Eugene Kontorovich: ASA policy reversal delegitimizes BDS, but does not reverse past discrimination
THE ASA HAS RELEASED A RESPONSE to the charges of national origin discrimination. They astoundingly claim their policy has not changed; that the “boycott” was always limited to “on an institutional level will not engage in collaborative projects with Israeli research institutions.”Brooke Goldstein: Barbarism Doesn’t Deserve to be Humanized at The Met
The claim is demonstrably false. Their written explanation of their policy clearly stated that scholars who are “representatives” of institutions would be barred based on their national origin. Now they say no one will be barred. If they do not understand the difference between someone and no one, it will be hard to explain.
It is also demonstrable that their policy changed – because they actually changed the text of their policy explanation, as evidenced through screen shots.
Finally, their “response” characterizes the American Center for Law and Justice as an anti-gay organization founded by Pat Robertson. This is doubtless an appeal to their base – they are under attack by the right. Ironically, they quote this characterization of ACLJ from the Electronic Intifada, which has been denounced even by ardent leftist critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, and would certainly be described as anti-Israel in the conventional senses of the phrase. But maybe this is a meant to rally the troops as well.
Why are we here today? Because we’re opera critics? No. It doesn’t take a professional critic to know that lyrics like “America is one big Jew” aren’t the least bit tasteful.Phyllis Chesler: Israel-Hatred 'Has Scaled the Wall of High Culture'
An opera that calls us “all kinds of filth” and accuses us Jews, of being greedy, sodomizing blasphemers with watches of solid gold and “getting fat wherever poor men are gathered.” Lyrics like that aren’t creative, they’re not even unique, and they’re shoddy plagiarism, recycled Islamist Nazi racist propaganda. It doesn’t take brains to put that kind of filth to music
Are we here because we don’t like free speech? The opposite. It’s the first amendment that gives us our right to assemble here, to protest, to express our disgust at how our taxpayer dollars are being used to fund terror apologism deceptively wrapped in the veneer of art.
The MET has no first amendment obligation to stage this bigotry. It’s their intentional choice! Perhaps it’s a choice influenced by the Wahhabi dollars feeding this mismanaged and bankrupt institution.
Perhaps Saudi minister Ibrahim Al-Naimi, one of the MET’s principle sponsors, can explain the hypocrisy of the Wahhabi Kingdom playing distinguished patron to the American arts, while at the same time beheading their own citizens for blasphemy, imprisoning and torturing atheists, and executing their own children for being gay like it’s a public sport.
Saudi Arabia’s ministers control the most censored media environment in the world.
As we know, the most lethal propaganda against Israel and America has captured the American campuses and the left and liberal media. Now, it has scaled the wall of High Culture.
The Metropolitan Opera House—a place I have loved—will never again be the same for me. No, I will not boycott it as some speakers have sworn to do, but in some sense, the Emperor is Naked.
The Opera House is tainted, polluted by contemporary politics. Gelb has taken a dangerous stand against America, against Israel, and against Jews by insisting on his First Amendment and artistic right to do so. No one has questioned these rights. I bumped into Gelb’s lawyer, Martin Garbus, with whom I go way back. Garbus was watching the rally, and we greeted each other in a very friendly fashion.
In the past, the merely aesthetic minus morality=fascism. Think of Leni Reifenstal’s “brilliant” film about the Munich Olympics in 1936. This is what we saw at the Met: Form devoid of content; form covering for malicious content.
I left at the intermission. I was too angry and too sad to remain. And bored too.
I have no idea about whether further disruptions arose or not. I do know that this is a signal moment of a very long fight in the Culture Wars against America, Israel, and the Jews. People with credibility and some power stepped up tonight, well-groomed people who do not usually take to the streets did so.
God bless them.