Belgian Jews criticize Flanders Opera for staging anti-Israeli premiere

Prominent Belgian Jews have harshly criticized the Flanders Opera in Antwerp for staging what they regard as an anti-Israeli, political event disguised as a premiere. The contested show was created by two Israelis.

The operatic production of "Samson and Delilah" is scheduled to premiere Tuesday, along with a political debate and film screening. Belgium's Jewish community has condemned the opera - directed by Omri Nitzan and Amir Nizar Zuabi - for dressing Philistine conquerors in Western garb while Hebrew fighters like Samson wear Arab clothes.

Samson, who lived in the 11th century BCE, was a partisan living under occupation of the Philistines - a powerful and technologically-advanced people of European roots. The Bible says he died at the hands of his occupiers, while killing many of his captors.

Zuabi and Nitzan's reverse-role adaptation of his love story with a Philistine woman leads Samson to become "history's first shaheed" (or martyr, in the Islamic tradition), they say. "Samson is a shaheed, and Delilah is his lover from the enemy camp," the directors explained.

"This isn't the first time public Flemish culture institutions stage unabashedly anti-Israel events," David Lowy, founder of the JOBI group for Belgian youth in Israel, told Haaretz. "Israel is misunderstood in Belgium and distorting Bible stories will only compound this. The analogy's ludicrous and state-funded bodies mustn't abet in it."

Guido Joris from the Dutch-language Jewish-affairs newspaper Joods Actueel condemned the event's political character, and the planned screening of a film calling Israel's 2002 military operation in the West Bank a "blood bath" at the event.

Jewish opinion-shapers also criticized the involvement of a state-funded institution in the show. "I imagine we are in store for Israeli flags burned, as we've seen in the past in Belgium," Joris said.

Nitzan insists that the opera's political messages are not an attempt to jump on Europe's pro-Palestinian bandwagon. A spokesperson from Flanders Opera said his institution isn't anti-Israeli and that the criticism is "premature," adding: "We may argue about the Mideast conflict, but there will be no flag burning."