HELP GAZA "Seven Jewish Children" Do Your Part

Ha, more kudos to Ireland for having two showings of “Seven Jewish Children” by Caryl Churchill. Which is a short play written during the recent genocide in Gaza, a ten minute history of Israel, ending with the bombing of Gaza. Keep reading to find out how you can bring this play to your country, city or town! The play opened in London and of course the Israeli “hasbara” machine swung into action, crying “anti-Semitism” and the usual ad nauseam garbage. Because criticizing Israel is “verboten” remember that!


Here are a few excerpts of a reviews in England (from the Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/feb/11/seven-jewish-children

The work consists of seven cryptic scenes in which parents, grandparents and relatives debate how much children should know and not know. It moves, implicitly, from the Holocaust to the foundation of the state of Israel through the sundry Middle East wars up to the invasion of Gaza. At first, the advice indicates the deep divisions within Israel ("Tell her they want to drive us into the sea" / "Tell her they don't"); at the end, it becomes a ruthless justification for self-preservation ("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").
What she captures, in remarkably condensed poetic form, is the transition that has overtaken Israel, to the point where security has become the pretext for indiscriminate slaughter. Avoiding overt didacticism, her play becomes a heartfelt lamentation for the future generations who will themselves become victims of the attempted military suppression of Hamas.

And as reported below in the Irish Times today:

Controversial drama about Gaza bombing to get Irish staging
IT IGNITED a war of words when it was staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London last month: now Caryl Churchill’s controversial 10-minute play Seven Jewish Children is to be given a series of stagings in Dublin and Kinsale.

Churchill (70) wrote the piece as a response to the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza in January. The script can be downloaded from the internet free of charge, but theatre companies must apply for the right to stage it. No admission fee may be charged, and all proceeds must go to the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) charity.

Billed as a 10-minute history of Israel, the play consists of seven short scenes in which Israeli parents debate how much to tell their children about various historical events, beginning with the Holocaust and ending with the recent conflagration in Gaza.
In his four-star review the Guardian’s theatre critic, Michael Billington, said “the play solves nothing, but shows theatre’s power to heighten consciousness and articulate moral outrage”.

But as mentioned, here comes the “hasbara” and cries of Anti-Semitism, “Jew Haters” “Jew Bashing” nonsense Israel likes to employ to cover up the real reasons a play such as this would need to be written in the first place. So, the “Board of Deputies of British Jews” springs into action along with a pro Israeli journalist who writes and entire essay on Anti-Semitism to quell the British Zionists.

In a lengthy essay on anti-Semitism in the Independent, however, Howard Jacobson described the piece as “wantonly inflammatory” and “Jew-hating pure and simple”. In the Spectator, Melanie Phillips accused Churchill of “perpetrating incendiary lies about Israel” and “drawing upon an atavistic hatred of the Jews”.

The spokesman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Mark Frazier, told the Jewish Chronicle: “We knew the play was going to be horrifically anti-Israel because Caryl Churchill is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.”He added that the title – Seven Jewish Children, rather than Seven Israeli Children – “pushes it beyond the boundaries of reasonable political discourse”.

Here’s the best part, although this play will begin in Ireland, where ever you live in the world, you can download the script and organize a performance in your city, town or country. The only proviso is that you cannot charge for tickets and all donations collected must go to help Gaza, see below for explanation and where to download the script if interested in making this play a reality in your part of the world.

But first, if you live in Ireland here’s where you can see the play:

Tomorrow, it will be staged at: St Stephen’s Green, at 2pm, directed by Duncan Molloy; the Temple Bar Square Book Market, between 2pm and 4pm, and at Piedescalso Art Cafe, Thomas Street at 6.30pm and 7.30pm, performed by the Shining Eyes Theatre Company and directed by Hilary Cotter; and the Project Arts Centre, at 9.30pm, following the preview of Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer, directed by Lynne Parker. On Sunday, it will be on at Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, at 3pm, staged by Mirari Productions and directed by Maisie Lee. There are also performances at the Peacock Theatre from Thursday and at Vicar Street on March 16th.
On Wednesday. it will be performed around Kinsale.

The script of Seven Jewish Children can be downloaded in PDF format from http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/files/downloads/SevenJewishChildren.pdf

And in other Gaza related news:

A group of Irish people is attempting to reach Gaza by boat in time for St Patrick’s Day.

Spokeswoman Elaine Daly said some of the group were members of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), “but the trip is non-party political and organised independently of the IPSC”. Ms Daly said she and 19 others hoped to set sail from Cyprus on a “Free Gaza siege-breaking boat” on March 14th and arrive in Gaza port a day or two later.

Link: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0306/1224242372462.html

I would encourage people around the world to download the script and re-create the play all over the world. As the major crisis in Gaza drops off the news, we must keep the world focused on what Israel has done, murdered thousands of people and over 400 of them being young children! We must all keep pressure on until they are brought to justice for the war crimes they committed, white phosphorous, DIME missiles, depleted uranium, all used on civilian populations! Never forget that.