Artists, Weighing Risks, Cancel Dates in Israel
JERUSALEM, Aug. 22 — The show planned for
next week at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv was to have been Israel's biggest pop concert of the year: an appearance by Red Hot Chili Peppers, the veteran rock band from Los Angeles.
But the 20,000 fans who had already bought tickets were bitterly disappointed last week when the band canceled its visit, citing security concerns heightened by a recent Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem and a renewed State Department warning against travel to Israel.
"I couldn't take the risk anymore," said Peter Mensch, the group's manager, asserting that his main concern was for the safety of the crowd at the concert, which had been set for next Tuesday.
Already unsettled by the bombing of a Tel Aviv disco in June, the group had been urged to go ahead with the show by former President Bill Clinton in a chance encounter at a residence in California with the band's singer, Anthony Kiedis, but the latest events tipped the scales against coming, Mr. Mensch said.
The cancellation was the latest evidence that along with the tourists driven away by the months of violence here, a significant list of top foreign performing artists are also canceling visits, affecting the Israeli cultural scene.
Israeli officials say that the security concerns are understandable but exaggerated, given the array of daily performances across the country by local and foreign talent. But for those artists who stayed away the threat was real.
"I didn't want to get killed, it's as simple as that," Mose Allison, the American jazz singer, said in a phone interview. He was supposed to appear in Israel last February. "After 50 years of performing I didn't need to put myself in that position.
"I wanted to go. I was looking forward to going. I kept looking for news it was settling down, that they were getting together, but it was getting worse. Why take the risk?"
Similar considerations, if put less bluntly, were behind cancellations by several foreign performers over the past year. Other artists have arrived, some after sending advance teams that satisfied themselves that safety would be assured.
Israeli promoters and concert organizers say that they often have to make intensive efforts these days to persuade foreign artists that performing here is not risky and that the concert venues and hotels are secure.
While some artists have refused even to consider coming, many prominent performers have shown up, from the Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra to the Irish pop group Westlife and the British group Five, playing to enthusiastic audiences in concerts that went off without a hitch.
Foreign artists are an integral part of Israeli cultural life, which remains vibrant despite the pall cast by nearly 11 months of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence.
"The last sign of sanity is that artists should keep coming here," said Shuki Weiss, the Israeli producer of the canceled Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. "But we have to understand that while we live with a feeling that cultural events must go on, and we continue going out to cafes and movies with a certain sense of security, we can't demand the same feeling from people coming from abroad. I have no complaints against the group."
Mr. Weiss said that there had been a 50 percent drop in the number of pop music performers he had been able to bring to Israel compared with previous years, and that the Red Hot Chili Peppers' cancellation could create a ripple effect that would make it even harder to attract other big-name groups.
"It took years to put Israel on the map of world tours, and with this cancellation I feel that we've moved back several years," Mr. Weiss said.
Despite cancellations at some festivals, most of the scheduled acts have appeared. At the Israel Festival, the country's most prestigious arts festival held earlier this summer, all but one of the 28 groups and companies from abroad took part as planned, organizers said.
Among the leading artists who arrived was the soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa from New Zealand, the Savonlina Opera of Finland and the Piccolo Theater Company of Milan.
The lone cancellation, though, was by a major attraction, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from New York. Julia Blackburn, the executive director of the company, said that dancers and staff became concerned about security after two bombings in Israel weeks before the planned performance in June. Festival officials said that parents of teenage dancers in the troupe were particularly worried.
The Rosas Dance Company, a prominent modern dance troupe from Beligum, canceled an appearance in January that was to have been a highlight of a dance series at the Performing Arts Center in Tel Aviv. About half the foreign performers failed to show up for an annual arts festival sponsored by the Tel Aviv municipality last November, in the early weeks of the Palestinian uprising.
While guest artists have continued performing with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, there have been some cancellations, among them the American soprano Christine Brewer, who was to appear in November, and Leonard Slatkin, musical director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, who had been scheduled to conduct concerts here in May.
Foreign participants in the New Israeli Opera's season arrived, but one company, the Stuttgart Opera from Germany, canceled a planned performance in October. This month, a group of Chinese opera, dance and acrobatic performers are appearing at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in a show accompanying an exhibition of rare artifacts from China.
Stomp, a popular British percussion group performing street music, canceled a scheduled performance in June, but a summer festival of world music was held with the participation of the prominent Cuban musician Juan De Marcos.
Organizers of an annual international jazz festival next week at the Red Sea resort of Eilat said that there had been no cancellations by any overseas performers, including the American bassist Ron Carter and the New Orleans group Take Six. Eilat, at the southern tip of Israel, has been spared the terrorist bombings that have hit more centrally situated cities.
One cancellation had political overtones. The British singer Emma Kirkby, a specialist in Baroque music, canceled a performance in March in protest against Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
Israeli officials have generally avoided criticism of the security-related cancellations, saying they understand the concerns behind them. But there have been flashes of resentment.
After the Limón Dance Company canceled a performance at a festival in Karmiel, the festival director, Aharon Solomon, wrote to express his displeasure, said Mark Jones, the executive director of the company. Mr. Jones recalled that one line of the letter said, "It is a pity that citizens of the strongest nation in the world are afraid."
Mr. Slatkin, the conductor, said he was rebuked by Avi Shoshani, the manager of the Israel Philharmonic, who wrote him that "all true friends of Israel are coming." Mr. Slatkin had said he was worried about the safety of his family and himself.
Moshe Fogel, who is in charge of international relations at the Israeli culture ministry, was more diplomatic.
"I don't think we're in the business of lecturing artists, and we're not in the position to wag our finger at them," Mr. Fogel said. "In the final analysis people have to make personal decisions. But I wish they could get the full picture, because our feeling is that the reality of the situation is not fully expressed in the pictures broadcast on the news. Every night there are shows, plays, theater, and every form of cultural life goes on."