(JTA) — Last year, Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall held its 10th anniversary of a Hanukkah concert series that was rebooted 70 years after it was halted by the Nazis, in what some Dutch Jews saw as a repudiation of antisemitism that had swelled during the war in Gaza.

This year, the concert has been called off — and the prestigious concert hall citing the chosen singer’s ties to the Israeli army.

The Chanukah Concert Foundation, which organizes the event, had booked Shai Abramson to sing. Abramson is a retired lieutenant colonel for the IDF who serves as the army’s chief cantor.

The Royal Concert Hall, or Concertgebouw, said in a statement on Sunday that it had pressed for months for a change to the program and canceled the concert, scheduled for Dec. 14, when one was not made.

“This decision was made because it was not possible to reach an agreement on an alternative to the performance by the IDF Chief Cantor,” the statement said.

It continued, “For The Concertgebouw, it is crucial that the IDF is actively involved in a controversial war and that Abramson is a visible representative of it.”

The Hanukkah concert was rebooted in 2015, 70 years after the Nazis ended the longstanding tradition in the city and murdered three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population. The relaunch was billed as a chance to connect and celebrate the city’s Jewish residents, a community that has never come close to its pre-Holocaust size.

Now, the Chanukkah Concert Foundation says the Concertgebouw is contributing to the “isolation the Jewish community feels it is being pushed into in the current era,” even as the concert hall said it “always remain a place where the Jewish community is welcome.”

“The Jewish community has been facing exclusion in the cultural sector for over two years,” the Chanukah Concert Foundation said in a statement on Sunday. “It is ironic that the Concertgebouw — where Chanukah celebrations have been held since December 14, 1921, a tradition interrupted only by World War II — is now confronting the Jewish community with exclusion and isolation.”

The Chanukah Concert Foundation said it would pursue legal action against the Concertgebouw, whose characterization of Abramson as an IDF representative it rejected.

“He is an independent artist, invited by the State of Israel to sing at national memorial ceremonies,” the foundation wrote in a statement. “Labeling him as an IDF representative fosters unwarranted negative sentiment toward Israel, the Jewish community in the Netherlands and visitors to the concert, purposely turning this great musical experience into a political event.”

The cantor’s website says his performances around the world are done “with the intention of developing and strengthening ties with Jewish communities around the world, and intensifying connections with Israel and with the IDF.”

The Hanukkah concert’s cancellation is not the first time the war in Gaza has interfered with plans at the Concertgebouw. In November 2023, a planned benefit concert for the Israeli humanitarian nonprofit Zaka was canceled after the Concertgebouw demanded that half of the proceeds go to a Dutch Palestinian aid group that had been accused of anti-Israel bias. The following year, the concert canceled performances by a Jerusalem-based quartet citing “safety” concerns over planned pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Amsterdam has been a hotspot of such demonstrations. Last year, the city was roiled by pro-Palestinian protests, and a soccer game between the local team and Maccabi Tel Aviv sparked antisemitic mob violence against Israeli supporters.

In March, the University of Amsterdam suspended a student exchange with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, accusing the school of failing to distance itself from the war in Gaza.

As for the Hanukkah concert, the concert foundation says it will “assume that the concerts on December 14th will go ahead, including Cantor Abramson,” amid its planned litigation.

The Concertgebouw, meanwhile, has removed the concert from its website, where among the other upcoming performances listed are multiple by the Jerusalem Quartet, the group whose concert was canceled last year over security concerns.

“Making this decision was extremely difficult,” Concertgebouw Director Simon Reinink in a statement about the Hanukkah concert cancellation. “Only in very exceptional cases do we make an exception to our important principle of artistic freedom. To our great regret, such an exception is now occurring. The intended performance by the chief cantor of the IDF is at odds with our mission: connecting people through music.”

The post Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall cancels annual Hanukkah concert, citing singer’s IDF ties appeared first on The Forward.

Last year, Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall held its 10th anniversary of a Hanukkah concert series that was rebooted 70 years after it was halted by the Nazis, in what some Dutch Jews saw as a repudiation of antisemitism that had swelled during the war in Gaza.

This year, the concert has been called off — and the prestigious concert hall citing the chosen singer’s ties to the Israeli army.

The Chanukah Concert Foundation, which organizes the event, had booked Shai Abramson to sing. Abramson is a retired lieutenant colonel for the IDF who serves as the army’s chief cantor.

The Royal Concert Hall, or Concertgebouw, said in a statement on Sunday that it had pressed for months for a change to the program and canceled the concert, scheduled for Dec. 14, when one was not made.

“This decision was made because it was not possible to reach an agreement on an alternative to the performance by the IDF Chief Cantor,” the statement said.

It continued, “For The Concertgebouw, it is crucial that the IDF is actively involved in a controversial war and that Abramson is a visible representative of it.”

The Hanukkah concert was rebooted in 2015, 70 years after the Nazis ended the longstanding tradition in the city and murdered three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population. The relaunch was billed as a chance to connect and celebrate the city’s Jewish residents, a community that has never come close to its pre-Holocaust size.

Now, the Chanukkah Concert Foundation says the Concertgebouw is contributing to the “isolation the Jewish community feels it is being pushed into in the current era,” even as the concert hall said it “always remain a place where the Jewish community is welcome.”

“The Jewish community has been facing exclusion in the cultural sector for over two years,” the Chanukah Concert Foundation said in a statement on Sunday. “It is ironic that the Concertgebouw — where Chanukah celebrations have been held since December 14, 1921, a tradition interrupted only by World War II — is now confronting the Jewish community with exclusion and isolation.”

The Chanukah Concert Foundation said it would pursue legal action against the Concertgebouw, whose characterization of Abramson as an IDF representative it rejected.

“He is an independent artist, invited by the State of Israel to sing at national memorial ceremonies,” the foundation wrote in a statement. “Labeling him as an IDF representative fosters unwarranted negative sentiment toward Israel, the Jewish community in the Netherlands and visitors to the concert, purposely turning this great musical experience into a political event.”

The cantor’s website says his performances around the world are done “with the intention of developing and strengthening ties with Jewish communities around the world, and intensifying connections with Israel and with the IDF.”

The Hanukkah concert’s cancellation is not the first time the war in Gaza has interfered with plans at the Concertgebouw. In November 2023, a planned benefit concert for the Israeli humanitarian nonprofit Zaka was canceled after the Concertgebouw demanded that half of the proceeds go to a Dutch Palestinian aid group that had been accused of anti-Israel bias. The following year, the concert canceled performances by a Jerusalem-based quartet citing “safety” concerns over planned pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Amsterdam has been a hotspot of such demonstrations. Last year, the city was roiled by pro-Palestinian protests, and a soccer game between the local team and Maccabi Tel Aviv sparked antisemitic mob violence against Israeli supporters.

In March, the University of Amsterdam suspended a student exchange with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, accusing the school of failing to distance itself from the war in Gaza.

As for the Hanukkah concert, the concert foundation says it will “assume that the concerts on December 14th will go ahead, including Cantor Abramson,” amid its planned litigation.

The Concertgebouw, meanwhile, has removed the concert from its website, where among the other upcoming performances listed are multiple by the Jerusalem Quartet, the group whose concert was canceled last year over security concerns.

“Making this decision was extremely difficult,” Concertgebouw Director Simon Reinink in a statement about the Hanukkah concert cancellation. “Only in very exceptional cases do we make an exception to our important principle of artistic freedom. To our great regret, such an exception is now occurring. The intended performance by the chief cantor of the IDF is at odds with our mission: connecting people through music.”

—
The post Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall cancels annual Hanukkah concert, citing singer’s IDF ties appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Thirty years ago, on November 4, 1995, I attended a pro-peace rally in Tel Aviv’s central square. It was a joyous, carnival-like atmosphere.

“We have decided to give peace a chance — a peace that will resolve most of Israel’s problems,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said. “I was a military man for 27 years. I fought as long as there was no chance for peace. I believe there is a chance for peace. A big chance. We must seize it.” Rabin stepped off the stage and headed toward his awaiting car at the bottom of a concrete stairway. Then, three shots rang out, and the trajectory of Israel’s history changed.

It seems incredible in this era of tunnel vision, radicalism and cynicism to even recall Rabin’s last words. His assassin did more than end a man’s life. He also ended the possibility of a better version of Israel, and set the country on a course that has led to a crisis of identity, democracy and purpose.

The Israel that emerged after Rabin’s death was one deprived of its moral center. It was an Israel where fear triumphed over hope, where slogans replaced strategy, and where a cunning politician named Benjamin Netanyahu deployed every conceivable cynicism to stay in power. The tragedy of Rabin’s death is not only what was lost, but what was gained: a political culture of manipulation and paralysis.

Rabin’s realism

Rabin was a successful leader because he embodied a realism forged in battle, combined with the moral courage to pursue reconciliation with the Palestinians.

He knew that if Israel was going to remain a state that was both democratic and Jewish-majority, it needed to separate itself from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. He could see, too, that rule over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians would corrode Israel from within.

Because of these eminently sensible perspectives, in the months before his assassination, he was targeted by the most virulent and hysterical protest campaign in the country’s history. Led by the youthful Netanyahu, this campaign viewed Rabin’s willingness to partition the Holy Land, and to hand parts of biblical Israel to the Palestinians, as treason and heresy.

The outlines of a final settlement were already visible, and may have been achievable if Rabin had lived. They involved mutual recognition, phased withdrawal, a Palestinian state that was demilitarized but sovereign, and an Israel at peace with itself and its neighbors. The extremists on both sides, who hated compromise, would have lost their momentum. The world, and the Middle East, might have been spared a generation of bloodletting.

Instead, Netanyahu, elected as prime minister by a whisker in 1996, pretended to honor the Oslo Accords while quietly strangling them. His project ever since has been to make Israelis disdain Rabin’s vision of pragmatic decency. He came into office on a wave of fear following Hamas suicide bombings, and his consistent message to Israelis since has been that peace is naïve, and negotiation with the Palestinians is futile.

This anniversary of Rabin’s assassination could not come at a more striking moment — with Israel involved in a fragile ceasefire after two years of war, which have decisively proven just how disastrous Netanyahu’s omnipresence in Israel has been.

The few times I met Rabin, as a young political reporter at The Jerusalem Post — including once at his home in Ramat Aviv — I was struck by his how his combination of skepticism and blunt pragmatism with a grasp of strategic realities gave him a kind of credibility that was essential.

That kind of leadership is what Israel needs, again, today. But where can it be found?

‘Who could possibly replace him?’

The convulsions of the past two years, triggered by Hamas’ invasion and massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, have undermined Netanyahu’s efforts to shape Israel’s future around a rejection of peace. Every poll since that day has shown Netanyahu losing the next election, and badly.

Yet as Israelis contemplate life after Netanyahu, the same lament is heard again and again: “But who could possibly replace him?”

That refrain is as revealing as it is absurd. Versions of the same sentiment have been heard in every country that has fallen under the thrall of an authoritarian populist cloaked in democratic legitimacy: Russia under President Vladimir Putin, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The question accepts the premise of personal indispensability that such leaders cultivate — the notion that the state cannot function without them. In all these states, the idea that no one else could govern is a myth propagated by those who benefit from the paralysis.

Who could replace Netanyahu? Not one person, but a democratic alliance — a potential coalition of competence, sanity, and moral seriousness that Israel has long deferred in favor of the familiar. They could band together to try and create a 61-seat majority in the Knesset, enough to oust Netanyahu from the prime minister’s office in the next election

Perhaps best primed to lead them is former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. He possesses a moral gravitas born of personal sacrifice — he lost a son in the line of duty in the early days of the Gaza war — and combines military realism with a social conscience and intellectual curiosity rare among generals. The son of Moroccan immigrants, he could bridge Israel’s enduring ethnic divides. Quiet in manner, almost austere, he has reminded many of Rabin: uncharismatic but unbreakable.

Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who briefly governed before the 2022 election, remains an alternative. Once dismissed as a television personality dabbling in politics, Lapid, the face of liberal centrism, has matured into a disciplined leader of the opposition. His brief premiership was notable for calm professionalism and relative honesty.

He is secular, pro-market, and pro-Western, a believer in diplomacy and inclusion. His weakness: For some Israelis he seems too polished, too Tel Aviv, insufficiently rooted in the gritty national narrative that Rabin embodied. Still, Lapid commands international respect and a clear moral compass.

Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, is the conscience of Israel’s old left: articulate, brave and deeply troubled by the moral decay of occupation and theocracy. He speaks plainly about the dangers of fascism and clerical capture, and his military record protects him from the usual accusations of naivety.

Golan’s appeal is limited to the educated and idealistic minority — but history has a way of catching up to such men. It doesn’t hurt that on Oct. 7, he picked up a gun and rushed into the field, in southern Israel, hunting for terrorists.

On the pragmatic right, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stands as a curious figure: religious but modern, nationalist but not delusional. His short-lived government was marked by quiet competence and a surprising willingness to include Arabs in his governing coalition —something no Likud leader has ever dared. He might, if he returns, be the one who can sell compromise to the right without appearing weak.

And former Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, often caricatured as a hawk, has in recent years emerged as a voice of secular rationalism. A blunt ex-Soviet with the instincts of a bar bouncer — a job that, in fact, appears on his resume — Lieberman detests the Haredi stranglehold on Netanyahu’s current government. He also understands the demographic peril posed by the occupation of millions of Palestinians — which is odd, considering that he is a West Bank settler. He is no liberal, but he is pragmatic and worldly — precisely the kind of tough realist who could, paradoxically, enable reform.

United by fury

What will matter is not ideology but integrity — the willingness to see the country as a shared project rather than a personal fiefdom.

The real challenge is the electoral math. Netanyahu’s machine persists because it is unified: a coalition of Haredim and ultranationalists bound by shared interests and an obsession with power. The opposition, meanwhile, is fragmented by persistent issues of ego and ideology.

To reach 61 seats, a post-Netanyahu bloc must unite centrists, parts of the pragmatic right, and the Arab parties. This need not mean Arab ministers in the cabinet, but it does require normalization of Arab political participation, as Bennett and Lapid briefly demonstrated. The taboo, although it was broken, is not yet dead. It should be.

But the arithmetic, while brutal, isn’t impossible — because a majority could be united not by ideology, but rather by fury. Fury at corruption, at extremism, at being held hostage by fringe coalitions. A leader who can channel that anger, which keeps building in society, into constructive purpose will find fertile ground.

Amid tragedy, a lesson

That night 30 years ago, I ran to nearby Ichilov Hospital after Rabin’s shooting. Inside, Rabin was already on the operating table. I was there when Rabin’s top aide, Eitan Haber, walked out to tell reporters — at the time, I was night editor of the Israel bureau of the Associated Press — of Rabin’s death.

The reporters, ordinarily immune to showing public emotion, cried out. I have goosebumps at the memory of it.

I filed updates to the story from my apartment overlooking the square where Rabin was shot until the early hours of the morning. Around 3 a.m., it occurred to me that no new prime minister had been announced. That something so obvious was overlooked reflects the degree of shock that characterized the moment. I called Uri Dromi, a key government spokesman, and asked who was now in charge of the country. He didn’t know either.

Dromi called me a short while later to tell me that, in fact, the ministers had held a vote and had in effect elected Shimon Peres, the foreign minister and a longtime rival of Rabin’s for the Labor Party leadership. Peres was destined to fumble the ball: he missed a chance to call a snap election that he would have won by a mile, and by the time he did call a vote, in May 1996, the country was in the throes of a spasm of terrorism.

But the country carried on. Peres replaced Rabin. Netanyahu replaced Peres. Life finds a way forward, in a country as in a person.

No one is irreplaceable.

The post Will Israel ever have another leader who truly wants peace? appeared first on The Forward.