NY Fringe Theater to Stage Play Mocking Self-Hating Jewish Leftists

To left, Professor Ben-Atar
The following story is amazing and unique in so many ways that I do not know how to count them. A leftist Israeli professor teaching in the United States, long active in "Peace Now" and similar groups, writes a play that mocks and denounces leftist "Post-Zionist" academics and self-hating Jewish "intellectuals," a play in which Palestinians are shown to be blind haters of Jews (even of "progressive" leftist Jews). The play is to be staged in New York City in its "fringe theater festival." And to top it off, Haaretz (Hebrew edition only) runs a raving favorable review of the play and its author!

The academic in question is Doron S. Ben-Atar, who teaches history these days at Fordham University in New York. He is a very serious academic, used to be on the faculty at Yale. He is an acclaimed scholar with a specialization in American history, and in particular writes a lot of serious things about intellectual property rights, trade secrets, and related issues.

Ben-Atar grew up in Israel. His father was a Sephardic immigrant from Turkey. Ben Atar's mother was a Holocaust survivor, who had been in Auschwitz. Ben-Atar previously wrote and staged a play about his mother. He was active in Israeli leftist groups before he went to NY to do his PhD at Columbia University.

Based on his personal experiences he decided to write a play mocking self-hating Israeli and Jewish leftists. The play is entitled "Peace Warriors" and it is scheduled to be staged as part of the NY fringe theater activities (see this). The play is about a group of whiney Jewish "peace" leftists, some ex-Israelis, one British self-hating Jewish radical, and some leftist American Jews. The Brit is the villain in the play, and he calls himself GW, based on his original name of Godfrey Warshevski, although he tells people it is short for George Washington. He specializes in seducing all the leftist women in the group.

In the play the whiney leftists spend their days mouthing anti-Israel slogans and trying to delegitimize Israel. Ben Atar says they are all based on real leftist academics with whom he has had personal contact.

He describes how was inspired by "dialogues" for peace in which he participated while at Columbia, where the leftist Jews spilled out their adoration for the Arabs present and their condemnation of Israel's army tactics, while the Arabs conducted long debates among themselves as to whether they should even be speaking with any Jews. He explores in his play the psychology of self-hating Jewish leftists and Jews who march around peacocking as proud anti-Zionists. He also mocks Meretz party activists he knew who were more interested in counting checks than in anything else.

When Ben-Atar staged his earlier play there was a role for an Arab. She was played by an Arab woman from Faradeis, near Haifa, who spoke no English, and she played a woman from the West Bank in the play. When that play was staged, a Jewish actress translated what the Arab actress was saying for the audience, but the Arab actress did not trust the Jewess and insisted that other Arabs be present to check the translating. Both actresses were supposed to be "peace activists" in real life but the Arab despised the Jew.

For Hebrew readers, the Haaretz review of all this can be read in Hebrew at this web address.

When asked if it is hard to be a Jew living in America, he answered the interviewer that NO, it is very easy, in fact TOO easy. What is hard, he says, is being an Israeli!