Two friends -- Moustafa Bayoumi and Eli Valley -- got asked by The Guardian to go to the premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer. And they didnt take me. Bastards. Anyway, theyve got different takes, both interesting. Moustafa brings it home (though I have to confess I love the music, having never paid too much attention to the lyrics): Palestinian history in Klinghoffer is staged as Muslim only – and only as fundamentalist Muslim, which is wrong and dangerous. The group that carried out the Achille Lauro operation, the Palestinian Liberation Front, was a Marxist-Leninist faction, an offshoot (twice removed) of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was led by the Christian Palestinian George Habash. But if you watched Klinghoffer, you’d have no idea Marxist Palestinians even existed, or that Christian Palestinians were at the forefront of much of the Palestinian national movement....Klinghoffer wants to collapse the complexities of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into a timeless religious battle between Muslims and Jews. Like the next guy, I find it annoying when historians pedantically tell you which little facts are wrong in a work of art based on history, but my point is not about the details. By suggesting that this conflict is based in religion and not in territory, Klinghoffer removes much of the history (and people) of this conflict and replaces it with a mythic clash of civilisations. Ironically, this is the same clash of civilisations that was driving the protesters outside the opera house last night.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 03:24:19 +0000
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