There is no fundamental right to an undisturbed concert

II hadn’t thought about Lenny Kuhr in years. Until Sunday, when activists from Palestine Action NL disrupted her concert in Waalwijk with a protest against the terrible situation in Gaza. One of them walked onto the stage and asked: ‘Aren’t you ashamed of supporting genocide? Your children are complicit in genocide, you should be ashamed.” From the audience someone else shouted: ‘Free, Free Palestine’ and: ‘Lenny is a terrorist, she is a Zionist!’

Many people managed to find something about this quickly and with certainty. For example, the National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism said: ‘She is being attacked and called a terrorist, a Zionist, apparently just because she is Jewish and has family in Israel.’ Almost all House of Representatives faction leaders signed a letter that equated the protest with hatred of Jews: ‘This is not demonstrating, this is intimidating.’ Gert-Jan Segers added a Holocaust comparison: ‘Pro-Palestinian activists went on a Jewish hunt again. Just as Sobibor started with a sign in the Vondelpark, this everyday anti-Semitism could be the start of a new pogrom.’

I myself suffered from nuanced thoughts. As everyone knows, they are currently very out of fashion, but I’ll bore you with it anyway. On the one hand, Lenny Kuhr does indeed have family in Israel, including two draft grandchildren, who do not choose to refuse service. To the Dutch Dagblad (ND), the singer told how her grandson, who was injured during the horrific massacre on October 7, wants to return to his army unit. ‘Making his contribution’ is what Kuhr called this. On the other hand, people are generally not responsible for what their family members do. And it is never acceptable to demonstrate against people because of their religion or origin.

But back to the one side: it is not accurate that Kuhr received this protest ‘just because she is Jewish’. The word ‘Jewish’ cannot be heard in the images. Palestine Action NL said it was concerned, among other things, with Kuhr’s ‘opinion surrounding the attack on Gaza’. To give an example of this: in that ND interview, the singer expressed her explicit support for the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza. “Of course a fight is necessary now,” she stated. “I support the military operation that Israel is conducting.”

She said this in December, when the world had already watched for two months as the State of Israel committed horrific war crimes in Gaza, including the heartbreaking extermination and mutilation of thousands of children. Kuhr noted that violence ‘should be as short and minimal as possible’, but short and minimal was already miles behind us at that moment. On the other hand: Kuhr is a musician, not a government leader. I don’t know if it is right to take action against an individual without political power.

But on the one hand: in a democracy, protest may be grating. No one’s freedom or safety was in danger in Waalwijk. There is no fundamental right to an undisturbed concert. And I can understand that the genocide and famine in Gaza makes people so desperate that they want to do everything in their peaceful power to draw attention to it.

I was reminded of the demonstration against the presence of Israeli President Herzog at the opening of the Holocaust museum. On the one hand, that protest was completely justified. Herzog had no business there after he first held not only Hamas but all Palestinians responsible for October 7, and then wrote ‘I believe in you’ on a bomb intended for Gaza. The fact that he later barely apologized for this – it had been ‘not very careful’ – does little to change that. On the other hand, I would have wished with all my heart all those present at that opening, and certainly the Holocaust survivor and his great-granddaughter, a dignified and healing day.

I think sometimes it is necessary to hold conflicting considerations and feelings together, and to reconcile with the fact that life in a democratic society can be inconsistent and messy. Sometimes an event is shocking and justified at the same time. Painful and necessary at the same time. At the same time reprehensible and vital.