First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams wrote in October 2014 that, though there were no First Amendment issues: "the killers ... chose to commit their crime. So did Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray and Osama bin Laden. We can expect no arias to be sung in their defense at the Metropolitan Opera, and there is no justification for any to be sung for the Klinghoffer killers." Former New York City mayor and opera fan Rudy Giuliani wrote that while the Met had a First Amendment right to present the opera,  "Equally, all of us have as strong a First Amendment right to ... warn people that this work is both a distortion of history and helped, in some ways, to foster a three decade long feckless policy of creating a moral equivalency between the Palestinian Authority, a corrupt terrorist organization, and the state of Israel, a democracy ruled by law."American writer and feminist Phyllis Chesler, an opera aficionado, conceded the legal and artistic right to perform the opera, but claimed that it "beatifies terrorism, both musically and in the libretto." In support of the production, Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of The Public Theater said: "It is not only permissible for the Met to do this piece – it's required for the Met to do the piece. It is a powerful and important opera."