Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen has never been performed in Israel. Now, for the first time, the Israeli Government has decreed that, in keeping with the 2013 announcement of Tel Aviv's being granted the 2020 Olympiad, and as a gesture of universal peace and forgiveness, Wagner's Ring will be the key cultural event highlighting the games. Heinrich von Hoffmanstahl, the world's greatest authority on the works of Wagner, an Austrian, has been engaged to conduct, and he has full authority to cast the singers. The Israeli Philharmonic will play with a huge international cast. Will the festival come off, or will powerful forces world-wide make another Munich out of the whole event? The PLO plots against it, as does the Hamas, the militant Islamic terrorist group and the Lebanese based Hezbollah. The clock ticks and the world waits.