Laundering Zionism through classical music
'Melbourne' Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming propaganda tour
While self-describing as ‘apolitical’, the MSO is embarking on a grand European tour, headlining an overtly pro-Israel pianist, with the backing and patronage of multiple Zionist donors, reasserting itself as a thoroughly Zionist institution.
The following text was written in collaboration with anonymous members of the classical music industry, and with First Nations consultation.
Recent context
On August 11 2024, during a solo recital for the MSO, pianist Jayson Gillham introduced and performed a piece of music dedicated to Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza1.
In response to Gillham’s on-stage comments, the MSO immediately cancelled his next performance and emailed2 patrons to assure them that he would no longer be appearing:
It has been a priority for us to address this difficult situation today … In standing for humanity and peace we seek for every one of our performances to be a welcome and safe place for all.
In a later attempt to explain the cancellation of Gillham, the MSO stated that ‘a concert platform is not an appropriate stage for political comment’.
This, of course, was disingenuous. The MSO often associates itself with overtly political causes. For example, the orchestra held a fundraising concert for Ukraine in 2022, and also threw its support behind the Voice to Parliament campaign.
Nowhere are the politics of the MSO more apparent than in its upcoming Zionist-funded propaganda tour of Europe, which begins next month (August 2025).
According to MSO Chair, Edgar Myer:
The decision to embark on the Europe tour heralds our first return to the region in more than 10 years. The opportunity to perform on some of the world’s great stages serves to promote the cultural identity of our city, showcasing the best of Australian arts to a global audience.
Despite Myer’s hubris, the MSO is currently both financially and reputationally embattled. In 2024, the orchestra made an AUD3.3 million loss3.
In August of that year, while Gillham received overwhelming public support, the MSO deleted the names and biographies of its managers and directors from its website, and closed its call centre to inbound calls.
Currently, the orchestra is attempting to explain its act of political discrimination against Gillham in the Australian court, having failed in its bid to have the case thrown out.
The orchestra is not attempting to repair the damage it has caused locally with principled audience members, with musicians who withdrew from scheduled MSO performances in solidarity with Gillham, or with Gillham himself.
Rather, with this tour, it is doubling down on its Zionism, hypocrisy, and political alignment with US imperialist interests.
Zionists at the MSO
The MSO’s European tour is supported by the Gandel Foundation and the ‘MSO Europe Circle Partners’.
On 13 October 2023, during the first week of the Zionist entity’s current genocidal campaign, Gandel Foundation patriarch John Gandel told the Financial Review that Israel had ‘no choice’ but to go ‘all out’ in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinian families were already pulling bodies from the rubble.
John Gandel and his wife Pauline are long-time billionaire associates of current Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu, contributing to his rise through occupation politics from the beginning of his career.
In the Australian colony, the Gandels fund and collaborate with occupation lobbyists and propagandists, including the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and the United Israel Appeal (UIA).
The ZFA is an openly genocidal anti-Palestinian hate group with close ties to the the Australian government and media. Their primary activities are lobbyism, propaganda, disinformation, and the vitriolic targeting of Palestinians and their allies.
The UIA, also known as Keren Hayesod, is a global Zionist organisation closely tied to the occupation regime. It was established in 1920 to fund and support the genocidal objectives of Zionist colonialism in Palestine.
The Gandels also fund organisations dedicated to the Zionist indoctrination of young people. For example, they are the ‘Principal Australian Supporter’ of Birthright, the propaganda tour organisation targeting Jewish youth.
The MSO’s Chief Conductor (and conductor for the European tour) Jaime Martin, is funded ‘in memory of’ wealthy Zionists Marc and Eva Besen, who were close personal associates of Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion.
The Besens have contributed directly to the colonisation of Palestine through the UIA, the ZFA, the New Israel Fund (NIF), and the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
The JNF is a major financial and colonial arm of the Zionist entity. In 1940, the JNF created the so-called ‘Village Files’: carefully constructed surveys and records of Palestinian villages. This intelligence-gathering laid the groundwork for the Nakba. It was the JNF who then concealed the mass graves and ruins of depopulated Palestinian villages under invasive European pine plantations.
Today, the JNF remains actively involved in the oppression, dispossession, and expulsion of Palestinians.
The MSO’s other Zionist patrons and ‘Europe Circle Partners’ include Debbie Dadon (current chair of the Besen Family Foundation), David and Kathie Smorgon (whose affiliations include UIA Victoria), The Finkel Foundation (whose affiliations include the JNF), and the infamous Zionist law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler (ABL).
ABL’s sole senior partner, Mark Leibler, is a powerful Zionist lobbyist and attack dog, operating at the highest levels of Australian colonial government. He is former president of the ZFA, a position now held by his son Jeremy.
ABL is also acting for MSO against Gillham in the Australian Federal Court.
Meanwhile, a ‘Co-Deputy Chair’ of the MSO Board is Farrel Meltzer.
Meltzer operates an investment company which he named after Orde Wingate, a British Zionist coloniser, war criminal and torturer, who led a brutal private militia against Palestinians in the 1930s.
Wingate’s so-called ‘Special Night Squads’ were drawn from recruits within the Haganah. Known for the arbitrary shooting of Palestinian villagers, Wingate is admired by Zionists, who consider him the spiritual forefather of the IOF4.
The ‘Wingate Group’ is also contributing to the MSO’s European tour as a patron of the ‘MSO Europe Circle’.
The other ‘Co-Deputy Chair’ of the MSO Board is former Labor politician Martin Foley, who has visited the Zionist entity on taxpayer and Zionist-funded propaganda junkets.
In 2013, a Zionist Council of Victoria event was held for Foley and other parliamentarian junket attendees. At the event, Foley assured the Zionist Council that ‘the Labor Party is well and truly a friend of Israel’.
In 2012, Foley described the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as ‘racist’ and ‘anti-Semitic’.
Foley also currently sits on the board of the intractably Zionist-affiliated Rising Festival.
Like John and Pauline Gandel, Pratt Foundation matriarch Jeanne Pratt holds an MSO ‘Honorary Appointment’.
In 2006, the Pratt Foundation developed ‘Australian Soldier Park’5 in occupied Ber Asaabeaa as a ‘permanent’ memorial to the Australian light horse regiments who invaded Palestine during world war one. Australian soldiers committed numerous atrocities including massacres of villagers — laying the groundwork for Zionist colonialism in Palestine.
A complete list of Zionist affiliations would require a much longer text. What I’m providing here is merely the tip of the Zionist iceberg that is the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Khatia Buniatishvili
The MSO continues to distance itself from Gillham, with whom the orchestra has performed and recorded on a number of occasions. For its European tour, the orchestra has pointedly chosen to headline French/Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili6 as soloist.
Buniatishvili has no past connection with the MSO, and has virtually no connection to Australia. Her headlining refutes Myer’s pronouncement that the tour will ‘promote the cultural identity of our city, showcasing the best of Australian arts’.
Buniatishvili is celebrated through western institutions as a bold advocate for ‘human rights’, yet her ‘advocacy’ is wholly contained by US state department interests. For example, Buniatishvili is an outspoken critic of Russia, yet publicly supports Zionism and performs in Israel7.
Buniatishvili has performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) multiple times, both within the entity and abroad. For the IPO, she headlined a private fundraiser in London, and another live-streamed fundraiser hosted by Zionist actor Helen Mirren8.
Zionist leader and war criminal Shimon Peres stated that ‘it is impossible to imagine Israel without its Philharmonic Orchestra’. The fabrication of ‘Israeli arts’ has been a central, not peripheral, element of the Zionist colonial project and the manufacture of ‘Brand Israel’ — one that the MSO is only too happy to align with.
Classical music as propaganda
The politics of the MSO’s European tour are unambiguous and ham-fisted.
For example, while the tour features pieces by Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, the national identity of these two artists has been completely erased from its text.
Instead, the MSO’s promotional material muses that Tchaikovsky’s work is ‘flavoured with Ukrainian folk songs’. Of Mussorgsky, we are told only to consider that his work is evocative of Paris, Rome and ‘majestic’ Kiev. Clownish ducking and weaving from an orchestra who — let’s not forget — claims their stage as ‘apolitical’.
The MSO’s ideology is clear:
Western imperialist actors and regimes are enlightened, civilised and axiomatically ‘apolitical’.
The Zionist entity, in particular, transcends politics, and is always to be celebrated.
Any mention of Palestine, of official US enemy states, or of Jayson Gillham, is axiomatically political.
‘Treaty’
The MSO’s European tour will also feature First Nations artists Deborah Cheetham Fraillon and William Barton, championed through a newly commissioned work titled Treaty. Without doubt, these are talented artists deserving of a platform.
It must be acknowledged, however, that Indigenous and model minority creative arts and political struggles are frequently platformed and exploited by Zionists to image-launder their institutions, organisations, events, propaganda, lobbyism, smear campaigns, and acts of censorship.
The cohort of wealthy Zionists behind the MSO and its European tour have a long history of strategic alignment with (non-Palestinian) Indigenous work — deflecting criticism as they uphold the Zionist entity and erase Palestine.
Sophie Galaise, former MSO chief executive (who cancelled Gillham over the mere mention of the murder of Palestinian journalists), has specifically referred to the commissioning of First Nations’ work as providing the orchestra with a ‘more inclusive and forward-looking’ shape.
In summary
The MSO is not ‘apolitical’. It is financially and ideologically beholden to a large number of wealthy, influential Zionists. These individuals and their organisations are actively funding the extermination of Palestinians, while disseminating propaganda, lobbying for Israel, and targeting Palestinian solidarity.
The activities of the MSO directly reflect this infiltration.
Rather than address its complicity, the MSO is doubling down with a European vanity project; a propaganda tour reaffirming its commitment to western imperialism.
On Thursday this week, journalist Ahmad Abu Aisha was directly targeted and murdered by Israel, bringing the number of journalists killed in Gaza by the occupation entity since October 2023 to at least 229 . This follows last week's massacre at Al-Baqa seaside cafe, where the entity killed at least 80 Palestinians, including several journalists.
The email read:
‘Mr Gillham will not be performing in the advertised concert with the MSO this Thursday night at Melbourne Town Hall. Customers will be advised of this change to Thursday's program as soon as possible. The MSO was at no point made aware of the content of the remarks Mr Gillham was intending to make. They were made completely without authority. The MSO understands that his remarks have caused offence and distress and offers a sincere apology. It has been a priority for us to address this difficult situation today … In standing for humanity and peace we seek for every one of our performances to be a welcome and safe place for all.’
For this deficit, Myer cited ‘case management and response costs’ and ‘staff costs associated with restructure and separation’. Both these factors can be associated with the legal and structural fallout from MSO’s cancellation of Gillham.
Zionist ‘historian’, Zeev Schiff:
‘The teaching of Orde Charles Wingate, his character and leadership were a cornerstone for many of the Haganah’s commanders, and his influence can be seen in the Israel Defense Force’s combat doctrine’
Australian Soldier Park features in my recent picture book Pull it Down, a board book for young children about colonial monuments. Both Pull it Down and The Pull it Down Reader are available from Slingshot Books.
This is a diversion, but I would encourage my readers to visit Buniatishvili’s website to read the text that she, presumably, has chosen for her ‘about’ page. The following is an excerpt:
‘Khatia’s great career has come quite naturally, without a struggle. The sun has no need to move mountains to exist for it rises and shines for all. And these are the words that spring to mind when one sees her bursting onto the stage or in life: her hair flowing, her fine figure quite the Parisian, her lips smiling, her light sylph-like steps and her feline body. But the rose will show its thorns if it feels what it holds dear to be threatened. She won’t be made to give up a humanitarian project. She won’t be prevented from helping the country in which she was born and raised. She won’t be forced to play in a land that pours scorn on her values. She won’t have playing partners forced upon her who do not inspire human respect and great artistic admiration in equal measure. For that matter, nothing can be imposed on this young lady of the air whose wing-beats pollinate works and who sprinkles a musical cloud of golden powder to the four winds.’
Zionist actor Helen Mirren, in an interview with Zionist media, during which she stated that ‘Israel must exist for eternity’:
'I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.'
Thank you for great investigative journalism.