Caryl Churchill: Loving to Hate Israel
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 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 bloodthirsty by choice, immoral haters, merciless.
"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 isn't art.
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Israel runs the WORLDS ONLY violently enforced colonial settler movement, and it has grown substantially every year for the last 40 years, regardless of whether there was peace or not.
How long do you suppose it would take to broker a peace if Israel ran the same thing in the United States? Especially, if during all negotiations, settlements kept expanding? It would take forever. We would be strapping on "freedom belts" and blowing up anyone we could until ALL SETTLEMENTS were razed to the ground.
Israels actions are bringing them and us down. The settlements are morally indefensible and needlessly inspire terror in Israel and in the US, and yes, they helped to inspire the funding and recruiting that helped make 9/11 possible.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
The Arabs vehemently denied Israel's right to exist, Palestinian terrorists steadily attacked Israelis and the Arab world displayed a goodly amount of anti-American feeling long before 1968 when the settlement movement began .. Problem is that every time the Palestinians turn down a reasonable peace offer, they get get offered less the next time.
way to go chessnoff and stand up and reply to these anonymous bloggers with actual facts. If anyone cracked a history book they would realize that no other people in the HISTORY of man has had as much international support for there own state as the Palestinians. If they played the game and appeared like viable partners for peace and Just APPEAR to round up terrorists, change there education system and renounce violence they would have there state very quickly. Everyone acts like peace is in Israels hands, when in fact it is really the Palestinians.
It's the media!
Just blame it on all that 'bad publicity' from the Gaza war. You know, all that live film of the Israelis pumping White Phosphorus into the urban neighborhoods.
While at the same time interviewing Israelis setting adjacent hilltops sipping Diet Pepsi while entire Palestinian Families die miserably.
Even Haaretz showed the world the depths of Israeli depravity by publishing their 'one shot two kills'
tee shirts.
They all just seem to be conspiring to make it difficult to 'love Israel' arn't they? Such is the nature of the Truth.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
If Palestinian terrorists didn't take cover behind civilians, then urban neighborhoods wouldn't be hit.
I'm sorry, did you mention human shields?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/23/israel-committed-human-ri_n_178159.html
Exactly what part of GAZA isn't an urban area?
If Hamas are 'terrorists' because they use human shield, then Israel's terrorism is greater by magnitudes since they use HUNDREDS of human shields.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7960824.stm
It's that pesky, media again isn't it?
Am I right to presume, Mr. Chesnoff, that you are a vocal supporter of a true two-state solution, oppose the settlements and other Israeli policies that have made such a solution increasingly difficult and fully and unconditionally support the right of the Palestinians to their own state in their homeland of Palestine? After all, if there is an Israeli "right to exist" would there not also be an equal Palestinian right?
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
I have long supported a two state solution based on clear agreement that Israel has a sovereign right to continue to exist as a Jewish state and that the Palestinians, like the Israelis. having established a functioning government, have a right to their own sovereign state within mutually agreed boundaries. Both sides would live side by side in peace - and work together cooperatively on economics and development.
"I have long supported a two state solution based on clear agreement that Israel has a sovereign right to continue to exist as a Jewish state and that the Palestinians, like the Israelis. having established a functioning government, have a right to their own sovereign state within mutually agreed boundaries."
Correct me if I am wrong, but you appear to condition Palestine's right to exist on its acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state? Do you condition Israel's right to exist on it accepting Palestine's right to exist? Do you condition Israel's right to exist on anything?
Because it seems to me that the settlements and the Israeli demands are quickly and effectively destroying Palestine's right to exist.
"I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm merely anti-Zionist".
perfectly right to say that,as semetism does not represent jewish people only ,attaqcking arab is anti-semetism,as arabs are semetic people.
i support her play...isreal has not shown her any better.
I think that it all depends on what people mean by anti-Zionist.
I am reminded of Amos Oz's statement:
"The drowning man clinging to his plank is allowed, by all the rules of natural, objective, universal justice, to make room for himself on the plank, even if in doing so he must push the others aside a little. Even if the others, sitting on that plank, leave him no alternative to force. But he has no natural right to push the others on that plank into the sea."
I think (hope?) that many of the people who say that they are anti-Zionists simply believe that Israel has adopted a program of pushing the others into the sea and are calling that Zionism.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
Technically, anti-Semitism does refer to ALL Semitic peoples. But in modern usage, it is most commonly used in terms of Jews.
Not really. The term was coined in a settling (19th c. Europe) to refer to Jews.
The parallels between Zionism and the "ideas" of Slobodan Milosovich are a perfect illustration of what Zionism is.
Milosovich and other Serbs like him claimed that the area inhabited by the Bosnian Serbs was the "homeland" of the Serbs, theirs by right of their people-hood, a gift of God. Just like the Zionists, these Serbs undertook ethnic cleansing, to force the Bosnians to migrate to Albania or anywhere else. If some die in the process, well, they were trespassing.
Anyway, they were of a foreign religion, not Gods' people like the Serbs. Like the European Jews, they had suffered horrible massacres during the war. This reenforced their sense of entitlement, but does not justify it -- as the Holocaust does not entitle Zionists to displace others to "strike back" at someone.
Like the Balkans, the Levant has been home to many, many "peoples" and for any one group to claim ownership of land occupied for generations by others -- and to uproot them and subject the remainder to an apartheid state, as Zionism does, is unjustified and criminal by the international standards thinking people have tried to enact since WWII.
The vast majority of Israel's population is composed on people from Europe or Mideast nations -- in other words, they are not indigenous. To claim that they have some right to this area is absurd and -- ultimately -- racist.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
Your comparison of Zionism to the ideas oft "Milosovich" (sic) is ridiculous. If the Zionist mainstream believed in ethnic cleansing, than 20% of Israel's current population would not be Israeli Arab. Study the various 20th century partition plans of Palestine - all of which were rejected by the Palestinians. You will see that Zionist leaders were always willing to share the land to which they have an inexorable historical and cultural link - not to mention religious tie. You might also compare the map of Israel with the map of the Arab world. And by the way, those Israelis who traced their origin to Mideast (Arab) nations, were forced to leave those nations, That's ethnic cleansing,
removing palestinians from thei land is callred ethnic cleansing,,unless you have a nother word for it.
The 20% are those who were not driven off their land live as second-class citizens -- harassed, restricted in their movements and subject to the depredations of settlers who constantly take more land. Some several hundred thousand people were evicted.
The "comparison" of Israel and Arab lands usually means (you're not perfectly clear here) that they should make the refugees citizens. For one thing, doing so would upset the very delicate religious balance in Lebanon. Its an arrogant and presumptuous demand.
The "partition" plans, starting with the Balfour declaration, were imposed on an unwilling population, subject to colonial rule. They had and have every right to reject those. The current "two state" solution would create a jumble of Bantustans, not a viable state. The only viable solution is a single democratic state for all.
"land to which they have an inexorable historical and cultural link ."
This applies only to Jews whose descendants survived the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and any trickles of Jewish people who may have settled there over the centuries. It does not apply to masses of alien Europeans and "Oriental" Jews bursting in under colonialist arrangements. Many of the Jews from Muslim lands were enticed, those who were driven off still don't have the right to take others' lands, they are refugees entitled to shelter and care.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
Though some Palestinians were undoubtedly driven off their land in 1948 when the Arab world tried to destroy the new-born state of Israel, the vast majority who fled, simply fled from war - some at the urging of their own leaders. Those who remained have mutiplied and are now full citizens of Israel, who vote for the Israeli parliament, have members of their communities in every aspect of Israeli life - the legislature, judiciary, education, medicine, theater, even the army and diplomatic corps. Israeli Arabs have not always enjoyed fair financial support from government agencies and they faced security difficulties in the first years of Israel's existance - but they now travel freely, have nothing to do with settlers or settlements in the West Bank and enjoy a better economic life, better schools, better health care and more democratic rights than Arabs anywhere in the Middle East. Very few would trade their places with Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Egyptians and certainly not with West Bank or Gaza Palestinians.
As for the 900,000 Jews who fled Muslim lands - and they did flee - they were welcomed by their fellow Jews and despite diffifulties, absorbed into the new state of Israel -- not shunted off into refugee camps to live on an international dole for 60 years and suffer for Arab political goals.
"You will see that Zionist leaders were always willing to share the land to which they have an inexorable historical and cultural link - not to mention religious tie."
No they weren't. Many specifically wanted all of the land (some wanted all of Mandate Palestine) and not a few saw acceptance of the Partition plans as a start that would eventually end with Israel encompassing all of the land West of the Jordan. They recognized the problem of the native inhabitants, of course, and had many differing "solutions" for the "problem," many of which did not include sharing the land.
"You might also compare the map of Israel with the map of the Arab world."
That is wholly and completely irrelevant. The Israeli's primary antagonist is the Palestinians because the land at issue is the land of Palestine, not the entirety of the "Arab world." Palestinians are not Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, etc., etc. They are Palestinians and their homeland is Palestine. The fact that there is another group that claims the land as a homeland under a different name does not mean that the Arab nationalities are fungible.
"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."
What is your point? That because it has a political agenda this play can't be considered art? So I guess Picasso's "Guernica" painting isn't art either? And I guess Schindler's List isn't a movie? Mixing art and politics goes back probably as far as the idea of art. It seems to me you are just rationalizing against a political message that you don't like.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
Picasso's "Guernica" is art and "Schindler's List" a film - and a fine one at that. But both were based on responding to harsh political facts - the evils of Facism and Nazism . Caryl Churchill's play is a one-sided polemic free of facts. Phony propoganda is not art - whether one agrees with it or not.
If you don't believe that the was the Israelis treat the Palestians, especially in Gaza and West bank are "harsh political facts" you are kidding yourself.
Imagine the situation exactly reverse, and a government of gentiles was doing to the Jews what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians. Which side would you support?
When I was a child my mother taught me about the holocaust. She told me it was essential to remember what happened so that it wouldn't be repeated. I never dreamed that some of the descendants of the survivors would end up using the same types of lies and violence to oppress a different people all done in the name of the holocaust.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
Do you truly believe that Israel has employed Nazi type lies and violence to "oppress" Palestinians? If so, you know nothing of the history of the region or the conflict-- or of what the Nazis did..
For me what is important is not the number of people killed, maimed, and tortured but the underlying ethics. Certainly Israel isn't at all comporable in the number of people it has harmed compared to the Nazis. However, if you look at the techniques and ethics behind them, then using white phosphorous, helicopters, aircraft, and tanks against civilians with rocks and a few fanatics with guns and out moded rockets? That sounds like a modern day version of the Warsaw Ghetto to me.
Where exactly is the anti-semitism here? That quote from the play sounds exactly like words I've heard from hard core zionists through various media as well as in personal interaction. Criticizing Israel is not equal to anti-semitism. There is also a big difference between "questioning Israel's legality" and saying that you want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Plenty of native americans still question America's legality pointing out that the country was stolen from them via lies and violence. Yet, i've never heard them called anti-caucasian bigots for expressing such opinions.
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I agree: criticizing specific Israeli policies is not anti-Semitism. However, denying Israel's right to exist is an attempt to deny the Jews the right to establish a nation in their own 'native land and to ultimately justify Israel's disappearancer. That is anti-Semitism. Israel was established through hard work, devotion to history and with long attempts to live in peace with Palestinians.
Where in the play does Churchill deny Israel's right to exist?
anti-american government isnt anti-american. likewise, being disgusted by the extreme right wing of israel's government does not equal anti jewish religion. antisemitism has lost all meaning when its used as a bumper-sticker-GOP-type of slogan to deflect legitimate criticism and while we're on the subject why is israel and its wants so important to our elected officials? for a tiny sliver of the american population there seems to be a an unbalanced focus on this place and its agenda. yes i said it.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
You obviously didn't read my columm. I said there is nothing wrong in criticizing specific Israeli government policies. The anti-Semitism comes in when criticisms are used as an excuse for a blanket condemnation of Israel and to question its very right to exist.
the actual anti-semitism might come in when you say, but the label is bandied about at every corner. i prefaced my main statement with that to hopefully discourage the bumper sticker crowd from declaring me so.
i stopped watching CNN years ago because it provided more coverage to israel and its "struggles" than important issues right here at home. my point is that the entire situation gets an unusually large amount of attention (and tax dollars) when you consider the "constituency" of israel in the US is relatively minor.
also, i dont believe that god declares any part of the earth for any one person, if that is part of the rationale for the conflict.
"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. "
This is utter unmitigated nonsense and yet another attempt to link anti-Zionism with bigotry.
Zionism is among a set of outdated 19th century nationalist idea that people have ties and right of ownership to particular pieces of land. Another related concept is the German "Blut und Boden" concept. Google that one for some eye-opening!
These are absurd, unscientific notions. One imagines the bronze-Age God coloring in various pieces of the globe in his "national coloring book." H-m-m-m-, I'll put the Greeks here, and the Mayans there, and my special people -- I'll wedge them between some of the earth's most formidable empires, so they will be frequently overrun. And, no oil for them."
Would be funnier if so many heavily armed people weren't acting on these delusions.
Millions who oppose Zionism and its land grab MO contemptuously reject this mythical, slanderous linkage. Especially Jews who happen to be anti-Zionist. It's been repeated so often it's like background noise. And often drowned out by the screams of Israel's victims.
See Richard Z. Chesnoff's Profile
If you are arguing that all nations should give up their"outdated" concepts of nationalism and surrender their "absurd" borders, then you're naive at best. If you don't believe that, and only think it's true for Israel, than you've just proved my point: anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.
The "outdated" idea I mentioned is that particular people, maybe I should have been clearer and specified "ethnic groups" or "tribes" -- have exclusive "birthright" claim to particular pieces of land, despite the presence of other people.
Most of the modern world rightly considers that retrograde, a failed idea. European nations no longer have racial standards for immigration, neither does Australia or Latin America or most of Africa. In the US we have our own wingnuts who think America should be a white Christian nation, but they are, thankfully, going the way of the Dodo.
I didn't say that nation states are invalid, like France, Spain, Canada and the US -- which claim and defend specific borders. But, for example, you don't have to be of mixed Gallic-Frankish-Roman ancestry to be French.
But the former government of South Africa, which declared most of the land belonged only to whites -- was expressing precisely this invalid concept. The same applies to Zionist Israel, which openly declares that it must remain a nation ruled only by Jews.
The Israelis aren't the only ones clinging to the absurd "Blood and Soil" idea -- it's implicit in a lot of Japanese policy and prejudice, for example. A number of Muslim nations specify religion for citizenship. But the faults of others don't give Israel a pass to oppress others.
I'm curious, would you agree to a democratic state that would embrace both Arabs and Jews?
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