《七個猶太小孩》的論述與戲劇奇觀

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩士. 論文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 《七個猶太小孩》的論述與戲劇奇觀. Discursive and Theatrical Spectacle of Seven Jewish Children. 指導教授：蘇子中博士 Advisor: Dr. Tsu-Chung Su 研究生：陳珣沛 Hsun-Pei Chen. 中華民國 105 年 2 月 February 2016.

(2) 摘要本論文旨在研究卡瑞•邱琪兒(Caryl Churchill)的劇作《七個猶太小孩》與其引發的爭議。邱琪兒將此劇的搬演視為一政治事件，意圖平衡英國國家廣播公司(BBC)在 2009 年加薩戰爭期間的報導，同時也表態支持遭受以色列軍方轟炸的巴勒斯坦人民。此劇的倫敦首演引來強烈批評，控訴邱琪兒與其劇散播反猶太思想。我挪用奇觀的概念作為論文的框架，先將劇本的爭議放在論述奇觀的架構中檢視，進而指出此一文本分析產生的論述困境。而後我回到劇場與表演的空間，在戲劇奇觀的脈絡下探討劇本演出的可能性，試圖為此劇平反。. 本篇論文主要分為四個部分。序論作為對《七個猶太小孩》背景的初步介紹，提供以巴衝突的歷史脈絡和劇本的概觀，並從劇評中整理出其爭議點。第一章分析劇本中的涉及反猶太爭議的題材，而後探討反猶太論戰中隱含的問題。第二章從亞陶、布萊希特與波瓦的戲劇理論切入，將此劇放回表演的脈絡，藉此反抗劇本文本的單一詮釋。觀察不同版本的演出，我主張此劇能展現各種觀點並跳脫反猶太爭議的限制，指出戲劇展演對抗媒體奇觀的可能性。最後，我藉由引介其他為解決以巴衝突所作的發聲，肯定邱琪兒以戲劇創作對不安、無常的生命所表達的關懷。. 關鍵字: 《七個猶太小孩》、以巴衝突、反猶太主義、奇觀、戲劇研究.

(3) Abstract My thesis concerns itself with Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza and the controversy surrounding it. Viewing the play as a political event, Churchill wrote it in an attempt to balance the news coverage by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and to support the Palestinians in the midst of the ongoing Gaza bombardment. The London premiere caused accusations against Churchill of being hostile toward Israel in an anti-Semitic manner. I apply the framework that circumscribes the play’s text, controversy, and performance under the rubric of discursive and theatrical spectacle. Examining the discourses generated in the play’s script and the criticisms of the play that reveal various critical standpoints, I suggest that the textual analysis of the play results in an impasse. I aim to introduce the play’s multi-faceted perspectives to the understanding of the Israel/Palestine question through the exploration of theater practices. This thesis is divided into four parts. The Prologue serves as an introduction which provides an overview of the play’s background, script, and the problem in narrating Israeli/Palestinian history. In Chapter One, I delve into the controversial references in the playtext which have received critical attacks based on an antiSemitic reading and point out the problem inherent in the criticisms of the play. Chapter Two discusses the play’s theatrical value in the context of Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, and Augusto Boal. Through the examination of different adaptations, I maintain the play’s ability to present manifold viewpoints that divests the play of an anti-Semitic interpretation. Therefore, I draw attention to the possibilities of theater spectacle that can counteract the images produced by media dissemination. In the Epilogue, introducing the activists promoting critical thought through their engagement in the Israel/Palestine question, I conclude the thesis with the concerns.

(4) about the precarious life that Churchill’s play aims at.. Key words: Seven Jewish Children, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anti-Semitism, spectacle, theater studies.

(5) Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Tsu-Chung Su, for the invaluable guidance and encouragement he has provided throughout this thesis-writing journey. It was his course on performance studies that inspired me to pursue the topic of this project. I am also deeply indebted to my committee members, Prof. Cory Han-Yu Huang and Prof. Lia Wen-Ching Liang, for taking their precious time to read my manuscript. The constructive suggestions they gave me developed to what is presented here. Additionally, completing this thesis would have been impossible were it not for the generous help and warm companionship of Jessica Huang and Jessie Lin. I have enjoyed greatly getting to know them and exploring our different interests together. I also want to thank C. Schmidt, who proofread my thesis and continues to tolerate my crankiness. I really appreciate all the kind greetings from Cailin Ou, Anita Kuo, Fiona Tsai, Orville Hu, Ya-Hsuan Chou, Chiu-Ting Chen, Max Ting, Zi-Yu Kuo, Ssu-Yu Chen, Sheila Chen, Jocelyn Chao, Jen-Kai Wu, Yi-Ling Yang, and Yin-Yan Lai when I cut off the connection with the outside world. Special thanks to Grace Lin, Yi-Chia Liu, Ming-Hsuan Ou, Claire Chiang, and Kate Chang; their comforting words helped me move on from the loss of my beloved maternal grandfather. I am grateful to my family, particularly my sister, for helping me get access to many book resources and always being there for me. Also, without my parents’ support, I would not have had the chance to study literature, attend courses taught by distinguished scholars, and meet so many interesting and brilliant classmates and friends during the MA program. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my maternal grandfather..

(6) Table of Contents. Prologue __________________________________________________________1 Chapter One _______________________________________________________18 Discursive Spectacle of Seven Jewish Children Chapter Two _______________________________________________________49 Theatrical Spectacle of Seven Jewish Children Epilogue __________________________________________________________85 Works Cited________________________________________________________88.

(7) Chen 1. Prologue. Caryl Churchill’s plays are best known for experimental forms of performance which provoke the audience to react to several contemporary political events. Writing short radio dramas at the beginning of her career, Churchill has been delving into human crises in modern, capitalized society in her works since the early 70s. Later on, after having become a resident dramatist in Royal Court Theatre, Churchill has attracted critical attention after the staging of some significant plays. A notable example of her early success is Cloud Nine in 1979, a play juggling with power relations in terms of gender politics. Not confined to a commonly touted position as a feminist writer, Churchill confronts various themes, including financial disaster, human cloning, international relations, and other serious issues. For example, Churchill’s socialist concerns are revealed in Serious Money in which she examines the problem of capitalistic society through the portrayal of the stock market. In plays like Mad Forest, Far Away, and A Number, presenting the degradation of humanity in wars and conflicts, Churchill can always find “potent theatrical equivalents for dread and violence” (Colleran 108). Gradually abandoning realistic representations of the subjects, she applies minimalist and abstract styles to “test the boundaries of theatre” (Tycer 12). In plays like A Mouthful of Birds and The Striker, dance and music in performance “expand her theatrical means of breaking through the limits of representation” (Reinelt 189). Churchill’s various styles realized in theatrical space can transgress the conventions of theater. To this end, her experiments of theatrical language “allow for various interpretations” and “induce her audience to make their own connections” with the political issues (Tycer 12)..

(8) Chen 2. In 2009, Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza raised debates among critics soon after its London premiere partly due to her political intention to support the Palestinians in the midst of Israel’s Gaza bombardment. The playwright never tried to conceal the purpose of the play. Finishing the play script within one month, Churchill was in a quest for balancing the unfair news coverage of the GazaIsrael conflict by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 1 Avoiding the “highly sensitive political issue,” the BBC refused to report on the need for humanitarian aid appealed by Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for Palestinians during the Israeli military strike on Gaza (qtd. in Malone 492). Such a decision made by the prestigious national broadcast surprised the charities and triggered public anger. The playwright, who is famous for her feminist, socialist concerns vis-à-vis current political issues, wrote the play in response to the situation in Gaza. Viewing the play as a political event, 2 Churchill made the performance a form of activism. A collection of voluntary contributions was held for Medical Aid for Palestinians during the performance of the play in Royal Court Theatre. However, the performance was followed by a series of criticisms accusing the playwright of biased representation of Israeli history which is tantamount to anti-Semitism. In the meantime, the defense against the claims of the anti-Semitic elements in the play emerged to side with Churchill and support her viewpoint on the Conflict. This thesis thereby takes up the examination of the play and its controversy contextualized in the controversial Israel/Palestine question.. The Guardian reported that the play goes “from pen to performance on a London stage in under a month” (Brown 2008). 2 “It’s only a small play, but it came out of feeling strongly about what’s happening in Gaza. It’s a way of helping the people there. Everyone knows about Gaza, everyone is upset about it, and this play is something they could come to. It’s a political event, not just a theater event” (qtd. in Rocamora). 1.

(9) Chen 3. The History of the Israel/Palestine Conflict For a further understanding of the critical concerns of the play, I provide a historical review of the Israel/Palestine conflict in this section. According to Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, the conflict between the Jewish people and the Arabs started when the Zionist project was initiated for the European Jews emigrating to Palestine. The early encounters began in the 1880s which were followed by the British Mandate in the early 20 th century. With the decline of the imperialist powers, the colonies in the Middle East went through great transformation in the rise of national movements. In 1947, considering the problem of the Holocaust survivors and the refugees in Europe on the rise, Britain terminated the Mandate in Palestine for the return of the Jews in the land. Buttressed by the great powers, treaties and negotiations, including the partition plan, were put forward in order to solve the Arabs and Jews problem. 3 Consequently, the Arabian coalition against the partition plan of Palestine failed; the State of Israel became a reality. 4 It turned out that the partition plan as a solution to the colonial problem has in no way achieved post-war peace in the Middle East. Instead, the homecoming of the Jews back to Zion led to the First Arab–Israeli War in 1948. Wars, riots, and skirmishes continue between the Arabs and Israel, including the significant Six-Day War in 1967, the Second Intifada, and finally the Israel/Palestine conflict continuing at the present time. The Six-Day War was the decisive battle for Israel to take control of the Gaza Strip and other Arabian territories. In this respect, the conflict is not limited to the perspective of Israel/Palestine problem but extended to Israel in contention with the Arab nations.. 3. The Partition divided Palestine into Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. The War of Independence for Israel in 1948, also known as First Arab–Israeli War. The Arab League includes Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. 4.

(10) Chen 4. Notably, this overview of the history on account of the materials selected could always be criticized for the oversimplification and misrepresentation of the events and the protagonists involved. 5 A historical narration can always give rise to the problem of taking sides with certain groups of people, i.e., the pro-Israel side or the pro-Arab, Palestinian side. “There are number of different ways of presenting the past 130 years of this conflict, none of which is a neutral recounting of mere facts or a simple chronology of event” (Caplan 222). Given the highly controversial nature of the issue which evokes different responses from person to person, the academic studies may not suffice for understanding the past and the present of territorial feuds. Therefore, the examination of the emotions and memories affecting people from different communities should also be taken into account. As suggested by Matthew M. Silver, the author of Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story: “…the time has come for historical research to concentrate on narrative perceptions that continually give color and ethical meaning to the bare facts of Israel’s founding and its subsequent history”(4). Therefore, attention should be given to the wide readership and spectatorship without academic background in analyzing the controversy of the Israeli-Palestinian narratives. Different works offer different insights to understand the Israel/Palestine conflict; various ideologies also emerge against each other when a narration reaches its readers in a variety of ways. I argue that Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, presenting the modern Jewish history as its main plots, also falls within the debate over a preferable approach in narrating the Conflict.. 5. Benny Morris and some other prominent Israeli academics like Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé are called “New Historians” whose historical insights on the Conflict come under criticisms for their “postZionist” thoughts which is critical of Zionism and Israeli military policies (Jangid 173)..

(11) Chen 5. An Overview of Seven Jewish Children and Its Controversy Written in response to the Gaza situation, the script of Seven Jewish Children unfolds the historical understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict from the viewpoint of Jewish/Israeli people. The short script contains seven scenes; each scene represents a pivotal event or period in modern Jewish history. The first scene starts with: Tell her it’s a game Tell her it’s serious But don’t frighten her Don’t tell her they’ll kill her It is noteworthy that “the text is performed on the basis of this dialogic tension, “tell/don’t tell” (Emberley 160). Yet, the stage direction provides that the script can be performed by any number of actors.6 The first section of the play is mostly read as the plight of European Jews facing the genocide program initiated by Nazi Germany during World War II. It implies arguments among the speakers about whether they should tell the child the truth of the Holocaust. The audience or the readers 7 can relate these lines to the ghettoized, threatened Jews who did not know how to explain the extreme situation to a child—to the silent “her” invisible on stage. This seemingly dialogical style of“tell her/ don’t tell her” in the following scenes is used to unfold the establishment of Israel and the current geopolitical situations. In the opening lines “Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and me/Tell her her uncles died/Don’t tell her they were killed,” a retrospective narration of Holocaust memories is presented in Scene 2. The rest of the lines seems. The stage direction: No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults (parents)…The lines can be shared out in any way you like among those characters. (Churchill). 7 The script can be downloaded for free on the Guardian and can be read or performed anywhere by any number of people, providing that “no admission fee is charged and that a collection is taken at each performance for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)”, see Churchill. 6.

(12) Chen 6. to depict an argument among the parents which particularizes the cause of the Holocaust tragedy, that is, “… there were people who hated Jews.” The memorization of the “clever grandmother” who died in the tragedy is followed by the contemplation on Jewish identity in “tell her there are still people who hate Jews/Tell her there are people who love Jews.” Scene 3 and 4 contain direct references to the Zionist-Jewish history of Israel. The text gives explanations to the Zionist claims for a homeland along with the description of the encounter with “the other” in Palestine: Tell her they live in tents Tell her this wasn’t their home Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away Don’t tell her they don’t like her Tell her to be careful. Don’t tell her who used to live in this house No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in this house. No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom. From Scene 1 to Scene 4, the playwright outlines the linear development of modern Jewish history, its geopolitical shift from Europe to the Middle East, and the competition for the legitimacy of the land. Scene 5, the shortest section among the seven, briefly characterizes the victory of the Jewish state in battlefields: Tell her we won Tell her her brother’s a hero Tell her how big their armies are Tell her we turned them back.

(13) Chen 7. Tell her we’re fighters Tell her we’ve got new land. These lines account for the valor of Israeli army and the consequences of the wars; references may be made to, for example, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War or the decisive battle for Israel to take control of the Gaza Strip and other Arabian territories in 1967. In Scene 6, the argument among the actors leads to the fluctuation between “tell” and “don’t tell” about the violence caused during Israel/Arab territorial feuds. Direct allusions to the concepts of lands and possessions are as follows: Tell her it’s not the water for their fields Don’t tell her anything about water. Don’t tell her about the bulldozer Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down Tell her it’s a building site.[sic]8 The fear of exposing the clash between peoples and nations to the child is presented in “don’t frighten her” and the avoidance of telling about “bombs in café.” Furthermore, the lines “Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence/Tell her we want peace” seem to portray the other side, that is, the Arabs and Palestinians as bloodthirsty radicals. The dialogical form makes repose in Scene 7 after pointing out the imperative role of media dissemination: “Tell her she can’t watch the news/Tell her she can watch cartoons/Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends” and “Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television.” Later on, the paragraph near the end of the script purports a cause-effect explanation of the disasters in Gaza. Not distracted by the. 8. The use of periods is not regular in the script..

(14) Chen 8. cacophony of other adults in the previous scenes, the monologue candidly expresses the speaker’s thoughts: […]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[sic] her all I feel is happy it’s not her.9 By starting with the Holocaust and ending with the current military conflicts, the play script draws a trajectory of the creation and development of Israel through presenting the struggle with recounting certain events or moments in modern Jewish history. Focusing on the portrayal of Israeli people and the historiography, several British Jews express their strong condemnation of the play. Some critics claim that the setting and plot development make a comparison between the Gaza War and the Holocaust. For them, such a comparison or connection is viewed as an example of anti-Semitism. In his article titled “Let’s See the ‘Criticism’ of Israel for What it Really is,” Howard Jacobson, the British Jewish writer who won the 2010 Man Booker Prize, points out the conspicuous use of such an equivalent: It begins with the Holocaust, partly to establish the playwright’s sympathetic bona fides (“Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting”), partly to explain what has befallen Palestine, because no sooner are the Jews out of the hell of Hitler’s Europe than they are constructing a parallel hell for Palestinians. The following are more accusations charging the playwright of Jew hatred through her characterization of the Israeli mentality. British columnist Melanie Phillips writes:. 9. In the script, the sentences are not all commenced with a capital letter..

(15) Chen 9. This is an open vilification of the Jewish people, not merely repeatedly perpetrating incendiary lies about Israel but demonstrably and openly drawing upon an atavistic hatred of the Jews. It is sickening and dreadful beyond measure that the Royal Court is staging this. It is not a contribution to a necessarily polarised and emotional debate. It is open incitement to hatred. Several articles on The Jewish Chronicle website also provide the approaches to understand the play as anti-Semitic and in many ways directed to be explicit Jewhatred.10 On another US-based commentary website PJ Media, Carol Gould provides the obverse of Churchill’s narratives of the situation in Gaza. Following the reviewers on The Jewish Chronicle, she criticizes that “the family of an Arab sniper, suicide bomber, Hezbollah Katyusha rocket-launcher, Hamas missile-maker, or car-bomber whose mother, wives, sisters, and daughters might also have some thoughts about the deeds of their menfolk” are deliberately not presented in Churchill’s geopolitical scenes. Refuting the facts about the Conflict in the play, she maintains that “Caryl Churchill obviously does not engage with the Jewish narrative” (Gould). Commentators like Gould are concerned about the fair proportion in narrating the situation in Gaza and therefore demand a balanced viewpoint on the Conflict. Namely, they insist the playwright should also present the violence caused by the other side. As the attack on the connection between Israel and Nazi crimes shows, the way Churchill presents the history of Israel leads to the debates on the negative representation of Israel. For these critics and commentators, the play advocating for Palestine becomes a new style of anti-Semitism disguised in the criticism of Israel or. 10. The Jewish Chronicle is a Jewish newspaper published in the United Kingdom. On the website, several reviews of the play attacking the play for its ideologies can be found, please see Dysch, Nathan, and Symons, just to list a few..

(16) Chen 10. Israeli military policies. Furthermore, Andrew Balcombe, chairman of the Zionist Federation, states: “Caryl Churchill is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. We hope the play is fair and balanced and not just a demonisation of Israel” (qtd. in Dysch). Balcombe’s statement brings the question of one’s identity and political stance to the examination of his/her legitimacy in presenting the Israel/Palestine conflict. In contrast, not viewing Seven Jewish Children as “a ten-minute blood-libel” or an anti-Semitic propaganda, some other reviewers also claim their voices. In the Royal Court Theatre premiere, the director and the cast are mostly British Jews. Ben Caplan, one of the British Jewish actors who took part in the performance, remarks that “I never believed it was anti-Semitic” (qtd. in Ghert-Zand). American playwright Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, the professor in Columbia Journalism School, also provide different insights on the play: […] a number of prominent British Jews denounced it as anti-Semitic. Some even accused Churchill of blood libel, of perpetrating in Seven Jewish Children the centuries-old lie, used to incite homicidal anti-Jewish violence, that Jews ritually murder non-Jewish children…We emphatically disagree. Kushner and Solomon therefore propose that “Churchill’s play should be seen and discussed as widely as possible.” They further designate an approach other than the subjective interpretations within the textual controversies: Surely it’s essential to understanding Seven Jewish Children that against the specifics of the script, the playwright, relinquishing nearly all traditional authorial control, engineers a far-greater-than-usual slippage among text and performance and audience reception, producing an unusually large amount.

(17) Chen 11. of room for variant readings. Critics like Kushner and Solomon, from another point of view, suggest that the play can be understood in various ways other than anti-Semitism for the gap created between text and performance. On the other hand, except for the comments and debates circulated around the commentary websites, direct theatrical responses to Churchill are also provoked in the pursuit of balancing effects. Richard Stirling’s Seven Other Children, Israel Horowitz’s What Strong Fences Make, Deb Margolin’s Seven Palestinian Children, Robbie Gringas’s The Eighth Child and Iris Bahr’s Seven English Children all seek to achieve counterbalancing or reciprocal effects in the narrative arena of the Israel/Palestine conflict. In the reading of the criticisms and responses above, it is noteworthy that some distinct political, ethical, and literary concerns are revealed. What becomes worth studying is the controversy the play elicits which is similar to those of the narratives about Israeli history. Significantly, the play, from the viewpoint of some critics, still provides different approaches to the Israel/Palestine conflict other than simply antiSemitic attacks on Israel. Proposing to examine the play and its controversy in this thesis, I am especially interested in the following questions: what causes the controversies in narrating the Israel/Palestine conflict? What do the controversies signify? If the play is not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic as some critics maintain, how does it enable multi-perspective approaches to understand and respond to the Israel/Palestine conflict?. Methodology I analyze Seven Jewish Children along with the comparable events through approaches of cultural studies and performance theories, premised upon the play’s.

(18) Chen 12. creation of discursive and theatrical spectacle. The term spectacle has been deployed in various ways and redefined in different contexts and research fields. In sociology and media studies, the term spectacle “unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena” since Guy Debord’s coinage of the “society of the spectacle” (qtd. in Kellner 24). Criticizing the capitalist society dominated by the “packaging, promotion, and display of commodities and the production and effects of all media,” Debord views spectacle as a tool of “pacification and depoliticization” (Kellner 25). Based on Debord’s conceptualization, Douglas Kellner further circumscribes the characterization of spectacle in media events which “invad[e] every field of experience from the economy, to culture and everyday life, to politics and war” (31). In the meantime, from the viewpoint of archaeology and anthropology, a spectacle can be referred to as a “public performance and public theatrical event,” “a showing and a looking,” and “a means to constitute political subjects” (Inomata and Coben 5). The meaning of spectacle could be exerted to the extent as long as one finds it appropriate as suggested by Takeshi Inomata and Lawrence S. Coben in their scrutiny of performances in the pre-modern contexts (5). I hereby draw on the idea that the meaning of spectacle can be fluid in an attempt to scrutinize the related events around Seven Jewish Children to a fuller extent. In doing so, I analyze the play as a phenomenon that summons up “showing and looking” as well as problematizes various political subjects regarding the complex issue of Israel and Palestine. In the case of Seven Jewish Children, I suggest that the creation of spectacle, however it is defined, is contingent on the powers involved and discourses exposed. Pining down some essential subject-matters based on textual references in the play and its criticisms as “discursive spectacle,” I appropriate spectacle as “a means to constitute political subjects.” In this framework, I interpret and diagnose the playtext.

(19) Chen 13. and its controversy in view of the political discourses embedded within. Historical approaches, political theories, literary criticisms, and media studies are all applied in the scrutiny of this discursive spectacle. After that, I apply theater and performance theories to examine the play under the banner of “theatrical spectacle.” I exploit the term theatrical/theatricality in a wider sense to refer it to theoretical approaches to the play’s performance as well as the effects brought out from it that are extended beyond theater walls. To deconstruct the textual reading that leads to a quite dominant interpretation of the play as an antiSemitic propaganda, I use the ideas of Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, and Augusto Boal to justify the controversial outcomes of the play. The theatrical spectacle of the play is analyzed within the context of Artaudian double, Brechtian alienation, and Boalian theater’s political function. This methodology, exploring the elements and effects of Seven Jewish Children synthesized as a spectacle, attempts to show that the spectacle of a theater piece can counteract media spectacle that affects people’s comprehension of Israel/Palestine issue.. The Outline of the Thesis This thesis is divided into four parts. The introductory Prologue provides an overview of the play’s script and the controversy in narrating the Israel/Palestine conflict which proposes to further examine the play based on the spectacle created through the explosion of discourses and theatrical involvements. In Chapter One, I probe further into the discourses with regard to the play’s historiography and its criticisms. I observe that the linear development of history along with the portrayal of Jewish/Israeli adults in the play is central to the debates among critics. Given this.

(20) Chen 14. characterization of the controversy, I start by scrutinizing the political discourses in the play as discursive spectacle, providing a review of the controversial textual descriptions focusing on the Holocaust, Jewish heroism, and Jewcentricity. In addition to the historical lens, Churchill also introduces an important factor in the formation of a discourse in the Palestine/Israel narration, that is, the denotation of female children in the script. The use of female children has created certain discursive meaning initiated from the title of the play and lasting throughout the script. I thereby examine the deployment of child figures in view of the silent, invisible “her” in each scene witnessing the argument among the adults. Later on, I want to comb the ideologies hidden in the criticisms of the play. Introducing some books that study the origin and the development of the Israel/Palestine conflict, I point out how various perceptions are generated when readers confront works by different historians. In this regard, I argue that the disapproval of Churchill’s historiography, as well as the portrayal of Israelis, corresponds to the problem of narrating facts versus perceptions. Different perceptions of the right to the land and the issue of justice with military matters are exposed in view of the critics’ concerns about unbiased representations of Jews/Israelis. In this context, it is also noteworthy that the criticisms against a narration of the Conflict are often developed to a tripartite differentiation between anti-Semitism, anti-Israelism, and anti-Zionism. Therefore, I explore these three ideas and analyze the hidden meaning in the accusation of anti-Semitism. I also tackle with the issue of legitimacy of the actors who are involved in the narrating conflict. Churchill’s pro-Palestine stance as a British playwright circumscribes a scope of literary reviews. That is, the production of the play is questioned for its authenticity of representing Israel and Palestine. In this sense, a.

(21) Chen 15. person’s engagement with Israeli/Palestinian political realities seems to be examined according to his or her cultural background. To underline this tendency, I provide two more examples of the discursive spectacle in Israeli-related events. German writer Günter Grass’s writing of the poem “Was gesagt werden muss”(What must be said) and British actress Vanessa Redgrave’s role as a Holocaust survivor in the film Playing for Time both have led to attacks on their political stances as well as their ethnic backgrounds. I observe that the similar controversies are derived from the criticism of the Israeli military policies and personal involvement with the comparable issues about Israeli history. I draw special attention to the polemic within the Jewish community. In the debates about Israel, individuals’ distinct political standpoints are examined along with their connections to the State of Israel. Howard Jacobson and Jacqueline Rose as British Jewish intellectuals serve as imperative figures in my analysis of this phenomenon. Their arguments over the Israeli politics lead to an allusion to the notion of “self-hating Jews,” who seem deprived of certain legitimacy in showing critical stances toward Israel. Ultimately, the controversy over a balanced viewpoint on Israeli history always draws the connection between the agencies of peoples and their ethnic backgrounds coupled with political inclinations, censoring: who has the legitimacy to speak or write about the warring factions? I employ this question as a tentative conclusion to the play’s controversy to imply that Churchill is disqualified from writing about Israel because of her milieu. To this end, I suggest that the discursive spectacle foregrounded on the textual subjects is confined to an anti-Semitic reading and therefore signals an impasse of narration.. .. In Chapter Two, drawing on Tony Kushner’s suggestion that the play can be understood in various ways for its “slippage among text and performance and.

(22) Chen 16. audience reception,” my approaches focus on the theatricality generated by its dramaturgical forms. I use the theories of Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, and Augusto Boal to reveal the play’s theatrical possibilities. Considering the playwright does not require specific directorial visions, I argue that the play allows authorial freedom for directors to explore different dramaturgical strategies. Therefore, to put it in an Artaudian context could divest it of the controversial textual references. In the meantime, given the lack of characterization of the characters in the play, I suggest that it allows a Brechtian distanciation which can subvert the play’s textual reading. Based on this technique, I maintain that the audience can raise the political or moral consciousness about Israel/Palestine dilemma without losing the power of reason. Also, observing the after-show debates and dramatic “writing back,” I examine how the play enables the theoretical approaches of Augustus Boal in light of the theatrical connection and tension created between the actor and the spectator. It is in this relationship between actor and spectator that theater’s political role is vitalized. In part, I argue that Artaud, Brecht, and Boal can be applied in a complementary rather than contradictory way within the play’s framework. Adaptations of the play on account of the different designs and effects created will be introduced. I review different adaptations of the play available on the Internet. The play with its short (originally within 10 minutes), adaptable (no specific setting or stage directions) script allows performances in any form. The first version is the dramatic reading by Jennie Stoller. The second is the ROOMS Productions in Chicago directed by Andrew Manley. Student productions include one at Warwick University and the other at Lebanese American University. After the analysis of these adaptations, I shift the lens to the “writing back” from some directors and playwrights that imitates Churchill’s theatrical framework to manifest their political intentions..

(23) Chen 17. One of the direct theatrical responses to Churchill is Richard Stirling’s Seven Other Children. Another theater piece staged in response to Churchill’s play is from Israel Horovitz, who displays his posture as a Jewish American dramatist. Another “writing back” is Deb Margolin’s Seven Palestinian Children (including a reading of The Eighth Child by Robbie Gringras). Writing from the perspective of the Palestinians, Margolon attempts to balance Churchill’s descriptions interpreted as the portrayal of Israeli mentalities. In this regard, I suggest that whether they oppose or support Churchill’s ideologies, these dramatic pieces of writing back correspond a lot to the struggles for a favored approach to the Conflict as analyzed in Chapter One. The last two adaptations are produced in Taiwan with one distinct dramaturgy different from the previous versions: to make a female child present on stage in each scene. In view of these productions, I maintain the play’s ability to present various Israel/Palestine narratives according to different theater practitioners’ intentions. Finally, I synthesize the play and its after-show events as a discursive and theatrical spectacle based on its provocative nature which can challenge the images of war and conflict created by media events. Overall, this thesis is an attempt to examine the discourses and theatricalities in representing the Palestine/Israel conflict on the basis of the spectacle that a play like Seven Jewish Children creates. I argue that the play’s production should not be limited to the subject-matters in the script. What the play clamors for is a multiperspective understanding of the conflict as well as the radical engagement by the activated spectators..

(24) Chen 18. Chapter One Discursive Spectacle of Seven Jewish Children. Distilling a great amount of information, each scene in Seven Jewish Children creates discourses for the conceptualization of Israeli political realities. The audience can approach the Israel/Palestine conflict through the prism of Caryl Churchill’s vision. Nevertheless, the background knowledge of the events concerning the conflict could be too tremendous to be presented thoroughly within the framework of the play’s textual content and thereby leads to dissatisfactions of individual audience. As the premiere of the play shows, the play conceals an ideological system not welcome to many Jewish critics. This chapter thereby launches an examination of the discourses related to the play’s discursive spectacle which are mainly deemed as hostility toward the State of Israel or Jewish people. After that, criticisms of the play are brought into discussion on account of the parallel spectacle of counter-discourses that the critics construct. I analyze the play and its controversy under the rubric of discursive spectacle that exemplifies the difficulties in narrating the Israel/Palestine question.. 1.1 The Discursive Spectacle Created by the Playwright 1.1.1 The Holocaust Churchill’s script provides a condensed version of the events happening around Jews and Israelis. Even though she does not specify the time, geography, and the actors in the historical spectacle, readers with a basic understanding of the history of Jewish diaspora could tease out the important references in each scene and relate them to certain events. According to Churchill’s suggestion to Ari Roth, a Jewish American.

(25) Chen 19. director who planned to stage the play in Theater J after the London premiere,11 the beginning of the play could be the Holocaust experience in Germany in the 1930s or the anti-Jewish pogroms in the nineteenth-century Russia (Kritzer 613). What I choose for thematic discussion is the setting of the Royal Court premiere in which the first scene portrays the Holocaust period. From the opening line “Tell her it’s a game”, presumably the adults in the scene pretend that it is just a hide and seek game they play with the child. According to Stef Craps, the scene can be compared to the plight in Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful12 and the story of hiding in a secret space told in Anne Frank’s diary. In this regard, the lines “tell her they’re bad in the game/tell her it’s a story/tell her they’ll go away/tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still” can be alluded to a precarious moment in a hiding place which could be invaded by the Gestapo at any time. I further suggest that the lines “Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good” remind the audience of the irony of Nazi death camps. The lie about the cake is not only for the interlocutors in the scene to placate the child in the despairing situation. Moreover, it also indicates a dark mockery of the “Arbeit macht frei (Work Brings Freedom, or Work Set You Free)” slogan, 13 which signifies nothing but a false promise to the hopeless victims of the concentration camp (Roth 78). Pointing to the iconic image of Auschwitz that work did not set the Jews free, the first scene of Seven Jewish Children presents a moment of Jews being hunted, caught, and finally perished in the death camp. Wavering between telling the fact that she may be killed and “don’t frighten her,” the argument among the speakers in this respect is. 11. Theater J features drama works of Jewish culture and legacy. Roberto Benigni’s 1997 film Life is Beautiful is “built on the same conceit of a Jewish parent trying to protect his child from the Holocaust by pretending that it is just a game” (Craps 189). 13 According to Victoria Nesfield, the “Arbeit Macht Frei” slogan above the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp symbolizes Nazi brutality (44). 12.

(26) Chen 20. about whether they should tell the child about the cruelty of life and their destiny as Jews. Nevertheless, can the unimaginable horrors of Nazi crimes and the great tragedy of Jewish people be simplified within a few words in a scene merely showing the hiding Jews? Arguably, the Holocaust scene alone could effectively show how the Jewish community being persecuted in the desperate situation even without mentioning the keywords like Nazi, death camps, and genocide. Capturing the terror that the Jews suffer through the unspeakable facts concealed by the adults, the scene highlights the inexpressible cruelty of the Holocaust atrocity caused by the unthinkable, ineffable evil. However, it should be noted that the reference to the Holocaust can always be questioned for its purpose and often criticized as a misuse or an abuse of the traumatic experiences and struggling memories of the Jewish people. Lawrence L. Langer has criticized the comedic concealment of the Holocaust realities in Benigni’s film. In Using and Abusing the Holocaust, he argues that the course of the concealment in Life is Beautiful seems to propose that the personal will of the protagonist, a loving Italian Jewish father, can triumph the extreme situation like death camps by virtue of the father’s understanding of Schopenhauerian philosophy. That is, “Schopenhauer says with will power you can do everything” (qtd. in Langer 33). From this viewpoint, Langer demonstrates that Benigni replaces the historical accuracy of the Holocaust with paternal love in an attempt to protect his son’s childhood innocence, ignoring the fact that “the freedom to choose” is deprived in death camps (32). Sacrificing the truth of imminent danger of death threats, the concealment projects an illusion of a hopeful future (Langer 39-40). Accordingly, this futility could also be found in the “tell/don’t tell” device in the first scene of Seven Jewish Children for it exposes a similar illusion as if the adults have choices and the free will to, for instance, “tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good” and ask the other not.

(27) Chen 21. to “frighten her.” After all, the threat to the child cannot be annihilated by the verbal deceit of the adults; hence I suggest the Holocaust reminiscence is from some viewpoints misused in the first part of Churchill’s play. Furthermore, regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict on a realistic political level, the Holocaust has been employed in part to buttress the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel and to support Israeli policies including settlement in the West Bank (Melson 468). However, as the State of Israel overpowers the neighboring Arab nations, this historiography could otherwise be used for delegitimizing the return of the Jews in the Eretz Yisrael. 14 One form of the delegitimazation is from the deniers of the Holocaust who assert that Jews employ the Holocaust to gain the land and political power. The delegitimization could be followed by the demonization of Jews and Israel and consequently a comparison of Israelis and Nazis. Based on the definition of the misuse of Holocaust imagery in Holocaust Encyclopedia: some misuses reflect a conscious, informed attempt to attack and de-legitimize a specifically Jewish target. For example, a cartoon image equating the Gaza Strip with the Warsaw Ghetto is an explicit effort to demonize Israeli policies and close off reasonable debate by equating the policies with Nazi genocidal ones. (“Misuse of Holocaust Imagery Today”) Holocaust imagery is therefore linked to the Israeli military policies as an accusation of Jewish conspiracy. In this sense, the misuse of the Holocaust could be a gesture of anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism or will mobilize persons who are not anti-Semitic to oppose the State of Israel. From this viewpoint, presenting the imagery of the Holocaust for the purpose of. 14. Land of Israel, biblically undefined territories, including the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine..

(28) Chen 22. supporting Palestinians, Churchill’s script becomes an example of misused Jewish tragedy. According to Churchill, the play’s goal is to present the persecution of human beings: “It shows people being persecuted, some of them going to a homeland (where others have been displaced) and the defensiveness of their threatened position, leading to further violence”( “Letters: Jacobson on Gaza”). The reference to the victimized Jews, nevertheless, leads to controversy over anti-Semitism due to the sequential development of the historical spectacle makes the former persecuted the persecutor at the present time. Churchill did notice the problems of this historical brevity: “It covers many years in 10 minutes and is, of course, an incomplete history. It leaves out a great deal that is favourable to Israel and a great deal that is unfavourable” (“Letters: Jacobson on Gaza”). However, what may be favorable to Israelis or the Jewish community, namely, the attestation of the Holocaust in memorial of the calamity befalling Jews, backfires the Jewish community and dismantles the rectitude of Israel. The minimalistic representation of the Jewish past can be read as a sheer sarcasm of the State of Israel. Hence I suggest that Churchill’s writing to an extent presents hostility toward the State of Israel and insinuates the Jewish community as a whole. Overall, Holocaust spectacle in Seven Jewish Children in a way consolidates the instrumentality of the tragic event exerted in current power struggles. Gil Hochberg states that “the success of instrumentalization of Holocaust memory in the service of a Zionist agenda is helped by the tendency among some Palestinians and other Arabs to “deny[] or minimiz[e] the gravity of recent Jewish suffering”(qtd. in Craps). The Holocaust in this respect becomes an instrument so as to challenge Israel’s founding story through which the focus of human suffering is shifted to the “second Holocaust”— the violence caused to Palestinians. It implies that Nazi crimes and Israeli military exploitation are identical in violating human rights. Therefore,.

(29) Chen 23. although it is appropriate to depict Jewish suffering caused by the Nazis in the first scene, I argue that the historical sequence of the play undermines the significance of the “Jewish” Holocaust and to a certain degree fits anti-Semitic caricatures. In this regard, even though I attempt to justify Churchill’s writing, I cannot deny that certain rhetoric in the script may result in an intended or unintended violation of anti-Semitic taboos and therefore risks condemnation from the Jewish community.. 1.1.2 Jewish Heroism The empowerment of the Jewish identity through the victories of wars in the script is another controversial subject. Scene 5 shows an affirmative tone of the adults who are not hesitant to tell about the triumph over the adversities in narrating the history of Israel: Tell her we won Tell her her brother’s a hero Tell her how big their armies are Tell her we turned them back Tell her we’re fighters Tell her we’ve got new land. To create an image of the powerful Jews is a strategy for Jewish people to regain confidence and reclaim identity. Before the founding of Israel, the wandering Jews represent a frail, victimized group of people whose identity as the powerless reaches its darkest moment during the Holocaust. As Neil R. Davidson points out, fin de siècle anti-Semitic narrative characterizes racial and religious assumptions of Jewish effeminacy, inferiority, and weakness (5). Therefore, the victory of the Jews after the shift from Europe to the Middle East, namely, to defeat the enemies and to build the.

(30) Chen 24. country, can reverse the inferior, feminized image of Jewish male body and strengthens the Jewish valor. In view of Israeli history, the glorification of militant figures serves not only as the memorization of heroes but also the making of Israeli collective memory. In Perfect Heroes, Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz traces the heroism back to the seven parachutists who were deployed on the Zionist mission to contact the European Jews during World War II. “For as soon as the parachutist died, the hero was created, and as soon as the person dies, the symbol is born” (Baumel-Schwartz 44). Baumel-Schwartz further explains the significance of commemoration: Commemoration is a very important mechanism in strengthening and cementing every society’s identity. It is even more crucial in a nascent society, which uses the rituals of commemoration to shape its self-image and sketch the contours of its national consciousness-in-formation. (46) Thus, political parties in Israel and the Jewish community worldwide seek legitimacy in the image of war heroes. The symbol of heroes serves to counteract the anti-Zionist discourses created by the adversaries, i.e., the long persecution of the Jews in Europe and the Arab hostility toward Israel. The commemoration of heroes is therefore perpetuated in Israeli society for it heralds the conquest of the Arabs, the possession of the land, and the hardship of building a country. After all, despite the fact that the Jewish state has already become a reality, the legitimacy of the nation is still questioned in anti-Israel stream of discussions. However, in the context of the military invasion, the heroism of Jewish people runs in tandem with the violence caused to the other side—the neighboring nations and the Palestinians. The Jewish heroism seems always followed by the delegitimization of the Israeli narratives in view of the violence caused and the.

(31) Chen 25. continuous conflicts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Therefore, the image of the perfect heroes as Jewish empowerment is dual when it also crystalizes Israeli nationalist, right-wing agenda of Zionism in a spirit of self-justification. In Exodus, the 1958 historical novel written by Jewish American novelist Leon Uris, Zionist heroism solidifies and glorifies the State of Israel after the devastation of the Holocaust. The novel achieved great success and, according to the late Edward Said, has been a dominant narrative for Americans to think of the State of Israel and the Middle East issues. Significantly, what lacks in the story of heroes conquering difficulties in establishing a country is the Palestinian narrative. As Matthew M. Silver observes, the coexistence of “Other Exodus” is neglected by Leon Uris, the like-minded readers, and Israel supporters (6). As a result, “Other Exodus,” signifying the transfer of Palestinians, discredits the rectitude of “Our Exodus” for the unfair proportion in depicting the tragedy of the other side. From this viewpoint, Churchill’s script presents a sort of forthright criticism of Israel—the Jewish claim of Promised Land led to the displacement of Palestinians and other conflicts in the area. The script in this sense uses the heroic image of Jews to reveal the self-serving mentality of the Israeli people. The Jewish heroism, conveying the only affirmative message in the play’s script to tell the child about “that we won” and “we’ve got new land,” is used to delegitimize the State of Israel due to the pernicious results of conflicts. Furthermore, showing the Israeli adults’ argument about telling or hiding the truth about “the bulldozer knocking the house down, bombs in café” in the following scene, the heroic narrative is transformed to a post-war reflection. The tone of uncertainty followed by the heroic victory indicates that the Israeli adults in the scene are conscious of the inglorious chapter of encroachment..

(32) Chen 26. As a result, the valor of Jewish people embodied in the building of the State of Israel is deconstructed because of the ongoing complex territorial feuds. As Silver points out, in the progress of Jewish empowerment, the images of superhuman Israeli soldiers become morally problematic in narratives showing affirmative tone to assert the legitimacy of the land. Moreover, highlighting military heroism and impregnable nationalist agenda to claim the land, the narrative could otherwise reveal the innate weakness and insecurity of Israelis. It ultimately makes the heroes defeatable. As the protagonist of Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun demonstrates,15 “they[Jews] are saying the opposite and unwittingly expressing their fundamental insecurity” when asserting their attachment to the land through narratives like Exodus (qtd. in Silver 184). Israelis, when celebrating Jewish courage, are like the Palestinians with the traumatized experiences of expulsive transfer, behave with uncertainties because of “the psychological effects of powerlessness” (Silver 214). In this respect, Churchill’s reference to the powerful Jewish soldiers in wars disarms the Jewish heroes and invalidates the commemoration of Israeli military exploitation.. 1.1.3 Jewcentricity Starting from the shift to the Middle East, the triumph over the Arabs, the settlement project, and the current military conflicts, the play runs in line with the unfolding of Jewcentricity. In Scene 6, lines like “Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert/don’t tell her about the olive trees/Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness/don’t tell her they throw stones/Tell her they’re not much good against tanks” write about the construction on the land. The expansion of settlement on the territories pertains to the economic prosperity of Israel. It signals the celebration of. 15. Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun tells about Palestinian displacement after 1948..

(33) Chen 27. the military exploits as the previous scene implies. Nevertheless, it also discloses the development of modern technologies bringing economic, capitalist development on the soil while jeopardizing the daily life of the residents in the incessant wars in the other aspect. The lines “tell her they don’t understand anything except violence/tell her we want peace” present an attempt to cover a rather impartial fact so as to view the Palestinians as primitive, pugnacious radicals. In this respective, Israel’s conflict with Palestine is presented as a one-sided violence, serving to demonize the other side—the Palestinians. Reviewing the events from the viewpoint of the Israeli people, the narration could otherwise be alienated from the Israelis. This narration seems to consciously expose unfavorable attributes of Israelis and designate the negative characteristic of a Jew-centered point of view regarding the long-standing conflict. This approach to the script again leads to a condemnation of the founding of Israel, if not a challenge about the legitimacy of Israel, by revealing its occupation, deprivation, and casualty of the Other. The monologue in the last scene therefore makes a conclusion of the previous presentation of Israeli self-serving mentality, showing that the Israelis exterminate the other without any sympathy. It is worthy of quoting in full: Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army. Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? 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.

(34) Chen 28. 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. This long statement explicitly shows the critique of Israel through exposing the mind of an unreservedly self-interest Israeli. The Jewish-centered conceptualization seems converged on the trope of “chosen people.” To this end, it constructs an ideology that the Israelis exert power to persecute the Palestinians because Jews are “the chosen one.” Adam Garfinkle, a Jewish American political scientist, proposes that antiSemitism as form of Jewcentricity intertwined with the concept of chosenness can be divided into three major stages of development. The original Jewcentricity was the Jewish self-perception in philosophical and religious sense which was replaced by the second one with racial tropes, that is, “the modern anti-Semitism of the sort that gave rise to the Holocaust” (Garfinkle 63). The postmodern one, he argues, is the current focus on the Jewish material and political power, designating an “ideological selectivity” that associates Jews, Jewish nationalism, and Israel with racism (Garfinkle 64). The establishment of Israel as an achievement of Zionism is thereby blamed for its racism against the other ethnic groups, mainly the Palestinians. To understand the use of the “chosen people” rhetoric in this way, Churchill’s script, weaving together the historical lens on Jewish/Israeli voice, could be elided.

(35) Chen 29. into what Kushner and Solomon called “misunderstanding of Judaism and obliviousness to the stereotyping of Jews” (qtd. in Kritzer 615-16). The “chosen one” as an idea of difference is easily blended into presumptions of snobbery and supremacy (Garfinkle 11). Accordingly, the “we/they” phrasing as a viewpoint of differentiating self from the other in the script presupposes that the Israelis are insensitive toward Palestinian suffering as an extreme expression of self-perceiving chosenness. The final speech in the script, underlying the survival of the Israeli child, explains the Israeli Jewcentricity which dehumanizes the Palestinians. It consequently suffuses the whole play with condemnation of the chosen people mentality which is interpreted as an anti-Semitic connotation. As Howard Jacobson argues, “once you venture on ‘chosen people’ territory, an ancient prejudice tantamount to a blood-libel of Jews,” you perform hatred toward Jews as a whole (qtd. in Kritzer 615). As an exemplification of Jewcentricity, the idea of “chosen people” could inevitably be read as a negative signifier that is predisposed to the controversy over anti-Semitism. The use of the chosen people rhetoric even disturbs Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon who justify and praise Churchill’s writing of the play. Even though Kushner and Solomon still hold that this reference does not amount to anti-Semitism since what the characters say does not stand for the playwright’s ideology, the “chosen one” trope still bears the weight of the history of discriminative violence and could always confront challenges from Jewish critics like Jacobson et al. Consequently, appealing to protest against Israel’s military policy and drawing public attention to Gaza crisis in the spectacle of Jewcentricity, Churchill otherwise makes the play vulnerable to the Jewcentric investigation of anti-Semitism in terms of the content of the playtext..

(36) Chen 30. 1.1.4 The Jewish Children The function of the Jewish child figure in the play remains fluid. The phrasing “Jewish Children” viewed as evidence of Jew-hatred can be found in some critics’ analysis of the play. “…the title of her ten-minute playlet is not Seven Israeli Children, but Seven Jewish Children” (Harrison 36). Paul Bogdanor provides a similar observation to Harrison that “The play is, after all, entitled ‘Seven Jewish Children’ and not ‘Seven Israeli Children’” (Bogdanor 83). Following the thread of Jew-centered ideology, the “Jewish Children” in the title of the play is understood as a kind of target that negates the Jewish community as a whole rather than a mere condemnation of the Israeli government. Reversely, Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon have defended this use, seeking positive connotation in the Jewish children: Why does the title use “Jewish" rather than "Israeli”? Because all the children the play revolves around are Jewish, but not all are Israeli. And because not all Israelis are Jewish; a sizable minority is Arab. More important, because her play addresses the worldwide Jewish community. Our history of diaspora and persecution led to the founding of the State of Israel, which claims to act on behalf of all Jews. We have an impact upon its policies. Many Jews, including the two of us, feel profoundly connected to Israel and concerned for its fate…. In contrast to the comments from the previous critics, Kushner and Solomon’s approach offers to read the Jewishness in the play as an appeal to Jews worldwide to face the current crisis together. From time to time, the child seems to be given a real place on the stage as if a dialogue or a conversation virtually takes place in the presence of the Jewish children. As Kushner and Solomon’s analysis shows, “Nothing is more intimate than.

(37) Chen 31. discussions between parents about what to tell their children; no act of speech is more carefully weighed or more fiercely protected. This is a family play, told from within the family. It concludes with love, and it concludes with fear.” In the light of a family play, the image of well-intended adults in normal, daily conversational circumstances allows the audience to identify with the dilemma of telling or not telling. Still, the “children” play an important part in interpreting the political intention of the play for the specified “her” in each scene. In Churchill’s previous play like Far Away, the child character plays an essential role to expose absurdity and violence inherent in a society. 16 From this viewpoint, Linda Dittmar and Joseph Entin’s analysis of the play’s politics directly qualifies the play’s “powerful testimony to the horrifying effects of violence on both Jews and Palestinians, seen through children’s eyes” (7). This observation of the child subject can also be found in Amelia Howe Kritzer’s “Women Playwrights Confronts the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” in which she explains how the symbolic meaning of the child is mobilized to arouse the audience’s emotions. Kritzer describes the child as “a guiltless party” that reminds us of the cruelty of wars and the violence happening in the warring factions. In her article “A child Is Testifying,” Julia Emberley focuses on the “fragility and vulnerablilty” of the “gendered female child to whom ostensible instructions are directed “(378). She also argues in “Can the Child Testify” that “the child as testifier is being deployed in contemporary testimonial practices for purposes related to the meaning and even the loss of childhood in a world of genocidal atrocities” (160). She observes that a female recipient of messages, for its vulnerablility in confrontation of war and violence, makes the agency more powerful to audience in the politicization of the child. In the first part of Far Away, Churchill’s 2000 play, the aunt Harper attempts to hide things from the niece Joan whose questions gradually expose the violence happening around. 16.

(38) Chen 32. (Emberley 160). However, Emberley still casts doubt on the use of the child being politicized as a subject in narratives “when the child is launched as the figure of truth, authenticity, and power in contemporary political struggles” (164). Such kind of politicization could otherwise give an account of the miseducation carried out by the adults. As Paul Bogdanor and Michael Billington argue, the child figure bears the inculcating words from the parents regarding the conflict between peoples and the understanding of the other. “Churchill’s play shows us how Jewish children are bred to believe in the ‘otherness of Palestinians’ (emphases added)” ( Bogdanor 83). Bogdanor and Billington thereby view the child as a receiver of negative messages, aiming at a negative portrayal of the parents which eventually becomes a demonization of the Jews/Israelis. Consequently, the child is interpreted as an innocent agent that bears witness not only to the cruelty of violence but, remarkably, the cruelty of the parents. For critics like Bogdanor and Billington who view the child simply as passive listener accepting certain knowledge that the adults attempt to inculcate with, the child’s agency is a mere device for the playwright’s political intention. The child agency therefore loses its ability to prove the authenticity of historical events. In this sense, the critical lens of the child is shifted from the function of bearing witness to what kind of truth or truths that the audience sees and is about to hold. As Emberley points out, “what becomes apparent in the oscillation between the sayable and the unsayable is that ‘truth’ is overdetermined in the sense that a regime of veridiction exists due not only to historical realities, but also to the fear of violence” (160). The child figure in the script serves not as a reliable agency to convince every audience of the violence but the concealment of the violence. It further brings out that truth is overdetermined, multilayered and therefore debated on due to the complex issue.

(39) Chen 33. behind her. To this end, the subjectivity of child is transferred to the audience whose interpretations give different political meanings to the truth or truths that the child witnesses. One of the common interpretations, as many criticisms of the play show, is the belief that the female children are silenced by the adults’ words of distorting the Israeli history and demonizing the adults. Consequently, Churchill’s deployment of child figure, just like the subject-matters previously analyzed, leads to a condemnation of the hostility toward the Jewish community.. 1.2 The Discursive Spectacle Created by the Critics I circumscribe the discursive spectacle of critics in view of “the number of column inches generated per page of playtext” and “the charge that the play was antiSemitic vigorously debated back and forth across countless newspapers and websites” (Haydon 76). Focusing on the textual description of Jews in the play, many critics criticize its distortion in line with anti-Semitic propaganda. Notably, in addition to anti-Semitism, accusatory terms like anti-Zionism and anti-Israel are also exerted interchangeably in the criticisms of the play. Besides, some critics draw special attention to the political stance of the playwright as well as that of the other critics. Examining the meaning of these criticisms, I approach the after-show discussions about Seven Jewish Children as the discursive spectacle counteracting that of the playwright’s.. 1.2.1 The Competing Narrations of Israel/Palestine Before examining the criticisms of the play, I want to review some examples of various narrations of the contested history from which debates over a neutral, balanced viewpoint on the Israel/Palestine conflict ensue. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim.

(40) Chen 34. has pointed out how he and other “New Historians” are attacked for their historiography of the Conflict.17 Shabtai Teveth, one of the critics of Shlaim and other new historians, states that “the new historiography is politically motivated, proPalestinian, and aimed at delegitimizing Zionism and the State of Israel”(Shlaim 291). The following are more book resources about Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their reviews. Charles D. Smith’s Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents attempts to give a thorough documentation of issues around Israel and Arab nations. The author’s documentation is nonetheless questioned by an online reviewer who criticizes the book’s very basic definition of Palestine as a “country.” “Those who call themselves ‘Palestinians’ started this fraud only after 1967 after the Arabs lost another war, one of many when they tried to drive the Jews into the sea”(Shvartz). In the meantime, some other reviewers, obviously with a pro-Israel stance, define the documentation as one more “pro-Palestine book” for not providing balanced viewpoints on Israel. However, comments viewing the book as “heavily biased against Palestine” for it does not cover both sides’ narrative in each story and problem can also be found on the website (“Heavily Biased”). In The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories, Neil Caplan scrutinizes the initial conflict between the Jewish community and the Arab nations as well as the following development of contentions to this day. Similarly, despite underscoring the plural “histories” of the conflict, Caplan’s narration is criticized by reviewers because he neglects to include all information about the Israeli side of things (Levi). In The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, Joseph A. Massad, discusses the ideas of anti-Semitism, colonialism, and racism in. Benny Morris’s The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Ilan Pappe’s Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-516, and Avi Shlaim’s Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine group them as “Israeli revisionists or the new historians” (Shlaim 288). 17.

(41) Chen 35. the framework of Israel/Palestine conflict from the standpoint as PalestinianAmerican academic. Due to Massad’s critical insight on the State of Israel and the warring factions, he has been involved in many controversies and become a representative figure confronting hostility from certain Jewish/Israeli communities. 18 Likewise, reexamining the Zionist ideology and Israel’s policies in the settlement of Gaza in Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, Muhammad Shahid Alam, a Pakistani social scientist at Northeastern University, also faces a challenge to his scholarship in view of his cultural background. For example, a polemic on American Thinker, a online magazine, addresses Alam as “historical hoaxer” and as “a native of a Muslim country, trained and employed in a field long disengaged from Middle Eastern, Islamic, or comparative religious studies, who presents himself as an expert on all things having to do with Middle Eastern history and society”(Schwartz). Michael A. Rydelnik’s Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict: What the Headlines Haven’t Told You, a book attributing the cause of the conflict to the Arab terrorists, also receives polarized reviews. That is, one praising the book’s credibility helping people understand the Israel/Palestine conflict and the other disapproving it for its biased, slanted viewpoint against all Arab communities. 19. For example, in 2005, Columbia University formed a committee to investigate faculty’s antiAmerican/anti-Israeli sentiment. Massad was accused of classroom intimidation and also received a mail from a fellow faculty member, telling “Go back to Arab land where Jew hating is condoned. You are a disgrace and a pathetic typical Arab liar”(qtd. in Finn). In 2013, Al Jazeera English published an Op-Ed by Massad entitled “The Last of the Semites.” It was followed by “numerous commentators largely the ones who have spent years casually smearing as anti-semites those who criticize Israel instantly and vehemently denounced Massad’s arguments”(Greenwald). 19 The following are the comments and reviews made: “If there’s a reason that Dr. Rydelnik spends more time on the Israeli side, it’s because it’s very under-reported, distorted, or simply ignored by the media and literary world in general (see now the academic study of this pervasive anti-Israel bias in the article by H. I. Silverman, ‘Reuters: Principles of Trust or Propaganda?’…”( Wechsleron); “This book gives the reader a good grasp on the history, development, and current state of the the land of Israel and the conflict with the Palestinians”(Bussell); “This book is one-sided. It is motivated by the author’s unchallenged dispensational eschatology, which is a racist doctrine. The book is thoroughly pro-Israel” (Chan). 18.