Hamilton, in addition to being an award-winning Broadway phenomenon, is notoriously bipartisan show.
“I feel like this really crosses political lines,” Lin-Manuel Miranda told me a year ago. “Dick Cheney and his wife came to the show and said wonderful things about it. I had a wonderful talk with Laura Bush and [a] Bush daughter about the show. Peggy Noonan has seen it. The reminder that our Founders were human is something that everyone can get behind regardless of our political affiliations.”
Yet that wasn’t the case last Saturday when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, went to see the show.
When he took his seat, accompanied by Secret Service guards and allegedly Mossad, Netanyahu was booed and heckled over Palestine as well as being loudly cheered.
The reaction was recorded on social media:
At Hamilton with Netanyahu attending. Two women leave the theater screaming, “Free Palestine!” as they shove their way through the security.
— Melanie Colton (@melanie_colton) September 25, 2016
At what must be the safest #Hamilton since Obama. Netanyahu in the house, plus Sec Service, TSA and some guys who very much look like Mossad
— Liz Hoffman (@lizrhoffman) September 25, 2016
It’s hard enough getting to see Hamilton on a Saturday night: Netanyahu just in front added airport security pic.twitter.com/oW343anIW9
— Greg Callus (@Greg_Callus) September 25, 2016
The reception meted out to the Israeli Prime minister is hardly in keeping with the spirit of the show.