This opera is simplistic and dangerous. So is banning it

My father’s house was razed
In 1948
When the Israelis passed
over our street

I’ve never forgotten the opening lines to John Adam’s 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. Crisp, elegiac, this  ‘Chorus of Exiled Palestinians’ rises up to a moment of anguished dissonance as it spits out the word ‘Israelis’. It’s beautiful. It’s also the most egregious romanticisation of Palestinian terrorism outside the muralled bunkers of the Gaza Strip.

In the Metropolitan Opera’s new production, a chorus of shrouded Palestinian women form a funeral procession as they intone their complaint, eventually parting to reveal a 5-year-old boy, cradled in the arms of his weeping, widowed mother. Marking the start of a libretto deeply versed in biblical codes – lyricist Alice Goodman is an Anglican priest and theologian, born into Judaism – the day ‘when the Israelis passed over our street’ becomes an image of Exodus. It’s a Palestinian appropriation of the Jewish Passover, when the Angel of Death is said to have culled the first-born sons of their Egyptian enemy, but famously ‘passed over’ the houses of Hebrew slaves.