The University of Cambridge, the site of a new controversy against the backdrop of "cancel culture". The Students' Union of the prestigious British institution has decided to cancel performances in Cambridge on October 26 and 27 of an opera telling the story of Israel's first king, Saul, and his successor David.
To discover
- Download the Le Figaro app: the news at the heart of your day
For the student association, this cancellation is justified by the current context of the war between Israel and Hamas, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reports the Daily Mail Online on October 25.
'Cancel culture'
In the sights of this association: part of this operatic work composed by Georg Friedrich Handel in 1739, which recounts the murder of Goliath by David. Goliath was a Philistine, a people who lived in what is now the Gaza Strip 3000,<> years ago and who inspired the name "Palestine." A decision to cancel that caused a public outcry. "The cancellation of an <>th-century work based on the Bible seems to be a rather extreme example ofcancel culture, and that's an understatement," said Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at Cambridge, slamming the "absurd" nature of the measure.
For director Max Mason, the production "was not able to fully confront issues that have a striking synchronicity with the current conflict in the Middle East." None of the Students' Union's statements mention Hamas, the banned terrorist organization that launched a deadly attack on Israel on October 7.
Read alsoÉdouard Tétreau: "In the United States, the fall of the 'woke empire'?"
To justify such a decision, a statement was also issued on October 23 by the Student Union, which attributed the war between Israel and Hamas to "decades of violent oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state." The association said it "resolved" to "condemn the British government's support for the State of Israel and the distortions of the British mainstream media in their coverage of this conflict." The Student Union even insisted: "Only a mass uprising" throughout the Middle East "can liberate the Palestinian people." When asked by a student about the definition of a "mass uprising," the student who wrote the motion replied cryptically: "Think of the first intifada," the British daily reported, referring directly to the Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993, which was violently suppressed by the Israeli army.
Condemnation by Jewish Students' Association
The decision comes at a time when the university is already tense over the Israel-Hamas conflict. A few days earlier, a debate organised by the Cambridge Students' Association calling for solidarity with Palestine had been interrupted by the debate's chairman, Benjamin Knight. He feared that the debate could "incite violence".
The statement announcing the cancellation of the opera, which was strongly condemned by the Cambridge Jewish Students' Union, which demanded a "public apology", led the Students' Union's president, Fergus Kirman, to change the statement on 24 October.