Playing on Racist Slander; Seven Jewish Children

This play, purporting to be an earnestly sensitive theatrical interpretation of the dissolution of Jewish moral precepts in surrender to the instinctual need for survival of a people traumatized by the most horrendous attempt at total genocide in human history, hides, none too subtly, behind the noble purpose of mourning Palestinian children. In the process, Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill, trivializes the Jewish crisis of survival beyond the Holocaust.

Ms. Churchill, in one fell 10-minute-long swoop of instant history through a thread of darkly meaningful narrative, purports to lay the background for a two-month-long response from a country too long under siege by a 'democratically elected' government whose hierarchy's charter is implicit in its determination to destroy the State of Israel. That Israel and its people have been subject time and again to violently hostile actions from its neighbours designed to murder and instill terror is handily overlooked.

The play opens with a child being admonished to remain quiet, very still, not to draw attention to her presence, lest she be discovered. The reason that she is so instructed is inferred, but not transmitted to the tender sensibilities of the child, to avoid frightening her unnecessarily. This, while her life and the lives of her family, her neighbours, her community are under direct threat of annihilation. A threat that succeeded to a gratifying extent, to the Nazis.

The play's thread advances steadily transmuting Israeli Jews into heartless monsters, through their discourse triumphantly taking possession of land they claim for its historical antecedents, unmindful of the current residents that would be displaced, as though that simple narrative sufficiently disclosed all the complex interactions that took place during that historic time when Israel became a State and the Palestinians fled uncertainty.

The final soliloquy reveals the innermost thoughts of a defensive, angry Jew who feels his people have suffered sufficiently, that the ongoing assaults on his country and its children's sensibilities can no longer be civilly sustained, that his country's military is more than justified in taking defensive-offensive action, that while no one wishes children to be harmed, better theirs than his. Replete with the admission that the world will condemn Israel no matter what they do.

This is an understandable human emotion, wishing to protect one's own. No country and no people constantly under siege by hostile and murder-intent neighbours could respond with perfect equanimity to events beyond their personal control and through which they feel they have been unfairly targeted to sustain the ultimate penance. The story of the Jewish diaspora and the State of Israel dispensed with in short order; the space of one-sixth of an hour of instructive 'entertainment'.

The inhumanity of the tribe of Jewish entitlement to a land of their own, wrested from the possession of innocent Arabs for whom a land of their own has long been longed for - and denied, thanks to their Arab overseers - painted in broad, brief strokes of subtle quasi-understanding and final condemnation. This is a play that was skilfully and cleverly devised as a work of creative art. It is, however, a work of self-serving propaganda.

The author, polishing her credentials as a fearless, talented world conscience, bringing to the light of understanding and compassion the plight of a helpless and horribly disadvantaged group singled out for occupation and humiliation by a powerful, unforgiving neighbour. Her already-bright reputation further enhanced and her powerful insights into human nature and those who carry the burden of the worst of human nature recognized.

Those of the liberal-left - the world of 'enlightened' academia, of trade and labour unions unified in support of the underdog, of self-agonizing Jews - whose most recent target of blame and shame has become 'Zionism' and 'Israel', can revel in the enactment of history-by-fly-by that this play exemplifies under the guise of an needful opportunity to permit fresh air to infiltrate the debate, and reason and principle to prevail.

They are possibly people of fundamental good-will, infiltrated by people of undeniable ill-will toward Israel and Jews by extension. This is sub-headed as 'A Play for Gaza'; a debate on hatred. Nowhere present is there any hint of a suggestion that hatred emanates indelibly from the Palestinian quotient of the divide, that children in both the Hamas- and Fatah-controlled territories are taught through school texts and television programs to fear and hate and seek revenge upon Jews.

The Israeli "operation cast lead" assault on Gaza had a defined purpose, and it was not to target innocent civilians, and most certainly not Palestinian children. Yet this is the clear inference in the play, its defining denouement. The nation of Israel is harder on itself than the international community that sits in stern judgement upon it, might ever imagine. Its judiciary demands respect of international laws and human rights.

Investigations called for by the executive branch revealed what most intelligent people know to be reality; that the elected government of Hamas, while threatening and assaulting Israel, and finally creating the atmosphere where the nation felt it could no longer tolerate those assaults, used their own population as human shields. Schools and mosques, private dwellings and hospitals were used to store munitions. When the IDF responded to rounds of attack they discovered civilians in the line of fire.

The IDF routinely took steps to forewarn residents to evacuate buildings and areas that were to be targeted. A medical clinic to look after civilian wounded was set up by the IDF. Cellphone calls were routinely placed, pamphlets dropped, to inform and update civilians as much as possible about the intended targets, thus revealing to Hamas precisely what was occurring. That same Hamas whose executive members were securely hidden from attack, comfortable with the knowledge that they had created a situation that imperiled vulnerable civilians.

The Palestinians, and Hamas in particular can take great satisfaction in the inroads their own political propaganda has made in the consciousness of the international community which has responded with alacrity in condemning Israel and the IDF, demonizing both as racist genocidal imperialists. They, the attackers, seen as the underdog, unfairly targeted by a powerful nation that squats over their land as an oppressive occupier.

Now, once again, with increasing confidence, Ismail Haniyeh is demanding that Hamas be taken off the lists of terrorist organizations in Europe and North America. That Hamas deserves to be seen as a legitimate government despite its intransigent insistence that its charter will never recognize Israel nor its right to exist. They have skilfully played upon the plight of the Palestinians even though they engage in fratricidal murder, to portray themselves as defenders of the innocent.

How has this furthered security in the region, and encouraged an atmosphere conducive to peace? This piece of theatre purporting to illustrate reality has aired a fantasy of delusion shared by a large segment of the international community, comprised of closet and deliberately celebratory anti-Semites, and self-abnegating Jews. This play is sheer, unadulterated propaganda.

Films or plays about terrorist catastrophes of truly dramatic proportions such as fanatical Islamist jihadists fervently training as airliner pilots to enable them to hijack passenger planes to sacrifice themselves and countless thousands for the greater glory of Islam would not represent propaganda, but an attempt to understand the profound instability and dysfunction the world faces.

A play or film about a Muslim so infused with hatred of the West and of Jews, who had no moral compunction about sending his Irish, pregnant girlfriend off on a trip to the Middle East to join him for their marriage, carrying explosives-laden baggage to make a martyr of her and his unborn child, along with the plane's other passengers might make a statement, other than propaganda.

But Ms. Churchill's talents at constructing a brief, hard-core yet subtle slander of Jews is cleverly-manipulated propaganda. Anyone may access the play. Free of charge. Donations gratefully accepted. To be forwarded to a Palestinian charity.