Skip to main content

Caryl Churchill's Gaza play is anti-war not anti-semitic

[UPDATE - The Guardian reported on 16 March that BBC Radio 4 is refusing to broadcast the play Seven Jewish Children claiming it might damage the BBC's impartiality. The BBC is caving in to the zionists again. In the footsteps of the refusal to show the Gaza humanitarian appeal this is truly unbelievable and outrageous. They'll probably refuse to report the next Israeli war against the Palestinians on the pretext it might create sympathy for Palestinians.

Protest to the BBC using the online complaints form here]

Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Some critics - yes Melanie Phillips is among the zionist attack dogs - have claimed the 10-minute play, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, by British playwright Caryl Churchill, is anti-Semitic. See Jeffrey Goldberg's 'critique' here The Royal Court Theatre's Blood Libel.

Churchill’s play is currently being performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre as a benefit for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.

You can download a PDF of the script here:
Seven Jewish Children script

Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill is a 10-minute history of Israel, ending with the bombing of Gaza. Thirteen performances will take place on the main stage of the Royal Court Theatre after Marius von Mayenburg's play, The Stone. There will be no admission charge and a collection will be made for Medical Aid For Palestinians (MAP): Emergency Appeal for the People of Gaza, after the show.

Angry? Sad? Confused? Come and spend 10 minutes with us.

Director Dominic Cooke, Lighting Matt Drury, Sound David McSeveney

Cast includes Ben Caplan, Jack Chissick, David Horovitch, Daisy Lewis, Ruth Posner, Samuel Roukin, Jennie Stoller, Susannah Wise, Alexis Zegerman.

and from the New York Times comment by 'Martin' on the ArtsBeat blog
The play (having read it) is certainly not anti-semitic. Although in NY, that term is used for anything that presents the Palestinians rights in any way whatsoever.

I have no doubt that there are Israelis who have said and/or thought everything Ms Churchill has put into the mouths of her characters.

There are few people in the world outside of Israel and the insular “with us or against us” portion of American Jewry, who do not understand that invading Gaza, killing 100’s of civilians, destroying buildings, impoverishing and terrifying the population - who have no army of any kind to provide resistance - was not a good idea.

Unless the idea is to make the people in Gaza so angry that they all become suicide bombers and provide the ‘final solution’ of the Gaza problem.

Writing a play that looks at the issue from the Palestinian pov, as Ms Churchill’s does is not ant-Semitic in any definition of the word that I know of.

Especially in New York, its important to understand the suffering and pain of the Gazans, which is as real, and incontrovertible as any ever inflicted on the Israelis by the Gazans.

Perhaps the 60 years of statehood for Israel and denying Palestinians an equal right to live in peace and prosperity and to share in governance is continuing to come home to roost.

And Israeli overreaction, their constant resort to Macho Rambo combat against their comparatively unarmed neighbors, guarantees only that the possibility of a peaceful settlement gets remoter and remoter

I’m Jewish and proud of my heritage. The arrogance and saber wielding of Israel fills me with grief and despair.

We need to hear the other side, as stridently as we hear the Israeli side.
— Martin


and from Theatre critic Michael Billington in the Guardian
...The work consists of seven cryptic scenes in which parents, grandparents and relatives debate how much children should know and not know. It moves, implicitly, from the Holocaust to the foundation of the state of Israel through the sundry Middle East wars up to the invasion of Gaza. At first, the advice indicates the deep divisions within Israel ("Tell her they want to drive us into the sea" / "Tell her they don't"); at the end, it becomes a ruthless justification for self-preservation ("Tell her we're the iron fist now, tell her it's the fog of war, tell her we won't stop killing them till we're safe").

Churchill, I'm sure, would not deny the existence of fierce external, and internal, Jewish opposition to the attack on Gaza. What she captures, in remarkably condensed poetic form, is the transition that has overtaken Israel, to the point where security has become the pretext for indiscriminate slaughter...

And from Theatre Notes
The accusations of anti-Semitism made against Churchill are very depressing. They are part of a political strategy to undermine critique by conflating legitimate criticism of a state with the ugliest racism. What is worse is that the bombing of Gaza has prompted some of the vilest anti-Semitism I have seen recently, which seems - erroneously - to legitimise this stance. However, confusing Churchill's play with anti-Semitism helps nobody, and worst of all, trivialises what anti-Semitism actually is.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

'Coronavirus-free' Gaza prepares for the worst

Until now, the besieged Gaza Strip has stayed free of  the novel coronavirus  spreading across the world. As the Gaza Strip has been under a stringent Israeli-led blockade for nearly 13 years, the spread of the coronavirus - officially known as COVID-19 - has become the topic of discussion for many Palestinians, with  some joking  that the blockade was preventing them from being exposed.But as authorities in the coastal Palestinian enclave gear up to contain any potential outbreak, serious questions have arisen about the risks and implications of such a scenario.  But given its already difficult humanitarian situation and high population density, an outbreak in the Gaza Strip could prove to be catastrophic, health officials have warned.  "If the virus enters Gaza and spreads, it will get out of hand," Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Majdi Thuhair told Middle East Eye, as he explained that a severe shortage of resources and personnel would make it near impossible

Boycott of New York diamond dealer launched to protest settlement construction

Members of Adalah NY call for boycott of Leviev for its crimes against Palestinians and South Africans New York, NY, May 9 – On the day before Mother’s Day, 40 New York human rights advocates gathered at the Leviev jewelry store on Madison Avenue and called on throngs of weekend Madison Avenue shoppers to boycott Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev over his companies’ construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in West Bank villages including Bil’in and Jayyous. Mother’s Day is one of the biggest jewelry shopping periods in the US annually. The New York protest came as controversy is growing in Norway over Norwegian government investments in Leviev’s company Africa-Israel . The New York protesters also commemorated Bassem Abu Rahma from Bil’in who was shot to death by Israeli soldiers last month during a peaceful protest against the construction on Bil’in’s land of Israel’s wall and of the Mattityahu East settlement by a Leviev company. Thanks to vivapalestina.us (not co

Support striking Palestinian quarry workers demanding their rights from Israeli employer

On 16 June, 35 Palestinian workers at Salit Quarries in Mishor Adumim (in area C, east of Jerusalem, in the Occupied West Bank) began a strike. The workers, organized with the independent union WAC-Ma'an, are demanding an end to exploitation and humiliation, and insist on signing a first collective agreement. Salit Quarries’ main customer is Readymix Industries (Israel). The total reliance of Salit Quarry on Readymix as their biggest and by far the most important customer puts responsibility on Readymix to make sure that their clients abides by labour laws and safeguards elementary rights for the workers of Salit. We call upon Readymix to urge the Salit management to terminate this unnecessary strike by signing the collective agreement with the workers and WAC-Ma’an. Click this protest link to send your message. The text of the message is as follows: I write to you to express my grave concern about the failure of Salit management to sign a collective agreement with the workers of