What surprises about the Middle East culture wars? The left and right have swapped sides

It is an unwelcome indicator of the horror of the Israel/Hamas conflict that it has rippled out to the most unlikely corners of the Antipodes. For example: symphony orchestras are not commonly regarded as hotbeds of activism and political controversy. But in recent weeks, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has been shaken by the extremely damaging fallout from a piano performance which touched on the horrendous death toll in Gaza.

How is that even possible?

Left: Pianist Jayson Gillham. Right: Sacked Melbourne Symphony Orchestra managing director Sophie Galaise.Credit: Simon Schluter, Laura Manariti

In August, the MSO pianist Jayson Gillham gave a recital to a small audience, during which he played a piece called Witness by composer Connor D’Netto. Gillham prefaced the piece with a speech dedicating it to journalists killed in Gaza (the International Federation of Journalists says more than 130 journalists and media workers have been killed since the horrific Hamas attacks on Israel).

Gillham said that some of those journalist deaths had been “targeted assassinations”, a war crime allegation vehemently rejected by Israel. He also said: “In addition to the role of journalists who bear witness, the word ‘witness’ in Arabic is ‘shahid’, which also means ‘martyr’.”

The Australian reported there were many complaints. Under the direction of (now former) managing director Sophie Galaise, the MSO wrote to attendees saying Gillham’s comments were not authorised, and apologising for offence caused. Gillham was removed from a concert the following week, then the MSO said that was a mistake, and then it cancelled the concert entirely. The MSO was bombarded with hatred from pro-Palestine “keyboard warriors”. The board sacked Galaise. All parties to the dispute – the MSO, Galaise, and Gillham – have lawyered up.

Last week Galaise told The Australian that concerts should be “safe havens”, free from political protest. The former MD, who clearly feels very hard done by, is the latest exemplar of what is becoming a hard rule: any attempted cleanup from Gaza/Israel controversies only magnifies tensions and increases the likelihood you will lose your job.

For reference, see the ABC’s sacking of broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf, and the Sydney Theatre Company’s handling of actors who appeared at a curtain call for The Seagull last year, wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestinian people.

I don’t pretend to know how Galaise should have handled the incident, although as a journalist, I’ll always lean heavily towards defending freedom of speech. Some patrons were offended but no one was endangered, or anything close to it.

Friends of mine involved in less well-funded arts organisations and charities have had a diabolical time balancing the passionate views of staff, and their right to express those views, with the very real fear and upset of many Jewish patrons and donors. There seems no right way.

The conflict between the freedom of pro-Palestine people to protest against Israel’s deadly campaign on Gaza, and the rights of Jewish Australians to live free from antisemitism, is playing out everywhere. In newsrooms, on boards, in charities and particularly, it seems, in the arts.

But the idea that artists should separate their views from their work seems profoundly bonkers to me – it’s not so much a moral question as a definitional one. Galaise said this week the MSO should be “neutral” – but it took a “Yes” position on the Voice, and on same-sex marriage.

Asking artists to be apolitical is like asking a frog not to croak or a bird not to tweet.

Artists have always made great works inspired by the horrors of war: Shakespeare’s Richard III, Picasso’s Guernica, the heartbreaking poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway … I could go on, and on.

To me, what is new about these Israel/Gaza cultural conflicts is how completely left and right have swapped sides from their usual positions.

Apocalypse then. Apocalypse now.

The concept of “psychological safety” and “safe spaces” have for years been pilloried by the right as identity-politics garbage, the indulgence of a snowflake generation who are constantly “triggered” because they have zero resilience. Who believe their individual, subjective feelings should override the freedoms of others.

But this is precisely the sort of reasoning now deployed by people offended by pro-Palestine pronouncements.

According to The Australian, one patron who complained after the Gillham recital said s/he was “angry and traumatised” by his remarks; another described the words as “an attack on … patrons”.

Once upon a time, former Coalition attorney-general George Brandis infamously declared that “people do have a right to be bigots” in his defence of freedom of speech. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single conservative who would claim that now on behalf of pro-Palestinian activists.

Meanwhile, many on the left have decried freedom of speech as the cover-all excuse for bigotry, and have accused their adversaries of “platforming” bigots, a sin which has become akin to bigotry itself, in some quarters. But when it comes to Palestine, they are all for freedom of expression, even when it veers close to antisemitism, or launches right into it.

Another example of this self-interested side-switching: the so-called “woke” left has traditionally held that an offensive person’s intention, or motive, has little relevance against the harm caused.

The reasoning goes that it doesn’t really matter whether you meant to offend someone, first, because you should know better, and second, because your intention has no bearing on the lived subjective experience of the offendee.

Now that logic is being (quite reasonably) used against pro-Palestinian activists – it doesn’t matter if you reject accusations of antisemitism, or genuinely believe that you are not antisemitic. What matters is the effect of your words on the minority group in question – and who are suffering from a global wave of revived antisemitism.

The Gaza/Israel culture wars have played out most notably on university campuses. In the US, protesters have been dispersed forcefully by the military. Some conservatives have demanded Australian student protesters be treated similarly – broken up by whatever means necessary.

In 2019, the Morrison government – alarmed by disruptive student protests aimed at shutting down campus speaking tours by controversial people like men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt – instituted a review into free speech on campuses. It was led by former chief justice Robert French. Results of the review were legislated by the Morrison government in 2020.

Many of the voices who so strongly asserted the importance of freedom of expression then are silent now. And some of the people who once emphasised the damage done by offensive speech are now pretty loosely spoken themselves.

I judge no one for their moral inconsistencies. To be a hypocrite is to be human, and that is the one blessed thing we all have in common.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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