May 25, 2009: Churchill’s ‘Seven Jewish Children’ is on the way to Ottawa

By Michael Regenstreif

Over the past few weeks, a number of Bulletin readers have been mentioning Seven Jewish Children: a play for Gaza by British playwright Caryl Churchill to me. The very short play, which takes about 10 minutes to perform, turned up in the news several times this month when productions ran in Montreal and Toronto. And it received a high-profile airing, May 3, on CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning.

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), the group that sponsored the Montreal production of Seven Jewish Children is bringing the play to Ottawa on Saturday, June 13.

IJV is a small group of Jewish activists who often act in solidarity with Palestinian groups opposed to Israel’s existence. IJV sent a delegation to the United Nations Durban Review Conference – the so-called Durban II Conference – last month in Geneva that was boycotted by Canada, the United States, Israel and a number of European democracies.

Despite years of build-up, Durban II pretty much fizzled out because so many of the world’s democracies stayed away out of concern that it would degenerate into the blatant antisemitism that marked the original Durban Conference in 2001. Many of the rest of the world’s democracies got up and walked out of the conference centre when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to invoke exactly the kind of rhetoric that turned Durban I into a sad farce.

Among the IJV delegates to Durban II was Diana Ralph, its Ottawa-based co-ordinator. After the conference, Ralph circulated an article about Ahmadinejad’s speech. “I heard much with which I agreed,” wrote Ralph, who went on to describe Ahmadinejad’s one-sided interpretation of Zionist history as “an accurate statement.”

For the trouble and expense of IJV’s sending a delegation to the Durban II Conference, Ralph was given the floor for almost three minutes in which she read a prepared statement.

“We denounce the campaign by pro-Israeli groups to destroy the DRC [Durban Review Conference] through disrespectful intimidation and fear tactics,” she said.

Almost comically, watching the video of Ralph’s speech, you can see the woman sitting directly behind her start to pack up her things as soon as Ralph begins to speak. The woman walks out about 20 seconds later.

Ralph condemned labelling any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, saying that such labelling is just a tactic to deflect attention from Israeli war crimes, “particularly in light of this country’s assault on the people of Gaza.”

In a presentation that was as one-sided as Ahmadinejad’s, Ralph went on to describe the Palestinians as “victims of apartheid, racism and crimes against humanity.”

And did IJV’s Ralph have any words of condemnation for Hamas terrorists or compassion for Israeli victims of terror in her statement?

Not a one.

Similarly, Caryl Churchill’s interpretation of Zionist history in Seven Jewish Children is one-sided. There are videos of the play to be found on the Internet and the script is available for downloading.

In seven brief scenes, adult voices debate what Jewish children should be told – “Tell her ...” “Don’t tell her ...” – as the vignettes evoke Europe just before and just after the Holocaust, Israel just before and just after independence in 1948, just after the Six Day War in 1967, during the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and during the recent war in Gaza.

Churchill never explicitly mentions the word “Israel” in her play, but she names it Seven Jewish Children. This leaves no doubt about her implications. It is Jews who go from being Holocaust victims to European colonists who displace an indigenous population, to occupiers, to killers who rule with “the iron fist,” all the while indoctrinating their children with propaganda that dehumanizes the helpless Palestinian victims.

When the play was produced in Montreal, the Quebec Jewish Congress – the recently rebranded Quebec Region of Canadian Jewish Congress – labelled it “antisemitic and full of hatred.”

In Toronto, B’nai Brith Canada unsuccessfully lobbied Mayor David Miller to have the production thrown out of Theatre Passe Muraille, a venue owned by the city.

Someone whose outspoken opinions on many subjects I frequently agree with, posted a Facebook message recently that she’d read Seven Jewish Children and didn’t see it as antisemitic. I’ve now read the play three times and watched online videos of two different performances. This time, I can’t agree with her.

The most astute analysis I’ve read of Seven Jewish Children, and about when and how criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism, is in a February column in the Independent by British novelist Howard Jacobson. That column, well worth your attention, is available online at tinyurl.com/cy6sdg.