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Metropolitan Opera's 'Death of Klinghoffer' premiere draws protesters

"The truth should be told that this opera didn’t create but certainly contributed to a romanticized version of the Palestinian cause," said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

By Kate Stanton

NEW YORK, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined hundreds of protesters Monday outside the Metropolitan Opera, which was staging its opening-night performance of John Adams' The Death of Klinghoffer.

The 1991 opera is based on the 1985 murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish-American tourist in a wheelchair, who was shot during the hijacking of a cruise ship by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front. Critics of the opera have described the opera as anti-Semitic, arguing that it sympathizes with Klinghoffer's murderers.

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"This is an opera that legitimizes terror because it presents the terrorists, the killers of Klinghoffer, as heroes," Rabbi Avi Weiss, who called on the Met to cancel the show, told the New York Post. "We are just a few miles from Ground Zero. Are we going to see on this stage a justification of what al Qaeda did?"

Peter Gelb, general manger of the Met, said the opera "does not glorify terrorism."

"It's a truly great work of art that deals with a difficult subject. That doesn't disqualify it from being on our stage," he said. "I think it would be terrible for art if the Met were to suppress it."

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio criticized Giuliani's participation on Monday, telling reporters that the former mayor needed to respect the Met's right to put on the play.

"The former mayor had a history of challenging cultural institutions when he disagreed with their content. I don't think that's the American way. The American way is to respect freedom of speech. Simple as that," de Blasio said.

Giuliani explained his position in an op-ed published Monday by The Daily Beast, nothing that he respected the Met's right to show the play, but called it a "grave mistake."

He wrote:

The truth should be told that this opera didn't create but certainly contributed to a romanticized version of the Palestinian cause which led to the American administration giving them hundreds of millions of dollars meant for the Palestinian people but mostly taken by Arafat and his band of terrorist crooks.

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