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Jewish World Review
April 8, 2009
/ 14 Nissan 5769
Caryl Churchill: Loving to hate Israel
By
Richard Z. Chesnoff
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I went to hear a reading of acclaimed British playwright Caryl Churchill's
hyper-controversial "Seven Jewish Children - a play for Gaza". It was presented by
the ever adventurous New York Theatre Workshop at its cavernous East 4th Street
theater. The actual reading - which lasted barely eight minutes - was extremely well
done and was followed by a lively audience participation discussion hosted the night
I attended by literary luminary Mark Crispin Miller. For the most part, the audience
discussion was more than civil - and given the number of would be playwrights
present and eager to talk about themselves, at times even slightly boring.
So what's the big stink? It's in the very nature and tone of Ms Churchill's latest
creation, a blatant attempt to use drama to spew forth her own very one sided, super
narrow Mideast political perspective and then call it "art".
Churchill has never made a secret of where she stands on the Mideast conflict. She
is vocally, ardently pro-Palestinian and decidedly anti-Israeli (or as one of the
theater's spokespeople told me "she's really just anti-Zionist" - - as if that made
it kosher). Her new play consists of a supposed stream of consciousness dialogue
among a handful of fictional Jewish and then Israeli parents who debate just what to
tell or not tell a little Jewish girl at various moments of modern Jewish history -
from Nazi pogroms to Israel's birth to the recent battles in Gaza. The moment the
abbreviated time span reaches the beginnings of a reborn Jewish state, the
characters become increasingly repulsive, boorish interlopers. The final lines of
the Gaza war mini-sequence contain Churchill's ultimate punches. As she portrays it,
the once oppressed have become the true oppressors, the once weak are now the super
strong, the "chosen people" as they refer to themselves, are merciless by choice,
immoral haters, bloodthirsty.
"Tell her there's dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she's got
nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell
her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them,
tell her I'm not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them,
tell her we're the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can't talk
suffering to us. 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, tell her I
laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they're animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn't care if we wiped them out,
the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don't care if
the world hates us, tell her we're better haters, tell her we're
chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it's not her....'
Churchill's defenders see her mini-play (really more of a poem) as legitimate
theater, the political drama of a playwright entitled to a singular perspective.
Others. Like The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg see "Seven Jewish Children" as little
more than agit-prop with some decidedly dangerous echoes of classic anti-Semitic
blood-libel . I'd agree with Goldberg.
In fact, while it is arguably political drama , I am puzzled how anyone would see it
as pure art - especially when it deals with so complicated an issue as the Mideast
conflict.
Indeed, why choose to comment on this most recent phase of the decades old conflict
by restricting it to a supposed discussion between Jewish/Israeli parents,
especially repulsive one who are far from representative of Israeli parents who
generally preach peace to their children - not war.
More to the point, why examine the Gaza battles and totally ignore the supposed
thoughts of Palestinian Gaza parents who allow their children to be systematically
taught to hate Christians as well as Jews, whose children are told that there must
never, ever be peace with Israelis, whose children are exhorted from toddlership
that there is no higher Palestinian goal than to strap an explosive belt around
one's waist and then venture forth to murder as many Jewish men, women and children
as possible.
The answer is because Ms Churchill, like her Hamas friends, is not interested in
promoting true Mideast peace. I don't believe she's even that interested in
defending all those hapless Palestinians she claims to identify with (she has
forfeited any claim to royalties for this play in exchange for audience
contributions to Palestinian medical welfare).
What interests her most, like a dangerously increasing number of left wing Britons,
is to strike out at Israelis and Israeli actions, and in doing so to question the
Jewish state's very validity. In the end, Churchill has produced a
let's-hate-the-Israelis piece of political propaganda disguised as avant-garde
drama.
Her work is a sad reflection of a growing tendency among "progressive intellectuals"
here as well as abroad not merely to criticize specific Israeli government policies
- their perfect right, even obligation - but to openly challenge Israel as such, to
challenge its very right to exist as a Jewish state more than 60 years after its
renaissance was ratified by the vast majority of the family of nations.
Indeed, it is increasingly chic in supposedly intellectual circles to claim "I'm not
anti-Semitic, I'm merely anti-Zionist".
If that means "I disagree with certain Israeli government policies" - than calling
oneself "an anti-Zionist", is a dangerous misnomer. Lord knows most of the people of
Zionist Israel sharply disagree with their government's policies at one time or
another. However, if by "anti-Zionist" one questions Israel's very legality, then
this Zionist would argue the term is nothing more than a camouflage for
anti-Semitism: it is denying to Jews the right that all nations have to a home on
their ancestral land, even if, as in the case of Israel, they must share that land
with another people that clearly doesn't want to share it.
Like so many who now proudly define themselves as "anti-Zionists", Caryl Churchill
simply loves to hate Israel. And that ain't art.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor and veteran journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff was Senior Correspondent at US News & World Report, and is now a columnist at the NY Daily News and the Huffington Post. A two-time winner of the Overseas Press Club Award and a recipient of the National Press Club Award, he was formerly executive editor of Newsweek International. The paperback edition of his critically acclaimed book, "Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe Plundered the Jews & Committed the Greatest Theft in History" is now on sale. (Click on cover above to purchase. Sales help fund JWR. To comment, please click here.
ARCHIVES
© 2009, Richard Z. Chesnoff
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