Jews Behaving Like Muslims

by Lorna Salzman (July 2014)

I circulated my criticism of the Metropolitan Opera for cancelling HD screenings of John Adams’ opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, I haven’t received too many comments, a handful on both sides of the issue. But the dissenting responses, all from observant Jews, were disturbing, not least because they are an echo of the responses of Muslims to speech or written material which they find offensive to their religion. As a result, the Muslim leadership, with CAIR leading the pack, invented the term “Islamophobia” so as to brand anyone who criticizes Islam or shariah law as anti-Muslim.

On the other side, sadly, Zionists and observant Jews have indulged in identical tactics, as they did against a very bad play based on the writings of the late Rachel Corrie, an American girl who was naively induced to join Hamas protesters in Israel and was run over and killed by a tank. But the most recent manifestation of the Arab habit of suppressing free speech has arisen over the screening, quickly cancelled, of the Adams opera. Unfortunately the Philistine complaints found a receptive audience at the Met because the opera house is having financial difficulties and did not want to risk losing donor money from wealthy Jews. (They did not cancel any actual performances on the stage).

The complaints over the opera were almost identical to those I received after strongly supporting the screening and deploring censorship of any kind.

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