The death of Leon Klinghoffer

The New Neo Posted on by

I happened across an old post of mine (2006) about the Palestinian terrorist hijacking of a cruise ship in 1985, during which they murdered a disabled elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair, named Leon Klinghoffer. The post was also about an opera made on the subject during the 1990s.

I decided to repost the gist of it because I am often struck by the fact that our current Israel/Palestine conflicts and reactions are intensifications of a situation that has been going on in similar fashion for a long time: the cruelty and brazenness of the terrorists, the fact that the legal system in various countries is inadequate and/or unwilling to punish them properly, and the widespread leftist sympathy for their cause and their heinous actions.

So here it is:

Last night [in 2006] was the opening of the controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” at New York’s Lincoln Center. It was marked by protests:

Demonstrators, primarily associated with Jewish groups, plan to rally outside Lincoln Center with 100 wheelchairs, in honor of the slain handicapped Leon Klinghoffer, on whom “The Death of Klinghoffer” is based.

Klinghoffer was hurled from the Achille Lauro cruise ship by PLO terrorists in 1985 after it was hijacked. The opera, which centers on the terrorists who perpetrated the murder, has been accused of glorifying terrorism and incorporating anti-Semitic tropes.

The opera is not new; it was first produced in 1991, and has drawn protests wherever it goes. It’s not hard to see why.

As Thomas Sowell once asked, referring to Klinghoffer’s murderers:

What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish?

The answer, of course, is “terrorists,” and we’ve spent a lot of time and energy in recent years explaining them and fighting them. That they are also human beings doesn’t mean we need to sympathize with them.

I recall hearing the news of the hijacking and the shocking manner of Klinghoffer’s death at the time it occurred, but back then I was unaware of the almost immediate post-modern interest of some in understanding—empathizing with, and even sympathizing with—Klinghoffer’s murderers, or with their “narrative.” In the years since, and especially post-9/11, such enabling attitudes have become only too apparent.

“The Death of Klinghoffer” is an example of the genre. In the olden days, an opera on such a theme might have featured the terrorists as traditional villains steeped in evil, with thunderous and dissonant music to signify the horror of what they did. But in this version they are given sonorous and lovely melodies to sing and sympathetic words to utter. But it wasn’t enough to portray the murderers in a sensitive light; the Klinghoffers and their associates are portrayed less nobly:

More than 20 years ago, in his review of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s premiere of the opera, The New York Times chief music critic, Edward Rothstein, questioned the presentation of Jews and Palestinian Arabs as “symmetrical victims of each other’s hatreds.” Rothstein later wrote that the opera’s depiction of its Jewish characters reduced them “to petty triviality” compared to their Palestinian counterparts.

The opera’s librettist, Alice Goodman, is an interesting tale herself. Born and raised as a Jew in Minnesota, educated in literature at Harvard, married to a British poet, she became an Anglican priest and opera librettist.

You can listen to Ms. Goodman discussing the opera here, in a BBC interview that features a selection from it sung by one of the terrorists. Without even being able to decipher the words of the libretto, just hearing the music and the voice of the kidnapper makes it clear that he is being given a respect and a certain esthetic elegance and dignity that could only serve to elevate him in the eyes of the listener.

Ms. Goodman’s answer to the question of whether the opera is anti-Semitic or an apology for terrorism is an interesting one. She says no (no surprise there); she believes that the charges of anti-Semitism and the rest are a result of her showing the terrorists as “human beings.”

Well, terrorists are most decidedly human beings, as were Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and—well, every other human being who’s ever lived. We all know how Hitler loved dogs, and was a vegetarian. To be evil does not require that one be a devil; being a human being who does evil will suffice. But considering terrorists human beings does not require giving them a forum by writing lovely arias for them to sing.

Ms. Goodman says she speaks not just as the librettist, but as a priest, when she recognizes the perpetrators as human beings with ideals—wrongheaded, yes, but idealistic nevertheless—as though idealism somehow has a value in and of itself. She acknowledges that the music and the words she and her collaborator wrote for the terrorists who killed Klinghoffer were lyrical and heartfelt, and she understands that this fact created “a dissonance difficult for some people to take.”

Indeed. I guess we’re not all highly evolved enough to understand the convoluted mental gymnastics required in comprehending how that doesn’t constitute some sort of sympathy and apology—if not for the devil, then for the human beings who perpetrated this heinous act.

NOTE: More background on Klinghoffer’s death here:

Holding the passengers and crew hostage, [the Achille Lauro hijackers] ordered the captain to sail to Tartus, Syria, and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then in Israeli prisons, including the Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar.

The next day, after being refused permission by the Syrian government to dock at Tartus, the hijackers singled out Klinghoffer, a Jew, for murder [after separating out the American and Jewish passengers into a special group], shooting him in the forehead and chest as he sat in his wheelchair. They then forced the ship’s barber and a waiter to throw his body and wheelchair overboard. Marilyn Klinghoffer, who did not witness the shooting, was told by the hijackers that he had been moved to the infirmary. She only learned the truth after the hijackers left the ship at Port Said. PLO Foreign Secretary Farouq Qaddumi said that perhaps the terminally ill Marilyn Klinghoffer had killed her husband for insurance money. However, the PLO later accepted full responsibility for murdering Mr. Klinghoffer.

Initially, the hijackers were granted safe passage to Tunisia, but U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered a U.S. fighter plane to force the get-away plane to land at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy. After an extradition dispute, Italian authorities arrested and later tried the Palestinian terrorists, but let Abu Abbas fly to Yugoslavia.

I highlighted the above for two reasons. The first is the statement of Farouq Qaddumi. The second is the action of President Reagan.

I wonder if Qaddumi is given an aria in the opera, too.

By the way, this is what happened to Abu Abbas. I hadn’t known these facts when I wrote the original post; I just discovered them:

Muhammad Zaidan (10 December 1948 – 8 March 2004), also known as Abu Abbas or Muhammad Abbas, was (with Tal’at Ya’qoub) a founder of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) Organization. …

On 14 April 2003, Zaidan was captured by American Special Forces in Iraq while attempting to flee from Baghdad to Syria. Italy subsequently requested his extradition. The Pentagon reported on 9 March 2004 that Zaidan had died the previous day, of natural causes, while in U.S. custody. The PLF accused the Americans of assassinating their leader. The U.S. authorities agreed to give Abbas’ body to the Palestine Red Crescent Society for burial in Ramallah on the West Bank. However, his burial there was blocked by the Israeli authorities, and he was buried in the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Damascus instead.

The wheels of justice grind slow, but sometimes they don’t appear to grind at all.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Biden gives the Israelis a stern talking-to:

(2) And then there are the tall tales:

His uncle was indeed in a plane that had to ditch over the ocean, in that area of the world, because of engine failure. He was not flying the plane at the time, but I’m going to assume he was indeed a pilot. However, most criticisms of what Biden said seem to ignore a few other things, such as the fact that he said his uncles enlisted right after D-Day. I’m going to assume he meant the attack on Pearl Harbor, because the date of his uncle’s death was May 14, 1944, three weeks before D-Day.

(3) [Hat tip commenter “Barry Meislin”] Gazans sunbathe:

Footage of thousands of Gazans enjoying the beach at Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip caused great anger in Israel.

“While Israeli citizens are preparing bomb shelters and buying generators, and at least 100,000 civilians are evacuated from their homes in the north and south of the country, and most importantly 133 hostages are still in Gaza, residents of Deir al-Balah demonstrate what ‘a step from absolute victory’ looks like,” one social media user commented.

Journalist Barak Ravid wrote: “It must be said that there is no longer a war in Gaza. Maybe there is partial and limited fighting. Maybe Israeli TV channels will also report on this eventually.”

I’ll cut Netanyahu a little slack. There is indeed a pause. If the pause continues too much longer, it’s a very bad idea. But I do think it’s just a pause while they prepare their next step.

(4) What could possibly, possibly, go wrong? In California:

Steven Bradford, a Democratic state Senator for LA County, proposed bill SB 1403 to create a controversial genealogy unit to ‘confirm reparations eligibility’ of applicants.

The state’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force last year decided that some residents should win $1.2 million payouts as compensation for injustices from the slavery era onwards.

But lawmakers have struggled to turn those plans into reality, and have advanced several bills to devise a working reparations scheme amid fears of spiralling costs in a cash-strapped state.

Bradford’s bill, which was amended this month, aims to solve the problem of working out who is in line for a payout.

The Nazis can only envy us the tools we have at our disposal. By the way, most of the American black population (not recent arrivals from Africa) have some white ancestors, and although their percentage of white DNA varies it’s often at least 20% to 50%. And quite a few white people have a percentage – a smaller percentage, but nevertheless a percentage – of black DNA. Nor, of course, does DNA tell the story of whose black ancestors were slaves and whose were not, unless one does an entire family tree going back to the slavery era.

Reparations is a terrible terrible idea on every single level.

(5) How’s that Trump jury selection process going?:

The jury selection process is ongoing, but what began at a fairly brisk pace has slowed somewhat, with two of the previously empaneled jurors being dismissed Thursday morning.

As things sat at the end of the day on Tuesday, seven of the 12 jurors needed had been seated. (Up to six alternates will also be chosen.)

But two of the seated jurors have since been dismissed: one for lying about his arrest history, and one because friends and family had reminded her of some of her previous history (I assume her social media history) that indicated she could not be impartial. Translated, I think this means that she had tweeted or posted on Facebook comments that were either critical of Trump or in favor of him. I don’t know which.

In the first round of jury selection, “over half of the nearly 100 prospective jurors were swiftly excused as they expressed their inability to be fair or impartial.” Another man was dismissed by the judge when Trump’s attorneys dug up this 2017 tweet of his:

Good news!! Trump lost his court battle on his unlawful travel ban!!! Get him out and lock him up.

Had this man already said he thought he could be an impartial juror, prior to the judge’s dismissing him? I don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise me.

Open thread 4/18/24

The New Neo Posted on by

An answer to a question a lot of people ask:

My own experience is that there is certainly a somewhat higher percentage of gay male ballet dancers than the percentage of gay people in the general population. But it’s by no means an extremely high percentage. And a heterosexual male dancer is in a fabulous position to find willing female partners, if you get my drift.

Visiting Walmart

The New Neo Posted on by

A few days ago I went to Walmart to buy some Jazz apples, my favorite variety. These days the only stores that carry them around where I live are Walmart and Trader Joe’s. Another thing I wanted to get was a certain kind of dental floss.

While I was at Walmart I noticed some extraordinary outfits. On people, not for sale on the rack.

The first outfit of note was on a young woman with long purple hair and very dramatic makeup, and a few rings here and there (nose, for example). But that wasn’t what caught my eye. She also had on what I can only describe as some sort of S-and-M costume. It consisted of – I didn’t want to stare although perhaps that’s what she wanted, and so I’m not sure of every detail – some sort of shiny black bra and panties, a little black leather bolero with metal studs, metal armband bracelets, black fishnet stockings, black shiny high-heeled boots, and a whip.

No, just kidding about the whip.

The store was also full of the usual strung-out and wasted middle-aged and older people. Drugs? Poverty? Mental illness? Some combination of all of them?

As I was leaving, ahead of me I saw two women walking. I only saw their backs, so I’m not sure, but I think they were identical twins because they had the same very unusual body. They weren’t especially fat – maybe just a bit overweight, although nothing special – but they had the largest posteriors I’ve ever seen on people whose shape was fairly normal otherwise. These women made Kim Kardashian look very modest in that arena. They had long flowing straight hair, tiny waists, and their legs tapered down rather quickly to thin ankles. None of this would have been so very strange, I guess, had they not been wearing completely form-fitting multi-colored tights of some sort of sparkly shiny stuff, to draw attention to the entire area.

It was – unusual. sort of like horses, from behind. It reminded me of something, and for a moment I couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized it was this:

I left Walmart, went to my car, and unloaded my small bag of groceries. And then I noticed that I’d left the dental floss in the cart and and had never taken it out to buy it. The price was ninety-eight cents, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put it in the trunk and take it. So I thought I’d leave it in the cart and let the store put it back.

At that moment the young woman who worked for Walmart collecting carts came by. “Is that yours?” she asked, pointing at the lonely dental floss in my cart. I explained to her what had happened, and she looked at me in complete puzzlement. “Just take it,” she said. “Nobody’s going to care.”

This was a store employee, and I’m virtually certain she was correct. But it struck me how things have changed; stores have so much theft now that it’s factored in, and the loss of a bit of floss is a joke to them.

I just shrugged and made a sort of hands-up gesture of futility, got in my car, and left.

Uri Berliner resigns from NPR

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Please see yesterday’s post for some background.]

Uri Berliner has resigned from NPR:

Longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner, who was suspended after blowing the whistle on liberal bias at the organization, announced Wednesday he has resigned.

“I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cited in my Free Press essay,” Berliner wrote in a statement published on X.

It’s interesting that he takes such a mild position about NPR itself, after lambasting it in his recent article that caused so much furor. As I’ve said many times, a mind is a difficult thing to change, even in someone undergoing some sort of mental transition from one point of view to another. Berliner has been at NPR for much of his adult working life and has a great deal invested in believing that its biased coverage is a relatively recent phenomenon although it’s not.

However, I applaud him for his courage in writing his article. I think he must have known it would result in his feeling the need to quit, once he’d burned his bridges that way. Then again, if he really believed in NPR as an institution, he might have been naive enough to think that his article would cause some soul-searching and change for the better there. But the only change it probably caused is that he’s now on the outs.

Get out the vote group is sending unsolicited voter registrations to non-citizens in Michigan

The New Neo Posted on by

But of course they are.

And no doubt it’s not limited to Michigan:

Documents provided to The Federalist show the form Al-Ani received was sent by the Voter Participation Center (VPC), a left-wing nonprofit that seeks to register Democrat-favorable demographics to vote. On the mailing envelope, the group lists its return address as that of Lansing’s Charles E. Chamberlain Federal Building and U.S. Post Office, which houses tenets such as the Federal Highway Administration.

Al-Ani said he has never engaged with VPC or any other voter registration groups. …

The Voter Participation Center is far from an obscure nonprofit. In fact, it’s a central component of leftists’ well-funded election machine that aims to accrue Democrats a ballot advantage over Republicans ahead of Election Day.

While federal law prohibits 501(c)(3) organizations from engaging in partisan voter registration, left-wing nonprofits such as VPC target demographics likely to vote for Democrats. According to InfluenceWatch, VPC “runs a direct-mail program that targets ‘unmarried women, minorities and millennials’ with voter registration mailings and phone calls.” Critics have described the group’s efforts as “imprecise, misleading, ineffective, and potentially illegal.”

Just now I did a very quick search to see if there are any legal challenges concerning this sort of thing. I couldn’t find any, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If anyone can find more information about it, please post it in the comments.

The feds are getting out the Democrat votes

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s being done through executive order:

“This is a coordinated effort from left-leaning third parties and the Biden administration to use executive power and taxpayer resources for the purpose of federalizing elections and taking power away from the states,” said Chase Martin, legal affairs director at FGA.

There are definitely some similarities between Zuckbucks and Bidenbucks. Much like private corporate funds in elections and their contract demands of involving activist groups, Biden’s order mandates federal agencies work with the White House’s “approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations.” These are NINOs, nonpartisan in name only.

Despite repeated requests for information on the implementation of the executive order, including the criteria for the third-party groups, the Biden administration has either slow-walked or altogether stonewalled the release of documents.

Please read the whole thing.

NPR editor who criticized the network is suspended; NPR CEO’s tweets

The New Neo Posted on by

Uri Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote an expose of their leftist bias. You can find it here. He seems to be somewhat of an old-fashioned liberal (or maybe an old-fashioned principled leftist), a rarity these days.

Now NPR has struck back; no surprise there. I quote another NPR article on that (my comments follow each excerpt from the piece):

NPR has formally punished Uri Berliner, the senior editor who publicly argued a week ago that the network had “lost America’s trust” by approaching news stories with a rigidly progressive mindset.

Berliner’s five-day suspension without pay, which began last Friday, has not been previously reported.

As I said, no surprise there.

Yet the public radio network is grappling in other ways with the fallout from Berliner’s essay for the online news site The Free Press. It angered many of his colleagues …

Why? Can’t they take criticism? Do they really believe that NPR is objective? If so, I’ve got this bridge …

… led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network’s coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump.

Oh no! It gave Republicans ammunition for pouncing. We can’t have that, even if the ammunition consists of the truth.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network.

So so long ago. Perhaps she was a mere child? We’ll see in a moment.

Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year.

Those were very mild examples, carefully chosen.

Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization.

Her first job at a news organization is to direct a huge one.

In a statement Monday about the messages she had posted, Maher praised the integrity of NPR’s journalists and underscored the independence of their reporting.

“In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen,” she said. “What matters is NPR’s work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests.”

Well then, it’s obviously fair and objective in its coverage, and the incredible bias of its director or its reporters – or its actual articles – is irrelevant. Of course Maher’s tweets while a private citizen are protected free speech. But people are merely pointing out the intensity of her leftist bias as expressed in those tweets, and suggesting that her bias might make it just a teeny bit hard to be objective.

If NPR’s mission is “to serve the American public,” please do so for a change because you haven’t in a long long time.

As for Maher’s tweets, that so-called “conservative activist” Chris Rufo is on the case. A lot of it is about that terrible thing, “whiteness” (Maher is white). You can find a sampler here as well as here.

I bet Maher thinks her own opinions are mild, because she’s probably been surrounded for a long time by people who are even more extreme than she is in their woke leftism.

Republicans defend Trump on the lawfare trials

The New Neo Posted on by

The right loves to criticize Republicans. And it’s not as though it’s hard to do; there’s plenty about the GOP with which to find fault. But please stick to the facts and do your homework.

There’s a particular sort of comment that I so typically see on blogs on the right that I’ve written several previous posts and/or comments on the phenomenon (although I can’t find them now): the “no GOP member is doing such-and-such” variety. Today I see that commenter “Sgt. Joe Friday” has obliged with the following:

Maybe I’ve missed it, but I have yet to hear any influential Republican speak up in Trump’s defense, or to even utter the words “innocent until proven guilty.”

Remember folks, the Democrats and Republicans in DC are not opponents, they’re dance partners.

No, they are not, and it’s a dangerous error to think so although a common one. They are different on many metrics, although the GOP often disappoints by joining the Democrats on certain issues, particularly involving spending. However, the Democrats are far left and are approving of many policies and people that are far more destructive to the nation and the world than what the Republicans advocate. Much of what I write on this blog day after day demonstrates that fact.

But back to the more narrow topic of Republicans speaking in Trump’s defense about the lawfare going on against him in the courts: just because you haven’t seen it or read it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. You may have missed it, as “Sgt. Joe Friday” mentions. You may have seen it and forgotten. Or it may be that GOP members are trying to get the word out but the media isn’t covering it. But it’s usually quite easy to find with a search.

For example, I searched for “rubio on trump trial” just now, and up popped quite a bit. Instantly. To take one example:

In an interview with “CBS Mornings,” [about the classified documents case about Trump] Florida Sen. Marco Rubio … expressed concern about the impact of the indictment on the country — and said it is “political in nature.”

“When you bring an indictment like this, it’s not done in isolation. It’s not done in a vacuum. You gotta take a lot of things into account. There’s no allegation that there was harm done to the, to the national security. There’s no allegation that he sold it to a foreign power or that it was trafficked to somebody else or that anybody got access to it,” said Rubio.

“You have to weigh the harm of that, or lack thereof, on the harm that this indictment does to the country. This is deeply divisive,” he said.

He said prosecuting the likely GOP presidential nominee, who will run against an incumbent president, is alone “political in nature,” and said there will be “certain harm.” …

When asked about Trump’s leadership qualities, Rubio expressed his belief that Trump could “do a better job” than President Biden as the next leader of the country. He also said he would personally choose Trump over Biden “in a heartbeat.”

Now, Ted Cruz. Immediately we get:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday he is hopeful the U.S. Supreme Court “puts a stop” to what he called an “abuse of power” aimed against former President Trump after the high court announced it will weigh whether the former president can be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“I’m glad the Supreme Court is taking the case. I have to say what we’ve seen in the past year — about the targeting from the left, the targeting from Democrat prosecutors of Donald Trump — has been an enormous abuse of power,” Cruz said Wednesday on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.”

Or this:

It’s easy to find more – although, unsurprisingly, Mitch McConnell (who has nevertheless endorsed Trump for president) is not one of them. But you know who is? None other than Mitt Romney, who said:

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a sharp Trump critic, voiced criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of the former president on Tuesday, calling it an “overreach” that is political in nature.

“I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office,” Romney said in a statement. “Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.”

He added: “No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law. The prosecutor’s overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public’s faith in our justice system.”

Also, in that same article:

“It’s clear that this is a politically-motivated prosecution against President Trump,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a Senate Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement.

“Politics should never tip the scales of justice, and Congress has every right to demand answers and accountability from the Manhattan D.A.’s office, especially as this directly relates to federal law.”

Also Mike Johnson, House Speaker:

I could easily go on, but I’ll stop here because I believe the point is made: search, and you’ll find.