The Night at the State Library, Melbourne, May 18, 2009

Di and I arrived at 5:15, over an hour early to meet Alex and Marg and Sue, and other Women in Black comrades for a coffee before the events of the night, but we were stunned to see that even at this early hour hundreds of people were already standing in a long que stretching up the street. The night grew dark, people greeted each other, young people from various groups leafleted us as we waited, Students for Palestine, the Jewish Students Group, others slipped into our hands broadsheets saying why the play we were going to see, all ten minutes of it, Caryl Churchill's "Seven Jewish Children," was antisemitic. Because of the controversy over the appearance of the well known Australian Jewish actress Miriam Margoyles in the reading, Australians for Palestine, the sponsoring organization of the night, had changed the night's agenda to include a panel discussion after the play reading and time for audience comments. As the night darkened we could hear the chants of competing student groups, and we knew that the time of silence over Israel's national policies was over; many parts of the Melbourne community were ready to talk out loud and passionately and will be for a long time. Palestinian and Jewish, we sat together in the too too small lecture hall, many still standing out in the street, to be welcomed by Sonia, the dedicated leading force in Palestinians for Australia, a commanding presence, who quietly centered us on the timing of the play, the commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, the catastrophe, for the Palestinians which was the founding of the state of Israel, two opposing histories, trying to find a common ground.

As Sonya wrote in the program notes: "While everyone has their own opinion of the matter, the Palestinian Nakba remains pivotal to this event. It is inherent in the play's own intent to show a 'shared' history, which we believe is the point of the play and not the attempts to denigrate it as antisemitic. So, not only do we hope the play will contribute to a greater understanding of the Palestinian narrative here in Australia, we also hope to find common ground with the Jewish community so that Israel's policies and practices do not come between people desiring universal human rights, respect for international law and a just peace."

-- I found the reading of the play moving and rich with connections, and the ensuing conversation--a young Palestinian Australian woman scholar, a well known Jewish QC, Prof. Yakov Rabkin, a Canadian visiting Professor of History and author of "A Threat from Within: Jewish Opposition to Zionism," an Australian Palestinian father telling of his family's history of displacement and of his family still living in Israel, detailing his life of interconnectedness, a young Zionist professor and Dennis Altman, the gay historian speaking as a "public intellectual," a term I will run from forever more--sometimes inspiring, sometimes infuriating, sometimes challenging, sometimes pushing me to new thinking. The evening ended with a short film of the assault on Gaza set to the reading by Dr. Rafey Habib of his poem, "A Prayer for Gaza." [We will include the texts of the poem on another posting] All the talk fell away, as images of the dead and wounded, of the crumpled world that once was Gaza, of the images of militarism raining down destruction on all our dreams of life and hope--for in such unjust acts, we all die a little, the Jewish heart that seeks a humane world and the Palestinian mother who looks for her child amid the rubble of her home. I can still hear the voice of the actress, refusing mikes or that stage, shouting out to us, stop the bombing, stop the killing, talk, TALK, TALK, she screamed. As we poured into the now quiet night street, we knew that there was no turning back from our struggle to call for a new Israeli way. Later we learned that the library had been pressured not to allow the event to happen. It is too late for such tactics now.
Joan