Motti Lerner’s play, The Admission, ignited a firestorm in Washington when it was announced as part of the season at Theater J, which is housed in the D.C. Jewish Community Center (“DCJCC”). I had seen the play and reached out to Ari Roth, Theater J’s former Artistic Director to obtain a copy of the script. Roth put me in touch with Lerner, a preeminent Israeli playwright, screenwriter and television writer, teaches and lectures.

 Lerner shared with me a talk he gave at Strasbourg University in April 2015 on “Political Theater in Israel.” In it, he details his frustrating efforts to get The Admission produced in his own country. The play had been commissioned in 2004 and, as of the date of the talk, had yet to be produced in Israel.

In his new play, After the War, which premiered in Washington last month at Roth’s new Mosaic Theater Company, Lerner examines the devastating personal and professional cost to an artist — an internationally known Israeli concert pianist — for speaking out against the war in Israel. I thought about Lerner as I read about a protester who shouted “Black Lives Matter” at a Trump rally in Louisville in March. She was shoved around and called “leftist scum” as she was booted from the political rally. As Lerner and the protester at the Trump rally know, speaking up can come with a steep price. Yet, in his talk, Lerner is hopeful as he challenges us as writers and artists to initiate the public discourse that he believes can lead to solutions. 

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – The Challenge for the Israeli Theater

A talk by Motti Lerner at the conference: “Political Theater in Israel”, Strasbourg University, April 16, 2015

Edited by Patricia Connelly

Those of you who have followed the public discourse in Israel over the last 15 years are probably surprised to see how little of it deals with the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reason for it is probably that too many Israelis and Palestinians are in despair over the recent developments in the Middle East and they don’t see any possible solution for this long and bloody conflict in the near future. I am not among those people. I deeply believe that, in the long run, Israel’s survival depends on finding a comprehensive solution for the conflict with our Palestinian neighbors. I also believe that such a solution is possible with the first phase of it likely being the two-states solution proposed by President Clinton in January 2001. Therefore, I strongly believe that Israeli Theater artists –- especially those who believe that a solution for the conflict is within our reach –- should address the conflict incessantly and stubbornly. We theater artists may not bring about a solution, but we can initiate a public discussion that will create the climate for achieving it.

How do we do it?

I don’t think there could be a collective plan for the artistic vision of theater artists. Theater work is based more on the visions of individuals than on organized artistic endeavors. As such, I’d like to focus on my own strategy and my work on one specific play. I hope that this description will inspire other works very different from mine that will also address  the conflict. The play is The Admission, which was produced last spring in Washington D.C., and directed by my friend and colleague Sinai Peter.  The play will be produced next spring in Tel Aviv, if the political conditions allow for it.

I’d like to begin with the origins of the play. I was born in Israel in 1949 in a small village called Zichron Ya’acov, which is located about 3 kilometers from the Mediterranean between Haifa and Tel Aviv. My parents were farmers and, like all the boys in the village, I spent my summer vacations working in the family vineyards. During the harvest of 1965 – when I was 16 years old – a surprising incident occurred. My father employed workers from the neighboring Arab village, Furaidis. One day, about noon, a truck arrived at the vineyard. It was time to load the boxes of grapes and deliver them to the market in Tel Aviv. The driver got off the truck and sat down in the shade of a tree. Suddenly, I heard a bitter discussion between him and the Arab workers. I speak very little Arabic and I couldn’t follow it, but it was quite clear that they were accusing him of murder. He replied: “I didn’t murder. I only buried the dead.” It was a hot August day and nobody had the patience to explain to me what the argument was about. When I returned home I started asking questions. My father refused to say anything. Only one neighbor was willing to tell me what led to that heated discussion.

Those workers, from the neighboring Arab village of Furaidis, were actually refugees from another Arab village — Tantura —located on the  Mediterranean coast. Tantura had been conquered by the Israeli Army on May 23, 1948, during Israel’s war of independence. Most of the inhabitants of the village had been expelled and relocated to Tul Karem in the West Bank, except for 200 who were allowed to remain in Furaidis. The driver — whose name was Sokoler — was the guide who led the army regiment into Tantura and who later was ordered to bury the Palestinian dead. I assumed that the Arab workers accused Sokoler of participating in murdering their relatives and he was defending himself when he said he didn’t kill, but only buried the dead. That neighbor who told me about the battle in Tantura said that his brother was a company commander in that battle. He added, “Yes, there was a massacre there, but my brother didn’t participate in it. He tried to stop it.” That brother was already dead in 1965, but I remembered him very well. He was a very warm, loving and generous human being. I used to call him “Uncle” although he was not an uncle of mine. I think the first seed of The Admission was planted that summer.

The second seed was planted in 2002 when I read an article about a thesis submitted by Teddy Katz, an MA student in the history department at Haifa University. His thesis contained testimonies from Arabs and Jews about a massacre of 250 Palestinians committed by soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade during the battle of Tantura on May 23, 1948. Alexandroni veterans denied the accusations and insisted that only 80 Palestinians were killed, all of them during the battle. Alexandroni veterans sued Katz for libel. Under heavy pressure from family and friends, Katz signed a statement in which he declared that there was no massacre. He regretted his statement after 12 hours, but his thesis was rejected based on the fact that it was “inaccurate and distorted the historical truth.” Several books have also been written on the subject.  I recommend those by Yoav Gelber  and Ilan Pappe’s  who hold completely opposite views.

I read Katz’ thesis. A few of the witnesses were from my village and I knew them. During the years after 1965, I heard more and more stories about the battle in Tantura from neighbors and relatives. It became clear to me that there are several narratives of the events of the battle. I am not a historian and I didn’t want to judge the various historical accounts. I was challenged by the mere fact that there were several narratives, all so different from one another. The number of Palestinian dead varied from 50 to 270, the Palestinians claimed that they were taken in groups and were shot after the battle, Alexandroni veterans claimed that most of the dead were soldiers and all of them were killed in battle. The debate developed into a heated controversy and each side struggled desperately for its own version of the events. The reason for this heated controversy is clear: it has huge consequences on the understanding of one of the major elements of the Israeli Palestinian conflict — the Palestinian refugees problem — which poses perhaps the most frightening dilemma for many Israelis when they consider the peace plans for the Middle East.

Since I’m a playwright and not a politician, I don’t think I should present a comprehensive solution for the Palestinian refugees problem. What then, is my challenge? As I said earlier, we, theater artists, cannot bring about a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our challenge is to create a public discourse that will lead to achieving it. How do we do it if the public discourse is so superficial and if our spectators are so deeply prejudiced, so deeply defensive, so deeply resistant to even hearing the narrative of the Palestinians? In other words, how do we transform our stubborn theater-goers into open-minded spectators who are capable of listening to the narrative of the “other”?

I strongly believe — and this is of course my own personal belief, based mostly on my own experience as a spectator, but also on great visionaries of the theater like Aristotle — that the most potent and most efficient tool in the hands of the playwright to affect the spectator is catharsis. I believe that if we want to create a change within our spectators we must lead them through a process of catharsis that will initiate this change. Aristotle didn’t say it in the Poetics for reasons which I can only guess — and I’ll be happy to discuss at another opportunity — but he repeatedly said that the catharsis is the purpose of tragedy.

Look for the second half of this lecture next week! Patricia Connelly is a current student in the Goddard College MFAW Program.