There is a double bill benefit for the inappropriately-named Stop The War Coalition at the Hackney Empire in May.
One play is, of course, 7 Jewish Children. It will apparently have a music written by a Reem Kelani, a one time Gilad Atzmon collaborator who has now fallen out with the great man, because she has decided that he has colonised ‘her people’s music’ just as the perfidious Zionists colonised her country.
And the other play:
The second play, The Trainer explores the love story between a British Jew, Josh, and his Palestinian fiancée, Taghreed, who works in a gentlemen’s gym. Their story is interwoven with the bankrupting of composer, Keith Burstein, who was accused of “glorifying terrorism” in his opera, Manifest Destiny.
…
Corin Redgrave, who appeared at the first sold-out rehearsed reading in March said, “The Trainer takes the scandal of an artist bankrupted by the state . . . and brilliantly exposes the threat to our freedoms and civil liberties.”
Bankrupted by the state because he was accused of glorifying terrorism? That sounds terrible. Should we be supporting Keith Burstein?
No.
The clue here is that Burstein is being supported by Corin Redgrave, a luvvie who spent his entire life supporting the Gaddafi-funded rape-cult, the Workers Revolutionary Party. In other words, he is a man with a history of poor judgment.
So how was Burstein “bankrupted by the state”?
Simple. He wrote an opera about suicide bombers. The Evening Standard reviewed it. They found its glorification of terrorism distasteful. Burstein claimed that he hadn’t been glorifying terrorism.
He sued the Evening Standard for libel. Mr Justice Eady decided that this was an appropriate case for a jury trial. The Standard appealed. It won and was awarded costs. Burstein had to pay them, and was consequently bankrupted.
In no sense was Burstein ‘bankrupted by the state’.
He was bankrupted by his own stupidity.
