Can a 1991 opera give us a different perspective on Hamas extremism?
On 19 March 1991, the world was disgusted. Over an opera. For the first time in about a century probably, because normally there just aren’t enough people who care about classical music to cause a fuss. And those who do care tend to start riots only occasionally. This opera was different though. John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer struck a chord—a particularly vicious one, most likely a diminished fifth.
That chord, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, sounds as ugly today as it did back then. To make it heard across the globe, Adams only had to stage one scene from this never-ending tragedy. The Death of Klinghoffer recounts the 1985 hijack of a cruise ship near the Egyptian coast by Palestinian terrorists, ending in the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound Jewish American.
The opera caused a massive backlash. The premiere in Brussels on 19 March 1991 went ahead as planned, as did the first U.S. performance in Brooklyn. Later productions though, were either cancelled or disrupted. As a consequence, no one staged it between 1992 and 2001. The freshness of the events obviously contributed to the controversy. The subject matter was still very much an open wound. Most offensive though, was the way in which it was narrated.
The opera starts with a Chorus of Exiled Palestinians, describing the lost homeland of their parents, building to a climactic: “Let the supplanter look upon his work. Our faith will take the stones he broke, and break his teeth.” Adams seemed to legitimize the unspeakable acts of terror. Romanticize even!
At least, that was the accusation. What the opera really does, is humanizing the terrorists. Giving them a face and a voice, without endorsing them.
We also see the smaller side of Leon Klinghoffer. “You don’t give a shit,” he shouts at the hijackers, “about your grandfather’s hut… You don’t give a shit, you just like to see people die.” Swearing aside, the crowd knows that this just isn’t true; the terrorists certainly did give a shit, and they still do. Things have changed since 1991 though.
Traditional terrorist attacks like the one described in the opera—or like the Munich Massacre of 1972—have all but disappeared. Palestinian suicide bombing has ended over four years ago. Today, Hamas militants use a more impersonal form of violence, firing rockets from a distance. They’ve become reluctant to throw themselves into the fray. As a consequence, the activism of Hamas has become faceless. Humanizing their terror has become impossible.
If anything, this suggests they’ve become less extremist, not more. Although that doesn’t necessarily make them less dangerous, because the impersonal nature of violence can make it even more threatening. Israel knows this all too well. From Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jeruzalem, for example. Or from their own drone programme. But in the end, the biggest price is paid by the population of Gaza. And guess what, Hamas doesn’t give a shit.
These stories need to be told. Artists around the world need to find news ways to do so. Why? Because 1991 not only saw the Klinghoffer controversy, but also the start of the Madrid Conference. As a result, the first Israeli-Palestinian treaty since 1949 was signed two years later in Oslo. Coincidence? Maybe, but there’s no harm in trying.
This post was originally published on the Distilled Magazine blog.