Seven Jewish Children, a play for Gaza Part 1 of 2

Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza is a controversial six-page, 10-minute play by British playwright Caryl Churchill, written in response to the 2008-2009 Israel military strike on Gaza,
performed in New Zealand on Waiheke Island in March 2010.

A panel debate was held after the performance.

The play was first performed at London's Royal Court Theatre on 6 February 2009.

Churchill, a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has said that anyone wishing to produce it may do so gratis, so long as they hold a collection for the people of Gaza at the end.

Seven Jewish Children consists of seven scenes spread over roughly seventy years, in which Jewish adults discuss what, or whether, their children should be told about certain events in recent Jewish history that the play alludes to only indirectly : The Holocaust, Jewish immigration to Palestine, the creation of Israel, the flight or expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the dispute over water, the First Intifada, the death of Rachel Corrie,[citation needed] the building of the West Bank barrier, the death of Muhammad al-Durrah,[citation needed] Palestinian suicide attacks, Hamas rocket attacks, and the 2008 bombing of Gaza.

The play takes the form of a litany, repeating the phrases "Tell her", "Don't tell her" to reflect an ostensible tension within Israel and the Jewish community over how to describe events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

"Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own/Tell her again this is our promised land/Don't tell her they said it was a land without people/Don't tell her I wouldn't have come if I'd known/Tell her maybe we can share/Don't tell her that."

Churchill has been particularly criticized for an angry monologue within the play purportedly representing a hardline Israeli view: "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/Don't tell her that."

Reaction to the play has been mixed.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has criticized it as "horrifically anti-Israel," and "beyond the boundaries of reasonable political discourse," and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly called the play a blood libel, "the mainstreaming of the worst anti-Jewish stereotypes,"[3], while playright Tony Kushner and academic Alisa Solomon, both Jewish-American critics of Israeli policy, argue in The Nation that the play is dense, beautiful and elusive, and that "[a]ny play about the crisis in the Middle East that doesn't arouse anger and distress has missed the point."[2]

Donations of $970 NZ dollars went to Medical Aid for Palestinians.

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[rachelgolem]

Tell her the Egyptians who burn down churches really want peace with Israel.

[ewingsco]

@rachelgolem

Who once burnt the museum at Alexandria, rachelgolem ?

When will Israel stop trying to expand, rachelgolem ?

[ewingsco]

What do golems love, rachel ?

[ewingsco]

Part two here :

watch?v=ID8GJ3xLHl0

[Lagolop]

@nacho1560

Deep baloney ...lol. And you swallow that tripe.

These leftist arab pandering twats know nothing about reality or the truth of what goes on in the Middle East. They would be the first to be beheaded in any islamic shit hole, but they would be safe in Israel.

[rachelgolem]

Tony Kushner should move to Gaza. They love gay athiests there.

[rachelgolem]

Laughing when Iraqi people send their children to blow up mosques in not Anti-Semitism.

[jmsinnz]

Moving, clear, insightful. Thank you to all the people who made this play, and this particular presentation of it possible.

[nacho1560]

Such a deep message contained in very simple words.