The Hall is Alive With the Sound of Interrupted Music

In his "Impromptus" column, Jay Nordlinger describes a disgraceful scene:

"Did you hear what happened in Wigmore Hall the other day? “The Wigmore,” as locals know it, is a London concert hall and sort of a shrine of music. The Jerusalem Quartet was giving a concert, and anti-Israeli demonstrators disrupted it. They staggered their disruptions so that the concert could never proceed with security. The critic Norman Lebrecht has a column on the affair, here. It’s often hard for Israelis to move about in the world. I have athletes and musicians in particular in mind. Wherever they go, they are harassed or threatened with harassment. (Of course, at the Munich Olympics, athletes were murdered. Talk about harassment!) Earlier this year, a female tennis player was playing a match in New Zealand. Protesters shouted at her throughout the match. She won anyway, in a wonderful display of sangfroid. And I’ll tell you this: The only time I have seen security screening at Carnegie Hall, ever, has been when the Israel Philharmonic is playing. (Original name of the orchestra: the Palestine Orchestra, of course — Bronislaw Huberman founded it; Toscanini conducted it.) The goal of the anti-Israel crowd — which is perhaps too big to be called a “crowd” — is clear: to make Israel a pariah state, just as South Africa was in apartheid days. Not for nothing did our 39th president, a Nobel peace laureate, title one of his books “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” You remember how people would hound that trackster, Zola Budd? They do that to Israelis as well. In my view, standing up for them — the Israelis — is a plain imperative of our time. It is part and parcel of standing up for humanity and civilization. And let me say one more thing about the Wigmore Hall affair. The anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian disrupters? Jews — I’m tempted to say “of course.” In every generation, there are such people. David Pryce-Jones talks about Dr. Hans-Joachim Schoeps, who had a group that was kind of a Jews for Hitler. Some liked to joke that its slogan was “Raus mit Uns” — “Out with Us.” And, as DP-J says, the “Raus mit Uns” spirit is always alive and well."