The Israel Ballet, which reportedly receives around $1 million annually in funding from the Israeli government, gave a performance Saturday in suburban Washington DC that was panned by influential WaPo dance critic Sarah Kaufman.
She wrote,
- One could hear the dancers rejoicing from the stage Saturday after the curtain fell on the Israel Ballet… [A]s the audience filed out of Montgomery College’s Takoma Park/Silver Spring Performing Arts Center, the dancers’ commotion seemed tinged with relief that the three-hour-plus event was over.
If so, they were not alone.
About the performance itself, she wrote,
- The performers danced with a firm correctness but no joy. Standing behind their partners, awaiting a cue for a lift or a turn, a few of the men looked bored. Throughout the evening, the men and women alike lacked a sense of presentation, which was odd given the intimate dimensions of the 500-seat theater. They shouldn’t have had a problem with projecting in that small space, yet they came across as unfocused and distant.
It is quite possible that the dancers’ ‘distraction’ came from the sheer weight of distinctly political expectations that have been laid upon their current US tour. It’s the company’s first US tour in 25 years, and it’s been aggressively marketed, e.g. here, by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as part of its “Rebrand Israel” campaign.
I’ve seen no reports that the performance at Montgomery College was greeted with any protests. But protesters were out in force during earlier appearances in Brooklyn, NY, and Burlington, Vermont. In Brooklyn, the always inventive protesters organized by Adalah-NY had a small troupe of women dancers in blue-and-white tutus, and people handing out mock ‘programs’ to ballet-goers as they went in. (Scroll down here.)
I guess the intention of the hosts at Montgomery College was to try to make sure the ballet company felt warmly welcomed at the college… by making the numerous lengthy speeches that, according to ballet critic Kaufman, took up a full hour before the first pointe shoe hit the stage. The speechifying seemed to rile a good portion of the ballet-lovers who had turned up– including, apparently, Kaufman herself.
She wrote,
- The evening’s languor wasn’t entirely the company’s fault. The dancers took the stage nearly an hour after the appointed start time, once the capacity crowd endured politician introductions, speechifying by campus officials and heaped-on praise for endless donors to the college. It made one wonder if the ballet wasn’t in some way a play for the pockets of culture-loving Jews. The least they could have done, one man near me grumbled, was to have a plate of hamentashen in the lobby.
The greater lack of sugar was on the program…
Ouch. It really seems the lengthy ‘welcoming’ backfired, doesn’t it.
POP QUIZ:
NAME ONE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS/POLITICAL FIGURE WHO HATES ISRAEL ALMOST AS MUCH AS HELENA DOES.
ANSWER:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1153097.html
Arch,
While Farrakhan may hate Israel (he does), I don’t think Helena is similar to him. Their ultra-critical views of Israel are for very different reasons.
I don’t think Helena Cobban could even be considered a “religious/political figure” since she’s not a leader of any large organization. She’s more like an “advocacy journalist”.
I’m not familiar with Helena’s views/reporting of the Lobby, the target of Farrakhan’s rant. But Farrakhan is not even correct in saying that Obama is targeedt by the Israel Lobby. The Obama administration might seem to have yielded more to Arab demands rhetoricly, but they have done very little diplomatically in regards to Israel.
He say’s that Congress is controlled by the Israel Lobby. Well, a recent poll has shown that Israel’s popularity is highest since 1991, so naturally politicians would adopt popular positions. Is that not democracy?
Anyone who goes out of her way…. day after day
after day …. to castigate Israel on all matters
large and small … as Helena Cobban has been doing for years … without ever stopping for a moment to find any redeemimg qualities in Israeli
society …. unless it is to agree with fringe groups in the country that happen to share
her far left and pro-Hamas, pro-Ahmadinejad
views … is a hater of Israel… and fully deserves the comparison to Farrakhan.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1153016.html
And now she picks on a ballet? She has blown a fuse, her hatred is consuming her. So what, you didn’t like a performance? Fine, big deal, that also has a political connotation. Get a life.
So the objection to Helena’s stance is that she ‘castigates Israel on all matters large and small’ except where she doesn’t.
No problem there, though, because, if Helena isn’t castigating, peace groups, civil rights advocates,opponents of militarism. obscurantism, racism and fascists, as fringe groups, then our re4visionist zionist friends are.
The issue here is that of the policy of the government of Israel. About which there is no mystery: Gaza is under siege, and there are no excuses for it being so. Gaza was attacked most brutally and there was no justification for that attack or for the detail of the actions involved.
Any person of any integrity, honesty or decency objects to such policies. The mystery is how they can be condoned except in arguments founded in racist theories and defiant of every code of morality in the history of our civilisation.
If the ballet tour was all about dance, perhaps it would not be worth the comment. But it is not; it is all about politics. The tour is unabashedly part of the “rebranding” of Israel by the current extreme right wing Israeli government. A political gesture must expect to be discussed in the same political terms. Pointing out the Israeli attempts to manipulate public opinion in America is important. Yes, approval of Israel is up significantly, but the poll showed that all of that increase was in Republicans, specifically right wing evangelicals and other extreme right wingers, all hoping for Armageddon.
Even if they are right wing Americans, they are still Americans. Their opinions are their’s for them to legitimately express.
I’m not defending Helena as an outstanding person. But she is not Farrakhan, who attacks other Americans’ participation in American politics.
Though this whole post by Helena is rather cheap.
Louis Farrakhan says:
“…the Zionists are in control of the Congress.”
“You cannot deny the pro-Israeli lobby and get re-elected. Ask Cynthia McKinney. Ask David Hilliard. Ask our mayor in Oakland, California. Ask [former Illinois Senator Charles] Percy. Ask Jimmy Carter. You can’t criticize, you can’t say nothing because if you do, you’re branded as an anti-Semite.”
Why, U.S. Congress, will you not speak? It is because you fear a lobby that has money and influence that will turn you out of your seat? So you’re terrorized. That’s why you don’t act for the American people that sent you to Congress. You are not their representative. You are the representative of the money and interests that have bought your soul.”
“There’s not a vote that the pro-Israeli lobby wants that doesn’t get bipartisan support. Why? Because the Israeli lobby controls the government of the United States of America.”
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE STATEMENT HERE THAT H. COBBAN EVER INDICATES THE SLIGHTEST DISAGREEMENT WITH. IN THE ISRAEL BALLET POST, SHE VENTURES INTO LOONEY TUNES TERRITORY THAT EVEN FARRAKHAN IS TOO CAGEY TO ENTER FOR FEAR OF BEING LAUGHED AT BY HIS FOLLOWERS.
COBBAN AND FARRAKHAN MAY SEEM LIKE AN ODD COUPLE TO SOME, BUT THEIR FUNDAMENTAL
BELIEFS REGARDING ISRAEL ARE IDENTICAL.
The shoes fit, so Cobban should wear them …. unless, of course, she chooses to denounce Farrakhan’s views on Israel NOW…. LET US SEE IF SHE DOES.
Hello, Arch.
I know very little about Mr Farrakhan. I have never been to the USA. But I have read what you have quoted from him. I must say that in most countries of the world outside the United States, what Farrakhan says in these few sentences would be considered unexceptionable and even commonplace. What’s your problem? Surely that’s the way the US system works, isn’t it?
It’s very odd that you should think that the only place in the world where the US political system may not be frankly described is the US itself. Or is that also part of the way it works, nowadays?
Let me hasten to say that I am not speaking for Ms Cobban, whose views are distinctly her own, and not particularly similar to mine. I would hate for her to be caught in some guilt-by-association trap on my account.
I did enjoy the ballet story, as mildly amusing as it was. I wonder what somebody like Lenny Bruce might have made of it? Of course, he also got into trouble, didn’t he?
A.S.
Farrakhan is absolutely correct in that statement you were so kind as to post….
It takes guts in today’s USA to speak the truth about certain things, and Israel is top of the list.
If you love Israel so much and believe in “Patron Saint” status for all things Israeli, as clearly you do, then why be so touchy about telling it like it is….
DOMZA:
Louis Farrakhan is widely regarded as a hater of Israel and supporters of Israel. I believe that Helena Cobban shares his views, and I think that it is likely that you share some or all of them as well. All I am asking Ms. Cobban and you to do is to admit forthrightly that you share Minister Farrakhan’s views concerning Israel in the same way that ERIK — in the post after yours — has done.
I await your reply and HELENA’s with
great anticipation, but without any real expectation of a positive reply. Farrakhan, it seems, is not the kind of Israel hater that Helena can really wrap her arms around. What she likes are “workers for peace” who picket ballets and Marxist “one worlders” whose one world seems only to exclude a Jewish State of Israel . Too bad. I believe that she and Farrakhan would make a fabulous team.
“Louis Farrakhan is widely regarded as a hater of Israel and supporters of Israel. I believe that Helena Cobban shares his views, and I think that it is likely that you share some or all of them as well…”
This will obviously be news to you Arch, but you simply can’t get away with argumentation of that sort here. Or anywhere else in the real world: what you are saying is that Farrakhan’s opinions are disqualified because you say so.
It’s a bit like saying that the Goldstone Report is unimportant because, you say so.
You have to learn to do better than that. OK?
You have to explain what happened to Cynthia McKinney or Senator Percy. You can’t simply say that anyone who blames AIPAC is anti-semitic.
Out here, there are billions of people who are thoroughly unimpressed by the nonsensical rationales that zionist revisionists proffer, by way of excuses, for killing the children of Gaza and imprisoning, toturing and assassinating those who differ from you as to the necessity of the zionist project.
I remember the reception the Bolshoi Ballet (and they really could dance) got after the Hungarian Uprising.
My guess is that future cultural exchanges of this sort will attract increasingly large crowds. And commensurately smaller audiences. That will be no consolation to the besieged of Gaza but it might bring their suffering to an end, a little more quickly.
Bevin, I am pleased to add your name to the list
of Helena Cobban-admirers who openly and without any evidence of shame endorse the opinions of Minister Farrakhan regarding Israel and American supporters of Israel. Fringe left-wingers in our
country are frequently criticized for attempting to conceal their true feelings of hatred for Israel behind insincere expressions of the need for “love,” “peace” and “justice” in the Middle
East, but in your case, at least, that does not seem to be the case.
Bevin, I’m sorry I garbled up my last sentence in
the post above. The entire post should read:
Bevin, I am pleased to add your name to the list
of Helena Cobban-admirers who openly and without any evidence of shame endorse the opinions of Minister Farrakhan regarding Israel and American supporters of Israel
Fringe left-wingers in our country are frequently criticized for attempting to conceal their true feelings of hatred for Israel behind insincere expressions of the need for “love,” “peace” and “justice” in the Middle East, but that does not seem to be true in your case.
If really new, Arch clearly doesn’t get it – or perhaps he is just another old retread masquerading under a new name. Simply yelling antisemitism is not argument; it is the opposite. It is schoolboy taunting. Let’s start with some analysis. Was AIPAC and AIPAC money a large factor in the defeat of the above listed candidates or not? What were their views on Israel? Were they anti-Israel or simply not supportive enough? Why would people in New York and Los Angeles get involved in political races in Indiana? Even the other side sometimes speaks the truth; witness Barak’s comments about Israeli apartheid.
Arch,
Please add me to your list along with Helena and bevin. My name is Mya and I’m in Salt Lake City.
Thank you.
Oops, Arch, I guess you haven’t read the guidelines on courtesy, discourse-hogging, etc. Could you please do so? Also, writing something in all caps doesn’t, it turns out, make it any truer. Who knew? (I guess, not you.)
JACK:
The “other side” Jack? The side that pulled out of Gaza only to be greeted by rocket and mortar attacks indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets? The side that has repeatedly offered to sit down and talk with Abbas with no preconditions? The side that is vilified daily by primitive, barbaric carricatures in
Palestinian and Arab newspapers, TV and schoolbooks? The side whose health, educational, cultural and artistic institutions — many of which are among the best in the world –are under continuous attack by “human rights” organizations and “experts” like Helena Cobban whose chief and perhaps only goal in life is to end the “Jewish occupation” of Israel? The side — the only one in our country that I have ever heard of apart from blacks in the pre-civil rights era — whose adherents are continually criticized for
wanting to exercise their rights as citizens to participate fully in the democratic process through lobbying and other political efforts? The side that is consistently cited in polls by a great majority of the American people as one of our country’s best friends in the world? The side whose goodwill and support the Palestinians need more than anyone elses if they are ever to dig themselves out of the very deep hole and bad place that their leaders (and “friends” of theirs like Ms. Cobban) are continuing to dig
for them.
But, of course, this “other side” is not your side, is it Jack? Your side, the side of Minister
Farrakhan and Ms. Cobban, is the side of Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and other “freedom
fighters”around the globe of a similar stripe. Well, if that is your choice, and I believe it is, you are, of course,free to make it. My purpose in contributing yesterday and today to Ms.Cobban’s dreary blog was never to change anyone’s mind here about Israel …. I knew that was unlikely …. it was only to test out
for myself whether people like yourself would admit honestly to agreeing with Farrakhan about Israel. Ms. Cobban has been unwilling to show her face on her own blog to respond to this request and almost all of the other responders, like yourself, have just dodged the question. SO I THINK THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION FOR ME AT THIS POINT IS TO SIMPLY GIVE UP ON MY QUEST FOR AN HONEST RESPONSE, WHICH — IF TRUTH BE TOLD — I NEVER HAD ANY REAL EXPECTATION OF RECEIVING IN THE FIRST PLACE…..AND TO WISH YOU, MS. COBBAN AND HER TINY GROUP OF LOYAL FOLLOWERS (ALONG WITH MINISTER FARRAKHAN), THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE LUCK IN ADVANCING YOUR PITIFUL AGENDA TO HARM ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE.
Jack, are Americans so dumb they just “vote AIPAC,” issues be damned? Don’t these unfeeling cattle read the same internet as you? Or are they just too stupid to draw the right conclusions?
You have a more serious problem than AIPAC or the Vast (and imaginary) Zionist Conspiracy. Your problem is that Israel is well regarded by a growing majority of Americans, whereas its opponents are not; this condition predates AIPAC altogether, and is only getting stronger.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126155/support-israel-near-record-high.aspx
You might notice that as Americans are expose to more sources of information, their support for Israel has grown. How can we explain this without our heads exploding? It’s simple: Israel’s foes have also been hostile to the United States, and advocate for political systems hostile to core US values (religious freedom, gender equality, pluralism.)
The truth is that AIPAC competes with all kinds of PACs for the favor of the US voter, inclusing some pro-Arab PACs that have given McKinney money, and anti-Israel PACs like the one Helena recently left. Whereas the forces on the other side of the divide (those hostile to Israel in the Arab world) enjoy a complete monopoly of information and opinion in their home markets. Zionists don’t even have a monopoly within Israel.
As one of the other posters (Bevin?) pointed out, critical views of Israel are mainstream in most of the world outside the USA, and are more mainstream in the USA than A.S. expects. Here, public criticism of Israeli apartheid neo-colonialism is the kiss of death to any politician, corporate officer, journalist, or academic. So people express their views only in private. A friend who teaches PolySci at a major eastern university holds identical views with Helena C. and tells me so in private, but would go the way of Ward Churchill if he dared right about it or, worse yet, speak of it in public.
Israel really has no friends except the US since the fall of the Old Regime in South Africa. Does A. S. really think it’s just because people just hate Jews?
Nah, saying so don’t make so..
The problem with Israel is and always has been that the movement started by Herzl is essentially a criminal enterprise with an agenda only spoken of openly by Israelis in private (cool, huh?) which differs in no real regard from the Voortrekker movement in the Cape Provinces during the first part of the 19th. century. The agenda is to dispossess the local inhabitants and establish a “members only” private club over there. Over decades the culture and government have been masters of dissimulation as they press on with their agenda. Our govt. and culture are complicit in that agenda and the rest of the world, owing nothing to AIPAC, are free to speak the truth about this ugly exercise in the 21st. century of a 19th century plan of action.
During the cold war it had a certain logic to it, but our connection to Israel has no positives any longer for America and when people in this country finally wake up to that reality, the day will come when we will see what the world does and we may then drop Israel like the bad habit it is. The world is moving past “Volkisch” movements…
I think it’s great Erik that the Palestinians
have smart friends like you and Helena Cobban who are truly aware of what’s going on, while the Israelis have to just make do with people like me that haven’t woke up yet. I’m sure the Palestinians go to bed every night thanking their lucky stars for this.
So, should dancers emit enthusiasm because they, Israelis, had been allowed somewhere overseas in to perform-or what is a point of this article?
Your respondent’s probably limited English does not allow author’s hints to in-depth understand, but her writings on modern intellectual genocide would very much be appreciated if she dare producing, and your reader has something relevant and contributing to Ms. H.Cobban’s professional sarcasm on that topic from a place supposed being on a summit of modern human rights paramount humanity had achieved to date.