Weizman
Strikes Again

LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent

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srael President Ezer
Weizman, holder of a non-
partisan post, is now being
called the "true leader of the
Israeli opposition."
In calling for new elections this
week because the peace process is
dead in the water, Weizman put
life into the peace movement,
threw down a challenge to Prime
Minister Binja.mM Netanyahu and
shook the political system.
According to public opinion
polls, a solid majority of Israelis
also want
early elec-
tions. And
despite
charges by
Netanyahu's
supporters
that the presi-
dent has
politicized a
non-political
office, and
damaged
Israel's negotiating positions,
Weizman says he's going to keep
criticizing where it's due,
Weizman has complained that
Netanyahu has exploited him in
recent weeks by dispatching him to
counsel patience to Egypt's
President Hosni Mubarak and
Jordan's King Hussein, and to seek
support from U.S. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright, Mideast
envoy Dennis Ross and Labor Party
leader Ehud Barak. All along,
Weizman claims, Netanyahu was in
no hurry to accomplish the long-
overdue second withdrawal from
the West Bank.
"I've reached my red line,"
Weizman said in a television inter-
view this week. "I'm no longer
willinc,b to help Netanyahu. The
peace process isn't going any-
where, and no one should try to
tell me I'm wrong."
Netanyahu countered saying
that Palestinian intransigence, not
his, was holding up the second
withdrawal and that he was work-
, ing "night and day" towards
achieving a good agreement.

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52

`Valkyrie' Bridled

Knesset committee retains ban on Wagnerian music,
despite growing objections.

many Israelis, Wagner remains a
detested symbol of the Teutonic
Special to The Jewish News
racism that exterminated six million
Jews during World War II. Still, 115
Richard Strauss's opera "Salome" had
years after Wagner's death, the debate
its Israeli premier in Tel Aviv last
over his banning continues.
month. The performance, by St.
Zalman Shoval, chairman of the
Petersburg's visiting Kirov Opera,
New Israel Opera and
was an unchallenged hit,
Israel's ambassador-desig-
despite the fact the late corn-
Zalman Shoval,
nate to Washington, puts
poser served briefly as a cul-
chairman of the
tural official in Adolf Hitler's New Israel Opera the case for the prosecu-
Nazi administration.
and ambassador- tion.
"This is not a debate
Apparently, Strauss has been
designate to the
about the merits of
forgiven, perhaps because he
U.S. The Israel
Wagner's music," he insists.
had a Jewish daughter-in-law
Philharmonic
"Nor is it a debate about
and soon learned the folly of
Orchestra per-
our relationship with
his ways.
forms under
Germany, nor about the
Yet when the- Kirov's hosts,
Zubin Mehta.
freedom of expression, nor .
the New Israel Opera, sug-
about anti-Semitism. It is a
gested that it was time to lift Israel's
debate about sensitivity. It is a debate
tenacious ban on another German
about Wagner as a self-proclaimed
composer, Richard Wagner, some of
symbol.
its audience walked out. Two weeks
"He evolved a philosophy which
ago, the Knesset education commit-
called for the disappearance, if not
tee reaffirmed the embargo. For

ERIC SILVER

the destruction, of the Jews. In his
writings, he blamed the Jews for all
the ills of the Aryan people. He was
the head of a pan-Germanic racist
movement. His ideas were later taken
over by Nazi propaganda. Hitler
once said: 'If you want to understand
National Socialism, you have to
know Wagner.'"
Shoval admits there have been
other anti-Semitic composers, whose
works are performed in Israel. But
Wagner, he argues, was different:
"No other anti-Semitic composer
had hatred of Jews as something
which permeated everything they
did, in their artistic as well as their
personal life. Wagner did not want
Jews playing his music. When a
Jewish conductor, Hermann Levy,
conducted his music, Wagner tried
to get him to convert to Christianity.
"These things had a different
meaning after the Holocaust, when
we know what all this led to. There