Opera About Palestinian Hijacking and Execution Provokes Outrage in New York

Monroe Freedman and his granddaughter were handing out opera lyrics on Monday night outside of Lincoln Center in Manhattan, but they weren't out to inspire a public sing-along. They were there to protest the Metropolitan Opera's controversial production of The Death of Klinghoffer.

"Wherever poor men are gathered they can find Jews getting fat," the Klinghoffer lyrics distributed by Freedman read. "You know how to cheat the simple, exploit the virgin, pollute where you have exploited… America is one big Jew."

Although taken out of context, it's lyrics like these that drew hundreds of protesters to the streets. The demonstration occurred under heavy police supervision, with two police helicopters hovering overhead and NYPD officers restricting access to Lincoln Center with a cordon.

"The woman who wrote the libretto says it's eloquent and truthful," said Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. "But it's improper, because it's similar to the language used by Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels."

First staged in 1991, The Death of Klinghoffer is based on the hijacking of an Italian cruise ship in October 1985. Four men representing the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) boarded the MS Achille Lauro off the Egyptian coast and redirected the ship toward Syria, demanding the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

When the Syrian government refused to let the ship dock, the hijackers executed Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish American passenger, and threw his body — along with his wheelchair — overboard. Klinghoffer, who grew up in New York's Lower East Side, was 69 at the time and on vacation with his wife, Marilyn. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) later apologized for Klinghoffer's murder and agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by his daughters, Ilsa and Lisa.

The opera is not the first dramatization of the hijacking. Television movies about the incident aired in 1989 and 1990, but the opera has been uniquely polarizing. Considered a masterpiece by some music critics, it has been lauded for its complex portrayal of the universal agonies shared by Arabs and Jews.

Others, however, believe The Death of Klinghoffer glamorizes terrorism and exalts Klinghoffer's killers. Protesters on Monday arranged a row of wheelchairs on the sidewalk opposite Lincoln Center and called for the ouster of Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb.

"Many Jewish leaders sit on the board of the Met," Richard Allen of the group JCC Watch told the crowd. "We're giving them the benefit of the doubt. But you have to fire Gelb."

Allen then led a chant of "Gelb must go!"

Several prominent politicians joined the demonstration, including ex-mayor Rudolph Guiliani, former governor David Paterson, and congressman Peter King. Guiliani told the crowd that the opera contributes to a "romanticized version of the Palestinian cause and a romanticized version of terrorism."

Current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio criticized the protests at an unrelated press conference Monday, especially slamming Guiliani for joining in.

"I really think we have to be very careful in a free society to respect that cultural institutions will portray works of art, put on operas, plays, that there will be art exhibits in museum," de Blasio said. "The former mayor had a history of challenging cultural institutions when he disagreed with their content. I don't think that's the American way. The American way is to respect freedom of speech. Simple as that."

Klinghoffer's daughters, in a Sunday editorial in Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), wrote that they attended the 1991 American debut of the opera in Brooklyn and were "devastated" by what they saw, alleging the production used their father's death as a vehicle for anti-Israel political commentary.

Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer have struck an agreement with the Metropolitan Opera producers allowing their criticisms to run in the show's edition of Playbill, the New York Post reported Monday.

"It rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father," the Klinghoffers wrote, adding that the show "presents false moral equivalencies without context, and offers no real insight into the historical reality and the senseless murder of an American Jew."

In his remarks Monday, de Blasio acknowledged the existence of "an anti-Semitism problem in the world today," but said that an opera was not where protesters should focus their attention. Although German composer Richard Wagner wrote anti-Jewish essays and is associated with Nazism, Wagner's operas are produced regularly at the Met without fanfare.

But the people who took to the streets Monday insisted that the opera hits too close to home.

"There are people here from all kinds of backgrounds," Wendy Lanski of Strength to Strength, an advocacy group for survivors of terrorism, told VICE News. "I'm a 9/11 survivor, a terrorism survivor. It's not just a Jewish issue. And if your father had been thrown overboard, you'd be upset too."

An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Richard Allen is affiliated with the Jewish Community Center. Allen is actually a member of JCC Watch, a separate group.

Follow Mary Emily O'Hara on Twitter: @MaryEmilyOHara