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Artistic Anti-Semitism And The Campaign To ‘Free The LPO Four’

Adrian Hilton defends the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and condemns those anti-Semites who lash out at all things Jewish.

By Adrian Hilton

22 Sep 2011, 15:30

I spent this years’ Proms season reviewing quite a few concerts for The Spectator Arts Blog, and was as shocked and disappointed as any by the ridiculous protest staged by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign against the appearance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The audience simply wanted to listen to their Webern and Bruch played by world class musicians; the ranting protesters only wanted to hear the sound of their own anti-Israel hysteria. The fact that the orchestra is multi-ethnic and its conductor Indian didn’t matter to these anti-Semites: it bore the name of Israel, included Jews, and so must be an agent for the great Zionist conspiracy against the world. So, for the first time in Proms history, a concert was suspended, and its live broadcast by the BBC cancelled.

But it transpired that some musicians actually agreed with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and wrote a letter to The Independent to say as much: ‘Proms exploited for arts propaganda campaign’, was their message. They explained: ‘Our main concern is that Israel deliberately uses the arts as propaganda to promote a misleading image of Israel. Through this campaign, officially called "Brand Israel", denials of human rights and violations of international law are hidden behind a cultural smokescreen. The IPO is perhaps Israel's prime asset in this campaign.’ And they went on to refer to Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state, as though Israeli Arabs were segregated like the black people of South Africa; denied education, denied healthcare, denied justice and denied the vote. In fact, all Israelis are equal under the law: there is no ‘apartheid Israel’, except in the minds of those who are blinded by prejudice.

But this letter caused a bit of a problem for four of its signatories. While the majority of artists simply appended their names and professions, four chose to implicate their employer. Cellist Sue Sutherley and violinists Tom Eisner, Nancy Elan and Sarah Streatfield all suffixed their names with the acronym ‘LPO’, thereby embroiling the London Philharmonic Orchestra in their anti-Semitism (and anti-Semitism it is, notwithstanding that Eisner and Elan are Jews, not least because their appeal was to censor the Israel Philharmonic on the prejudicial assumption that its members all think and believe the same). As a result, their fellow musicians in the LPO decided to suspend them for nine months.

It’s important to note that this was a judgement made not by the LPO’s management or governing body: it was the democratic decision of the four musicians’ peers and equals. LPO Chief Executive Timothy Walker said: “They found it abhorrent that one group of musicians would try to stop another group of musicians playing a concert.” There is no question of the LPO inhibiting its players’ political views; it is simply that the orchestra has no political or religious affiliation. Mr Walker made the point clear: ‘The orchestra would never restrict the right of its players to express themselves freely, however, such expression has to be independent of the LPO itself and must not be done in any way that associates them with the LPO. The company has no wish to end the careers of four talented musicians, but the board’s decision in this matter will send a strong and clear message that such actions will not be tolerated by the LPO. For the LPO, music and politics do not mix.”

As it happens, I don’t personally agree with the last statement. Art, in all its forms, can be acutely political: music can usher in revolution, sustain the state, and hold the mirror up to human nature. But that’s another article. It seems the LPO’s decision to suspend four of its members has brought out even more anti-Semitic luvvies and dahlings. In a letter published in The Daily Telegraph, it is evident that the signatories believe the LPO has usurped Big Brother and is punishing its musicians for some sort of thought crime. They insist artists should be allowed to express themselves freely ‘without fear of financial or professional retribution’.

Unless, of course, they happen to be Israeli.

The letter is endorsed by an interesting list of prominent left-wing agitators and academics mingled with some complete nonentities whose inclusion serves no purpose other than to swell numbers and give the impression of multitude. Quite why any credible artist would want their name associated with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is something of a mystery, but there is a long history of irrational anti-Semitic protest among some of them. They write: “One does not have to share the musicians’ support for the campaign for boycotting Israeli institutions to feel a grave concern about the bigger issue at stake for artist and others.”

But the problem is that the vast majority do support such a campaign. Film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, for example, have long spouted their lies and hatred against Israel under the enlightened guise of common-sense truth and artistic integrity. They may be quick to point out that Israel ‘deliberately uses the arts as propaganda to promote a misleading image (of itself)’, but they are blind to their own deliberate use of cinema in the propagation of their pathologically left-leaning, anti-British, anti-American, anti-Israel myopic worldview, which is endemic in the arts world. Forget the Israel Philharmonic; for them, it is as if the nation’s entire culture were contaminated by the mere existence of a Tory-voting, Telegraph-reading, Israel-supporting, US-loving, patriotic Brit.

Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have political influence through their art: they are at the forefront of demands for a boycott of Israel, along with anything contaminated by the merest whiff of Jews on the West Bank. They are part of a great artistic consensus that Israeli films, music, theatre and literature all represent the ‘illegitimate’, ‘apartheid’ and ‘evil Zionist state’. The fact that Jews are disparate in their artistic expression is neither here nor there. The fact that some write books critical of Israel, compose music against the IDF, and make films repudiating Zionism is neither here nor there.

And the fact that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra simply wanted to play a little Webern and Bruch is neither here nor there. Every crotchet must have constituted a clandestine code for the perpetual oppression of Palestine; every quaver is a bullet in the head of a Palestinian child.

Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, and all who have signed this letter demanding freedom of political expression are actually no different from those across the Arab world who routinely ban films like Schindler’s List because it is ‘sympathetic to the Jewish cause’. How many Iranians have seen it, Ken? How many Jews can become mayor of Ramallah, Mike? The hypocrites seek to uphold freedom of speech for Israel-hating musicians while calling for censorship of all Israeli artistic expression, yet it is across the Arab world that they will find the true apartheid. That is where they will witness the deliberate use of the arts ‘as propaganda to promote a misleading image’. That is where they can see ‘denials of human rights and violations of international law...hidden behind a cultural smokescreen’. The true hate is peddled by the anti-Semitic, judeophobic entertainers in both politics and the arts whose only dream is the end of the ‘Zionist entity’. But let’s not allow the facts to cloud trendy artistic truth and little chic integrity.