The Metropolitan Opera has sunk to a new low in its glorification of the Palestinian terrorist murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, on the Achille Lauro in 1995, say outraged Jewish groups. In its promotional materials, including a video on its official website, the Metropolitan Opera features a Palestinian terrorist pointing a gun at the back of a wheel-chair bound Klinghoffer, when he is about to murder him.

The Met Opera is clearly trying to sell tickets off of an evil Palestinian terrorist who is in the process of murdering a crippled Jew in the back in cold-blood” said Mark Langfan, President of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI). The group, headed by Langfan and Helen Freedman, is spearheading an unprecedented coalition of over 60 Jewish and non-Jewish organizations for the demonstration planned for this coming Monday, September 22, at 4:30 pm in front Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center Plaza at Broadway and 65th Street.

Langfan said that the Met Opera’s clear organizational message is that “killing a Jew is not just a good thing, but it’s ‘Art.’ The Met Opera, and all its board of directors are actively promoting Jew-murder in its ugliest form. It’s rank, pure Jew-hate, anti-Semitism in its most vile form.”

AFSI’s Executive Director Helen Freedman added, "For starters, the title is so misleading. It wasn't that Leon Klinghoffer just passively ‘died.’ He was a helpless, handicapped man in a wheelchair. He was executed by PLO terrorists for one and only one reason, because he was a Jew. What’s worse, the Klinghoffer opera was donated by ‘two anonymous’ donations. Who were the donors, and why are their identities being kept top secret by the Met Opera?”

On October 7, 1985, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, a wheelchair-bound Jewish U.S citizen, was on a cruise on the Achille Lauro along with his wife Marilyn, to celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary, when four hijackers from the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) took control of the liner off Egypt. The liner had been sailing from Alexandria to Port Said, Egypt.

The next day, October 8, the Palestinian terrorists singled out Klinghoffer, a Jew, for murder, by shooting him in the forehead and chest as he sat in his wheelchair. They then forced the ship's barber and a waiter to throw his body and wheelchair overboard.

The PLO (of which Mahmoud Abbas, the current chairman of the PA, was a high level official), at first accused Klinghoffer’s wife of the brutal murder, although it knew this was a lie. On October, 1996, the Palestinian terrorist Mohammad Abbas (not to be confused with Mahmoud Abbas) apologized for the terrorist murder. He reportedly said that “the seizing of the cruise ship in 1985 was a mistake,” and “apologized for killing of the disabled U.S. passenger Mr. Klinghoffer.”

Langfan emphasized, “The Met Opera is actively and knowingly ‘aiding and abetting’ today’s Islamic State’s beheadings of innocent civilians by its glorification and sympathy of Islamo-Fascist terrorism in any of its evil forms. I urge everyone to cease any and all donations to the Met Opera, show solidarity with not only Jews, but also with all victims of Islamo-terrorism everywhere, by showing up at the AFSI-lead demonstration on Monday, and/or call Peter Gelb the head of the Met Opera at 212-799-3100,or [email protected] to express your outrage and disgust.”

For more information on the demonstration, AFSI urges readers to call 1-800-235-3658, or email [email protected], and ask for Helen Freedman, or Judy Kadish.

'Death of Klinghoffer' Reuters