The very fact that the concert was held is insulting to Holocaust survivors

Efraim Zuroff

Shevach Weiss, head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, said he was "appalled" by the decision to perform Wagner's music.

But Israeli Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel on Thursday rejected an appeal by Holocaust survivors and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre against the performance.

Mr Zuroff charged that the Rishon Lezion Orchestra Symphony Orchestra performed Wagner "because it wanted publicity".

"The very fact that the concert was held is insulting to Holocaust survivors. It is a shame for the state of Israel," he said.

Freedom of expression

According to Judy Lash Balint, an independent Israeli journalist, some Holocaust survivors said the decision to perform Wagner in Israel was a positive step.

The orchestra argued that playing the German composers was a matter of freedom of expression.

Orchestra director Ehud Gross said that more than 50 years since the end of the Nazi regime, "it is time to introduce this music to the public".

Gross said the Siegfried Idyll was written by Wagner as a love offering to his wife Cosima to mark the birth of their son Siegfried.

Israel is home to some 300,000 survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, and on one day every year the country comes to a standstill as a siren wails in remembrance of the Nazis' victims.