Afterwards the Klinghoffer family released the following statement about the opera: “We are outraged at the exploitation of our parents and the coldblooded murder of our father as the centerpiece of a production that appears to us to be anti-Semitic.”[24]
** my words, not Wiki
Thanks for the reminder....for those who may not remember, or have known. I remember it...was young, but I do remember.
RIP Mr Klinghoffer, brave soul.
“Disgusting.”
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I know-—and I had never even heard of it.
The Met broadcasts live at theaters all over the country.I wonder if they will show this. (I’m too disheartened to read anymore.)
I doubt that “Yankee Doodle Dandy” would be filmed in today’s world.
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So glad to see this post here, after seeing all the hate comments towards these protestors, in so many “cultured” blogs all over the web. Every anti-Jewish cliche is dragged out.
Peter Gelb is just a lackey for the Met directors who employ him. They told him to accept the money from the Saudi financiers who wanted to fund this production, so he did it. Funny how defensive he is - over half the Met playbill is devoted to rationalizations and blather about why they should do this opera, even though a different opera is being performed that evening.
No, it won’t be broadcast. The Met was forced to cancel the broadcasts when the management of the company that owns the theaters that do this said they were unwilling to air it.
Thanks for the info and nice to hear.
I’m a frequent movie goer and one of my favorite theaters shows the operas. Showcase Cinemas owned by National Amusements Inc.
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Yes. It has. This is not the country in which I grew up.
I remember when President Reagan forced the plane carrying the hijackers of the Achille Lauro to land in Italy.
The damned Italians forced us to let them go.
Well, maybe not completely insane. Speakers at the protest rally included former NY State Governor George Pataki, former US Attorney General Mukasey, some liberal US Congress Representatives (surprise, surprise) like Carolyn Maloney and Eliot Engel, some NYC Council members, Executive Vice President of the NY Board of Rabbis Joseph Potasnik, Father Donovan, etc.
But money talks and the Met is strapped for cash. So they’ll accept the Saudi cash. Interesting that the Met brochure says the donors for this production have asked to remain anonymous. (An investigation is underway by one of the protest groups.)
Since the PLO flunkies had dumped the body, PLO Foreign Secretary Farouq Qaddumi said that perhaps the terminally ill Marilyn Klinghoffer had killed her husband for insurance money. The body washed up a few days later on the Syrian shore and the Syrians returned it to the United States.
The PLO later admitted responsibility and gave the Klinghoffer family a large cash settlement thanks partially to a ruling in a lawsuit, but more to an American president whom they knew would extract more if they did not.
Imagine any terrorist group who would be equally afraid of the dork we have at the helm of the ship of state today.
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