Photo Credit:
Leon Klinghoffer

The recent “chokehold” death of Eric Garner at the hands of police in New York City attracted national attention largely because of what had transpired months earlier in Ferguson, Missouri, where another black man, Michael Brown, was killed by police.

I live in St. Louis, of which Ferguson is a suburb. Based on a personal experience, I wish to draw some parallels between the handling of America’s racial conflict and the treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that suggest we remain tone-deaf in the dialogues we often attempt to have in dealing with tough, divisive issues.

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On October 20, a panel discussion was held at Ladue Chapel in St. Louis on the theme of “From Klinghoffer to Ferguson and Beyond.” Sponsored by the Lee Institute, it aimed to promote dialogue among diverse groups seeking constructive change in Ferguson and other highly conflictual situations. When I first read the announcement of the event, I felt that such forums were well intentioned and worthwhile. However, I found the title of the panel somewhat odd and troubling. In particular, what was the connection between Klinghoffer and Ferguson? In attending the meeting on October 20, my puzzlement and dismay only deepened.

Leon Klinghoffer, of course, was the 69-year-old disabled Jew who, after being shot in the head, was thrown overboard in his wheelchair into the Mediterranean by Palestinian terrorists during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Laurocruise ship. The controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” recently was performed in St. Louis and New York, with the controversy revolving around the fact that the composer explicitly said his goal was to “give voice to all sides” in the hijacking.

As Klinghoffer’s daughters put it, in defending the New York Metropolitan Opera’s decision not to simulcast the opera nationwide, the memory of their father “is trivialized in an opera that rationalizes terrorism and tries to find moral equivalence between the murderers and the murdered.”

David Harris of the American Jewish Congress noted that what was in question was not the right to stage the opera but the judgment of the producers in doing so; he pointed out that the opera was misnamed since the incident involved not merely death but murder, and indeed not just any murder but the most barbaric imaginable.

I found myself agreeing with the critics. I fully get the importance of dialogue, along with the function art serves to “provoke.” I also get the need to understand both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; as a member of a committee overseeing the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Through Film” series sponsored by the local JCC, I have urged that we ensure both sides are represented in the movies selected. But both sides represented in the Klinghoffer affair, one of the most monstrous acts committed in recent memory? Really? Sure, the murder is not condoned, but it is treated as something to be “understood” and “explained,” that is, worthy of serious reflection, alas, even sympathy.

I am reminded of the obscene rationalization I hear so often from academic colleagues who say “terrorism is the weapon of the weak,” which ostensibly offers an excuse for explicitly targeting babies in pizzerias not to mention wheelchair-bound elderly Jews. The Klinghoffer murder is unacceptable, period – no need to understand it, which only enables further such atrocities at a time when humanity needs to be sending an unequivocal message that such behavior is beyond the pale.

I do not consider the opera anti-Semitic, just morally obtuse as a vehicle for exploring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those who defend it as “art” are disingenuous.

After all, ask yourself whether we would ever, in the name of art, tolerate, much less celebrate, an opera that showed both sides (pro-life and pro-choice) in the bombing of an abortion clinic. It would be shocking if we sought to discern the “nuances” and the “context” surrounding the incident from the perspective of the perpetrators, and to organize a “discourse” around it.

Strangely, many of the same people who supported giving both sides a hearing in the Klinghoffer death were not as inclined to air both sides in the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

I had predicted to friends before the October 20 event that “I doubt on that evening we will see both sides given equal weight in the ‘discourse’ about Ferguson” and that, in effect, “Officer Wilson [Darren Wilson, who shot Brown] and what he represents will be portrayed as a greater evil than the terrorists, unworthy of a two-sided discussion.”

I was not defending Officer Wilson, simply noting the hypocrisy of “Klinghoffer” devotees.

Sadly, the prediction was accurate. During the Q and A, I specifically asked panel member Tim O’Leary, the St. Louis Opera director who had staged “Klinghoffer,” if he would have any problem performing an opera about Ferguson that showed both sides. He said he would find that morally objectionable, thus (perhaps unwittingly) admitting to a double standard.

Although much was made, and rightly so, about the racism that continues to plague the St. Louis region, nobody on the panel bothered to state the other side of the argument – that, contrary to many protestors and media, none of us should be rushing to judgment about Officer Wilson’s guilt without all the facts.

As we awaited the grand jury verdict, the truth was that we still as yet had no way of knowing for sure whether he was a racist cop who overreacted to a misperceived threat or was properly defending himself in a struggle against a young man known to have just robbed a convenience store. If you simply assumed that Wilson was a symbol of institutional racism and police brutality, then you were engaging in the very stereotyping the protestors criticized. One could surely sympathize with the Brown family over the loss of their son, and could condemn racial profiling, yet at the same time admit that we remained uncertain whether this particular shooting had anything to do with race except in the most oblique way.

Once the grand jury verdict finally was announced on November 24, along with the release of all the testimony and evidence, the facts remained somewhat sketchy but seemed to support law enforcement. The Ferguson case would seem at least as complicated as the Klinghoffer affair, even more so, yet did not appear to rate the same level of artistic “exploration.” As for the Garner case, it appears a bit less ambiguous but nonetheless open to debate. One wonders whether we might someday see an opera about Michael Brown or Eric Garner and whether “both sides” will be presented.

As we look beyond Ferguson, we need to make a much greater effort to better understand the many conflicts in our community and world and to work toward solutions.

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J. Martin Rochester is Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of the forthcoming “New Warfare: Rethinking Rules for An Unruly World.”