In his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,†Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, strongly objects to the fact that our taxpayer-funded CBC Radio aired the blatantly anti-Semitic play Seven Jewish Children.
Criticism of Israel is reaching a state of hysterical overreaction, devoid of rational analysis of events on the ground. Even decent, well-meaning people have been swept up in this frenzy to such a degree that they are now willing to entertain, as legitimate discussion, the most vile caricatures of Israelis and Jews.
That’s what happened on May 3, when CBC Radio Sunday Edition devoted its first hour to airing English playwright Caryl Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children.
A 10-minute drama, ostensibly criticizing Israel’s military conduct during the recent conflict in Gaza, Seven Jewish Children ends up caricaturing Israelis and demonizing Jews as bloodthirsty murderers of Palestinian children.
Sunday Edition host Michael Enright said it was important to broadcast the play – a series of monologues spoken by Jewish parents about what to tell their children concerning difficult episodes in their history – in order to appreciate the controversy surrounding it. So the CBC Radio audience was treated to lines such as the following, about Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which conclude the performance: “Tell her [a Jewish child] we killed the [Palestinian] babies by mistake…Tell her I laughed when I saw the dead [Palestinian] policemen. Tell her they’re animals living in rubble now. Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out…Tell her we’re better haters. Tell her we’re chosen people.”
Immediately following the reading of the play, Enright interviewed British novelist Howard Jacobson, who has written scathing critiques of Churchill’s work.
Jacobson made several key points:
- Churchill’s production is political propaganda masquerading as art;
- It’s based on a lie about Israel’s actions in Gaza and the way Israelis feel about innocent Palestinian civilians killed or injured in the recent conflict. Churchill eliminated any context about the conflict, making Israelis look wantonly brutal and wholly callous;
- It is also a lie to imply, as Churchill does, that Jews who suffered under the Nazi Holocaust are acting in a similar way toward the Palestinians;
- Churchill promotes an anti-Semitic “blood libel” against Jews, whom she refers to as “chosen people.”
Enright next interviewed McGill University professor Abby Lippman, a member of Independent Jewish Voices, a group that’s promoting the play’s performance in Canada. (It debuted in Montreal this month and will be staged in Toronto May 15 to 17.)
Enright asked Lippman whether she thought the play was anti-Semitic. “No, I do not. I reject that label” she said, without substantial elaboration.
With respect to Jacobson’s charge that Churchill promoted a “blood libel,” Enright referred to a line that he admitted he found “curiously disturbing”: “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake.”
Enright asked: “Isn’t the inference in that line that Israelis were killing babies on purpose?” Lippman said that she didn’t read it that way, but is aware that some have, adding, “It may be that I’m just not sophisticated enough or religious enough” to see any blood libel. Instead, she said, all she saw in that line was anger about Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
Referring to another point that Jacobson made, namely, that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, Enright pressed on with Lippman, asking, “But isn’t it also the case that sometimes anti-Semitism is hiding in the cloak of criticism of Israel?” Lippman replied that she won’t be silenced by that charge.
While Enright was very conscious of the criticism that Churchill’s play is anti-Semitic, even acknowledging that the play is “radioactive,” he apparently sided with Lippman against Jacobson on this crucial point. For otherwise he would not have aired something he knew or believed to contain noxious anti-Semitic tropes. And this is something this columnist, who knows and respects Enright, accepts that he would not knowingly do.
Yet it is also indisputable that Jacobson has the correct reading of the Churchill text, even if certain individuals, including some Jews themselves, fail or refuse, for whatever reason, to recognize this.
The result is that the CBC broadcast something, however unwittingly, that promotes some of the most historically vile stereotypes about Jews. Sunday Edition must deal with the consequences of its failure to acknowledge what is really at issue here.
This also stands as a frightening indication of how previously unacceptable discourse is becoming mainstream in the media.
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