The Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center (MAR-JCC) in North Miami Beach, Florida recently featured a play in the center’s cultural arts theater. “Crossing Jerusalem” is based on a day in the life of an Israeli family during the time of the Second Intifada. The performance claimed to look at both sides of the Jewish/Arab experience. An after-play discussion was offered as a way to create a conversation.
Many who attended and saw the performance were outraged. They felt the show was a one-sided propaganda piece that portrayed Israel in an unfair way and that it fostered hatred toward the Jewish state. Opponents felt the setting of a JCC seemed a particularly inappropriate venue for this type of disinformation. They felt betrayed by the presentation.
Despite angry cries against censorship by opposing factions, MAR-JCC officials cancelled the remaining five performances. They acted with courage in the face of controversy and are to be commended.
How and why did this anti-Israel program ever get on the agenda of a Jewish organization that touts its Zionist outlook? Unfortunately, this type of endeavor is not rare. It is typical of the Jewish establishment. It stems from a sincere but misguided mindset that assumes anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment can be overcome with attempts at “fairness” and “dialogue.” The people who think this way do not understand their efforts are fated to fail. The other side is not interested.
Gary J. Bomzer, MAR-JCC’s president and CEO, explained the decision to cancel the remaining performances in a letter: “Please know that our intentions in presenting ‘Crossing Jerusalem’ are good ones and yet we have unintentionally caused pain to many in the audience; for this we are sincerely sorry. The vision of JCAT leadership was to engage meaningfully with each other on Israel, across lines of difference, and to build a culture in which complicated questions are ones we can openly discuss. While we are aware that the play deals with some very controversial issues, the last thing we wanted was to alienate members of our community or damage relationships.”
The intifada consisted of a brutal spate of unprovoked attacks aimed at innocent civilians. Israeli men, women, and children were murdered and maimed. Bombs were set off on buses and at such nonmilitary locations as ice cream parlors, restaurants, and a communal Passover Seder in Netanya. Jewish children in a Sbarro Pizza shop in Jerusalem cried out the words of the “Shema” prayer before succumbing to their fatal injuries.
The truth is that the Second Intifada began soon after the 2000 Camp David Summit – two weeks of nonstop talks brokered by President Bill Clinton and attended by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat. Barak agreed to give away over 90 percent of the land liberated in 1967. Arafat’s response was to restart the terror.
There is no moral equivalence between those who create terror and those who defend themselves from it. Well-intentioned efforts at debate can create ideas that don’t match the ugly reality. Sometimes there is really is only one side of a story. This is one of those times.
Kol ha’kavod (all the honor) to JCC officials who took responsibility for a mistake and rectified the situation.