WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE CAMPS

Palestinian Children's Theater Troupe Al-Rowwad Performs in New York City

commentary by Howard Pflanzer

“Beautiful resistance” is the underlying focus of the Al-Rowwad Children’s Theatre Troupe (Palestinian Children’s Theatre) which was articulated by Dr. Abdelfattah Abu-Srour, the troupe's director, before the performance of Children of the Camps on June 21 at the Segal Theater of the CUNY Graduate Center to an audience of about 70 people.

The troupe is made up of six boys and five girls, ranging in age from about ten to sixteen, who are touring in the New York area and other cities in this country to raise consciousness about the situation of Palestinians on the West Bank.
Presented in the round, Children of the Camps is a multimedia presentation with dramatic scenes, video interludes and songs and dances. performed by the young actors in Arabic with projected English titles.
This is theater as testimony, with scenes of brutality, human suffering interrupted by songs of sorrow and resistance and even vibrant dances. We see scenes of the children interacting on the street and in school: playing, reading and fighting. There are brutal scenes of Palestinian refugees on the road, with old people and infants suffering and dying. The Palestinians see themselves as “refugees in our country.” During the 1948 war, 551 Arab villages were occupied by the Israelis and their residents expelled. The children sing and chant:
We are the lovers of resistance We became refugees We will never forget We have the right to study We have the right to play We have the right to be children

I am Palestinian

I ask, where is my country?

They say it doesn’t exist

We are the generation of the intifada

One scene depicts Palestinian children throwing stones at Israeli solders who respond with deadly force. At a military checkpoint, two Israeli soldiers taunt and brutalize a variety of Palestinians who are trying to pass through. In one indelible moment, a man who cannot bring his sick baby through the checkpoint lays the dead child at the feet of the soldiers.

In another scene, the actors dance with newspapers in their hands and then read the “news”, mainly about the peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

They dramatically read about how the peace talks for a two-state solution break down and are only half-heartedly started again with George W. Bush’s “roadmap for peace.”

The news articulated by the actors is filled with lies and hypocritical posturing. We learn at one point, ironically, that the current peace proposal is “brought to you by Coca-Cola.” The humanity of the young actors is palpable. They are young people fighting for their lives, future and their dignity as human beings. In a song and dance about birds the children sing:

Pigeons fly, pigeons fly I asked them to take peace to my country “Peace?”

Peace, what peace?

As a Jew, it is very disturbing to see the brutality of other Jews -- who had witnessed the Holocaust and seen their people killed by the Nazis -- treat the Palestinians with such brutality and disdain, in ways that attempt to break their spirit and destroy their lives.
Many years ago, Gershom Scholem, the well-known Jewish scholar of the Kabbalah who had emigrated to Palestine in the 1920's, was critical of political Zionism that treated the Arabs as the “other” in the same way that Jews had been treated throughout history. He called for a bi-national Jewish-Arab state bringing Arabs and Jews together.
With Palestinian calls for the destruction of Israel and the Palestinian “right of return”, the violence of the Israelis against the Palestinians escalates and is met by the violence of the Palestinian suicide bombers who become martyrs. Violence begets violence. Is non-violent confrontation of the brutality of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank now even possible? What about the 200,000 Israeli settlers who occupy Palestinian lands? Is there the possibility of peace and an equitable solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live together in a climate of respect?
There is a great similarity in the folk dances that the Palestinians and the Israelis perform. What if these young Palestinians and Israelis danced and spent time with each other, would another world be possible? There are a number of groups in Israel, Palestine and the U.S. which bring Israelis and Palestinians together to discuss many common issues, to promote understanding between the two groups which could lead to peace and reconciliation.
When people get to see each other as ordinary human beings, then they cease to be “others” and there is the possibility of real dialogue and ultimately a solution to seemingly intractable problems. At the end of the performance you wanted to embrace these children as your own and dance along with them. Perhaps if more people heard their testimony and saw them sing and dance their “beautiful resistance”, things could begin to change.


Al-Rowwad's Children of the Camps continues on tour in CT, VT and KY through July 10.
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