In the Shadow of the Wall
Deir Yassin Day 2004
Like the Palestinian tragedy itself, the village of Deir Yassin which symbolises it, lies forgotten. The site of the massacre of April 9th 1948, today lies unnamed and unmarked not 1500 meters from the most famous Holocaust memorial in the world at Yad Vashem. The international organisation, Deir Yassin Remembered, by building memorials and holding yearly commemorations, has put the village, and the Palestinian people, back onto the conscious map of the world.
“From Deir Yassin to the Wall”, this year’s London commemoration of the massacre, was directed by Jordanian actor/director Nadim Sawalha, and performed to a packed audience of Palestinians, Arabs, Jews and many others at the Royal Geographical Society in London’s Knightsbridge.
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| Nadim Sawalha |
In the event, the high expectations generated by the three previous commemorations were both met and dashed. They were met by the quality of the performance, this year written, performed and directed entirely by professionals, but dashed for anyone who came expecting a conventional commemoration or a mere repetition of previous years’ successes. Nadim Sawalha:
“'This year we tried something new, emphasising the theatrical side of the event, and I think we have succeeded in getting the message across to our audience in an entertaining and engaging fashion'.
It began simply enough with 17 year old Shadia Mansour singing “Asfour” by Marcel Khalife.
“I asked him where do you come from? He said my home is the sky. I said, what happened to your feathers? He said time has scattered them away.”
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| Shadia |
It’s about a small bird of course, but for Shadia, it’s about a small Palestinian boy taking refuge in the house of a Jewish woman. Deir Yassin commemorations always salute those Jews prepared to stand up and be counted.
“Shooting with Parsley” was a new play by Palestinian playwrite Razanne Carmey. Through the Deir Yassin commemorations, Carmey has established herself as the foremost English-language Palestinian playwrite. Fascinated by a subject which has occupied her attentions for the past three years, Razanne writes:
Like many Palestinians I grew up hearing about Deir Yassin. But also like many Palestinians, my parents didn’t go into detail, it was a massacre and many innocent villagers died. As if a blow by blow account was somehow obscene, as if we were preserving the dignity of the victims by glossing over what was actually done to them. This left us, the new generation of Palestinians born and raised in the Diaspora, with a vague sense of horror all the more disturbing for the lack of information.
So when I was asked to write the story of Deir Yassin, even as the writer in me wanted to convey a sense of this horror, the Palestinian in me wanted to lay the ghosts to rest by uncovering the mundane truth. But it was the mundane truth which proved more terrifying. In my mind, the villagers had been heroic, noble even saintly in their martyrdom at the hands of Zionist monsters. In reality, they weren’t all that heroic, they were ordinary people with ordinary faults, people like me. Sometimes they made mistakes, or were cowardly and sometimes foolhardy. They refused the Arab Liberation Army’s protection, preferring to trust to their negotiations with the Jews of Givat Shaul. Were they collaborators and appeasers? Or were they just plain frightened and confused Palestinians trying to guess at the best course in increasingly dark times?
In fact the single most disturbing discovery I made while researching Deir Yassin, is how similar it all is to present day issues. If the Jews who killed the people of Deir Yassin were in fact ordinary people saturated with hatred of Arabs is it any wonder they found it easy to massacre Arabs. The culture of hatred and racism against Palestinians made killers of the Zionists, even as racism and hatred made killers of the Nazis.
What will hatred and racism do now?
So, in a timeless and imaginary courtroom, a trial takes place. On trial, the state of Israel, and to be determined, the following issues: Was it a massacre or a battle? Was it premeditated or accidental? Indeed, was it just an attack that got a little out of hand, or part of a master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. As the Chief Prosecutor says,
“Make no mistake, Deir Yassin wasn’t a massacre of a village, it was the massacre of a nation. The extermination of a country, a society and a culture”
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| Shaltiel & Husseini |
For both Prosecution and Defence, witnesses are called: survivors of the massacre plus real figures like Haganah commander David Shaltiel, “It was a bad business….stupid” and the Israeli historian, Benny Morris “Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts.”
There is a surreal intervention by the anti-Zionist Jew Moshe Menhuin (father of the violinist Yehudi), “Jews and Blood! Jews and blood!” he rages, quoting the even greater anti-Zionist Jew Ahad Aham “Was there ever such a contradiction? And he concludes with a thundering “If this be the Messiah then I do not wish to see his coming!”
A selection of readings; poems, comment and heartfelt pieces written by various people over the years about Deir Yassin and its commemoration - Edward Said, Martin Buber, Afif Safieh; contributions from Robert Fisk, and a recitation by Andy de la Tour and Susan Wooldridge of “Never Again Shall We Forget” by DYR director of poetry Randa Hamwi Duwajui, with its refrain “La Tensa…La Tensa” Don’t forget….don’t forget….” And then, an astonishing performance by Poet and Jewish activist Michael Rosen. Rosen, who has appeared in two other Deir Yassin commemorations, performed his poem “Promised Land”
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| Andy de la Tour & Susan Wooldridge |
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| Michael Rosen |
A family arrived and said that they had papers
to prove that his house was theirs.
- No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here.
My father, grandfather….and look in the garden,
my great grandfather planted that.
No, no, said the family, look at the documents.
There was a stack of them.
- Where do I start? said the man.
- No need to read the beginning, they said,
Turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land’.
- Are they legal? he said, who wrote them?
- God, they said, God wrote them, look,
here come His tanks.
These were all professional actors, poets and performers called on to do a simple job, so it was quite a thing to see, sitting as I was at the front, these seasoned professionals slowly realising the importance of the occasion they were attending and of the words they were uttering.
The second half opened with Hadar from Israel. She had been spotted a few days earlier by DYR’s UK Director busking on London’s Piccadilly Line. He handed her a card “We’re casting for this, call if you want to” She did and ended up singing to an audience of Palestinians, Arabs and their supporters “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” by, (in her own words), “that great Jew Robert Zimmerman AKA as Bob Dylan.”
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| Hadar |
But nothing could have prepared the audience for what was to come when Company:Collisions appeared. Was ever an audience so surprised as when four young women and one young man took to the stage in white long-johns and vests and performed “In the Shadow of the Wall” specially written for the commemoration?
Nadim Sawalha, who discovered this group says, “This theatre company which operates from Brighton has a fantastic track record. Their speciality is physical theatre which means putting more stress on movement than on words. So, we had four girls and one man in long johns and white vests performing the tragedy of war and violence. Although they had one week to rehearse the piece, their facial expressions were haunting, their movement beautifully controlled and the sound track, breathtaking.”
Dressed unbelievably as babies, these young avant-garde performers confounded our expectations, raised and dashed our emotions and ended up totally seducing our minds and hearts. A pillow fight breaks out over an orange which these children seem unable to share. The conflict over the “promised fruit” becomes ever more playfully violent and then ceases to be funny as the violence moves inexorably from pretend to real. The “children” play soldiers with guns and find pleasure in killing for killing’s sake.
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| In The Shadow of the Wall |
And they took it. The Arab audience, surely unfamiliar with such cavortings, sat in total and stunned silence as the horrors of violence was starkly thrust before them. And, when it became almost unbearable, they were dismissed with a baby-voice “bye-bye.”
Commemoration endings have always been important but was there ever an ending like this? Unsure what to do next, stunned and disconcerted, we stumbled to our feet and went out into the night. Deir Yassin had been remembered.
Amongst others, the evening was attended by His Royal Highness Prince Turki al-Faisal Ambassador of Saudi Arabia. H.E. Afif Safieh, the Palestinian General Delegate, H.E. Mr Ali Mohsen Hameed, Ambassador of the Arab League and by Rabbi Mark Solomon of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. During the interval His Royal Highness accompanied by Mr Safieh went backstage to chat to actors and director. The performance was warmly praised by Rabbi Solomon who expressed an interest in bringing more and more members of the Jewish community to future commemorations.
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| Sophie Hurndall, H.E. Afif Safieh, H.R.H Prince Turki al-Faisal |
