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Friday, June 20, 2014

More on the Klinghoffer HD Broadcast Decision

 Links to some relevant articles and a few thoughts of my own about the opera. More to come, no doubt.
I think there is a case to be made against the libretto, but it's not one I have seen before: if you want to present the Israel/Palestinian conflict in an even-handed way, which is what I believe Adams and Goodman have said they were trying to do, having Israel represented by an American Jew and Palestine represented by terrorists misrepresents both sides. An American Jew isn't an Israeli and isn't Israel; Palestinians deserve better representation than the minority of terrorists. Consider an alternative plotline unrelated to the Achille Laura hijacking: a Palestinian family that lost its land after fleeing in 1948, an Israeli family that lost its home in the Holocaust or after fleeing Iran. And there's an obvious bad side in murdering an old man who has no power in the conflict. I haven't seen or heard the opera and have no opinion as to whether it is anti-Semitic. I will say that the portrayal of Henry Kissinger in Nixon made me squirm, though.

2 comments:

  1. Abraham Foxman explains his views in the Huffington Post

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abraham-h-foxman/more-concerning-the-death_b_5516482.html

    ReplyDelete

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