Zubin Mehta’s tone-deaf chutzpah

In an interview on Jan. 15 with India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai, conductor Zubin Mehta proudly announced that he had cancelled all of his scheduled performances in Israel for the coming year “because of [his] objection to Mr. [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s way of treating the whole Palestinian issue.”

Mehta, 89, who spent 50 years at the director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, added, “I hope he is outvoted by the next election. But it doesn’t seem like it, because he has a huge majority in parliament, mostly made of religious Jews.”

As if this false blanket statement weren’t bad enough, the maestro didn’t even mention the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, celebrated by jihadists everywhere—including in the Palestinian Authority.

But at least he was honest about his activism.

Asked whether one can separate music from politics, he replied, “Well, I can’t and I never have. And I have many colleagues who are the same.”

Among these is Daniel Barenboim, whom Sardesai invoked in the interview as follows: “You’ve been vocal about not supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestine in the past. You’ve stood up for Argentina-born Israeli conductor, pianist and your friend … Barenboim. You’ve disapproved of Israeli lawmakers who banned his performances, because they were unhappy about him performing compositions by the great German composer [Richard] Wagner—due to his connections with Nazism, and because he was seen as Hitler’s favourite composer. You’ve often visited Ramallah in Palestine. You’ve worked with Arab musicians. Did you believe that a day would come when you would have an orchestra where Israelis and Palestinians together?”

Mehta jumped in, “Oh, yes, I have that now. In fact, I have a tour of Spain and Italy and Austria with an orchestra called the “[West-Eastern] Divan,” which was founded by Barenboim, and I’m taking over from him. That orchestra is made of Israelis and Palestinians who sit together and make music and get along absolutely without a problem.”

Since the above orchestra was conceived of in 1999 by Barenboim and his late buddy, the virulently (and violently) anti-Israel professor Edward Said, one can assume that the Israeli and Palestinian players get along through shared virtue-signalling about the Jewish state in general and Netanyahu in particular.

Ho-hum. There’s nothing new about intellectually inferior “artists” espousing fashionably left-wing ideas in order to feel morally superior. And to sell tickets to their concerts, of course.

What’s enraging, however, is Mehta’s ingratitude toward Israel, a country that has done nothing but shower him with adoration throughout his career. Nor was performing Wagner in Israel ever outlawed, as Sardesai suggested, without being corrected by Mehta.

Instead, it’s been more of a cultural taboo, out of sensitivity for and solidarity with Holocaust survivors. In 1981, when Mehta conducted an Israel Philharmonic concert featuring a Wagner encore, members of the audience were so offended that they began to scream and shout.

Ironically, those who favoured such performances argued that “art should be separated from the artist,” regardless of his ideology. Interesting that Mehta was able to uphold the principle when it came to a Nazi, yet now he’s refusing to perform in Israel because of policies he doesn’t like. And this is on the grounds that he can’t—and shouldn’t—”separate music from politics.”

Itzik Bonzel—an Israeli lawyer whose 22-year-old son, Amit, was a paratrooper killed on Dec. 6, 2023, while fighting Hamas in Gaza—blasted Mehta for his gall.

In an open letter on social media, Bonzel wrote:

Mr. Mehta,

I heard your announcement about cancelling your projects in Israel because of the Netanyahu government, and the feeling it arouses in me is not sorrow, but deep contempt. As a bereaved father, who gave what was most precious to him for the existence of this people, I stand before you and ask: Where do you get the audacity?

I would 1,000 times rather see Maestro Netanyahu conducting the complex orchestra of our survival than someone like you—detached, rootless and willing to perform the works of the German Wagner in the heart of Jerusalem, while being utterly deaf to the cry of our sons’ blood.

Let’s talk about your morality:

• You, who wounded the blood and soul of Holocaust survivors when you brazenly tried to force upon them the music of Wagner—the composer adored by Adolf Hitler—dare to preach morality to Netanyahu? You, whose hand did not tremble when you tried to echo in an Israeli concert hall the sounds that accompanied our forefathers to the crematoria, dare to criticize a prime minister elected to defend the remnant of the survivors? One who trampled the dignity of the survivors in the name of his “artistic freedom” is the last person on earth who can speak of values or leadership.

• In 2026, when Israel stands tall after existential battles, most of the country’s citizens don’t even know who you are. You live under the illusion that canceling your projects matters to anyone, but the truth is that you are not even a footnote on our agenda. Your contribution, if there ever was one, was erased the day you chose to use your status to attack someone fighting for his life.

• The true conductors of the people of Israel are not those in tailcoats with wooden batons. Our conductors are the heroes who fell at the front—our sons. They are the ones who conducted the intricate masterpiece of victory and renewal. Compared to their self-sacrifice, you are nothing more than a pitiable conductor who thinks his boycott statements will halt the melody of our lives.

• While Netanyahu stands on the front line against a hypocritical world to ensure “never again,” you busy yourself with empty political gestures and fleeing the stage. He is a leader who bears responsibility for the fate of the Jewish people; you are a detached artist who never understood what it means to be Israeli.

Make no mistake, Mr. Mehta. Your absence is not a punishment; it is a moral cleansing of the stables. Israel will continue to create, to play and to triumph. Our melody in 2026 is stronger and prouder than ever, and it will continue to resonate thanks to those who truly belong to this land, not thanks to visiting conductors who never had a place in our hearts.

Go in peace. Our true conductors are engraved on memorial tablets, and they are the ones who give us the strength to keep singing—without you.

With deep contempt and head held high,

A bereaved father,
A proud citizen of the State of Israel.

Amen to Bonzel’s every word, which is true music to our ears.