Monday, September 4, 2017

United Kingdom: British theatre’s disturbing bias against Israel

Via Standpoint (David Herman):
This month two very different plays open in London. They raise disturbing questions about British theatre’s bias against Israel.  
On September 29 (coincidentally the night of Kol Nidre) a revival of the anti-Israel play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, opens at the Young Vic. First performed at the Royal Court in 2005, it tells the story of Corrie, a young American activist working for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who was killed trying to block an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer conducting military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2003.    
(...) The Times argued that “an element of unvarnished propaganda comes to the fore. With no attempt made to set the violence in context, we are left with the impression of unarmed civilians being crushed by faceless militarists.” 
This month’s revival has been condemned by Jewish organisations who have called the play “unapologetically anti-Israel” and “an opportunity to fan the flames of hatred”.  
More disturbing, however, is the larger picture of anti-Israel bias in British theatre. Over the past 20 years there have been a number of plays attacking Israel: My Name is Rachel CorrieAlive from Palestine: Stories Under the Occupation, one of David Lan’s (*) first productions at the Young Vic in 2002, David Hare’s Via Dolorosa and Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza (both at the Royal Court). In 2014 the Tricycle Theatre refused to host the UK Jewish Film Festival because it received funding from the Israeli embassy. The Tricycle was supported by Nicholas Hytner, then director of the National Theatre. In addition, Harold Pinter, Michael Kustow and Arnold Wesker all became vocal critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Along with Churchill and Hare, these were major figures in British theatre and the Court; the Young Vic and the Tricycle are prominent theatres. At Edinburgh this summer, Jackie Walker, a left-wing activist suspended from Labour over accusations of anti-Semitism, had a one-woman show, The Lynching, which included predictable attacks on Israel. A banner draped in front of the audience read: “Anti-Semitism is a crime. Anti-Zionism is a duty.”  
Where are the pro-Israel plays? More important, where are British plays which treat this conflict in an even-handed way or which create interesting Israeli characters? 

(*) The Jewish Chronicle writes: 
But David Lan, the theatre’s artistic director, who is Jewish, told the JC: “Gaza is a wound to the planet from which so many people are suffering.  “We welcome and hope to encourage as wide a discussion of this terrible situation as possible. Anything that keeps Gaza at the front of our consciousness is to be valued.”  (...)  Ivan Lewis, the Jewish MP and former Middle East Minister, is on the Young Vic’s Board of Trustees. He did not respond to a request for a comment.

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