Fairfax Media’s attempts to manufacture controversy around a Palestinian play have fallen very flat, according to Michael Brull.
Tales of a City by the Sea, a play about life in Gaza by a Palestinian playwright, has won two Drama Victoria Awards. One award was for Best Performance by a Theatre Company for VCE Drama. The other was for Best New Australian Publication for VCE Drama and/or Theatre Studies Teachers and Students.
Playwright Samah Sabawi accepted the latter, and gave a short speech.
“This one goes for anybody who has ever fought for freedom of expression. This one goes for anybody who has ever used their art to light a candle in the dark. This goes to anybody who has ever had the courage to speak truth to power.”
In May this year, alleged Fairfax journalist Timna Jacks started a gratuitous controversy about the play. Based almost entirely on false claims about the play by the right-wing pro-Israel group, the Anti-Defamation Commission, Jack’s article suggested the play was anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
She claimed that “characters” in the play call Israel “tyrannical”. In fact, the word tyrannical does not appear in the play a single time. When I put this to Jacks, she changed the story, without notifying readers of the correction, so that “characters” compare Israel to “tyranny”. In fact, one character uses the word tyranny – and it is clearly a joke, as the comparison is to another character’s mother.
Read the full article by Michael Brull at newmatilda.com.