TWO MIRIAMS/SEVEN MUSLIM CHILDREN

It's become the flavour of the month to write short plays so I'm writing one myself. It's entitled "Two Miriams" and its about the conflict between Israel and the Arabs (or perhaps, should I say the Jews and the Arabs?).

The first of the two Miriams in my fictional play is Miriam Farhat, a Palestinian mother who has a proclivity for sending her sons out on suicide missions with the aim of murdering and maiming as many Jews as possible. This Miriam is extremely popular with her people and gets elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council on the Hamas ticket (at the same time as a character called "Hitler" is elected on the opposition Fatah list). She is of course, strongly supportive of suicide bombers and the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli towns across the border from her home town of Gaza.

My second Miriam is a Jewish actor, Miriam Margolem who doesn't much like the idea that the Israelis, whose schools and kindergartens are being attacked by the ever increasingly sopisticated missiles being imported from Iran via smuggling tunnels, should defend themselves forcibly against such attacks. If only Jews delivered lots of food and goodies to the Gazans, they would stop hating them and return the compliment by sending over felafels instead of Grad rockets. Miriam's only line in the play is, "I love Israel but not an Israel that kills people. Now will someone please pass the chopped liver? I'm hungry!"

My play examines the nature of evil and asks which of the two Miriams is the more evil and which of them has the worst breath.

On a similar note I now reproduce the script from another relatively new short play Seven Muslim Children but before you read the play, it would be instructive if you went to Blue Truth to get an understanding of why the play was written and the motives behind it - Seven Muslim Children.

SEVEN MUSLIM CHILDREN

1 (circa 900)
Tell him how wonderful it is
Tell him that we won
Tell him about the swords and the rivers of blood
Don’t tell him about the swords and the blood
Tell him we’re doing it in the Name of the Prophet
Tell him they will all convert or be dhimmis
Don’t tell him about dhimmis
Tell him this will all be ours forever
Tell him al-Andalus is Dar al-Islam


2 (circa 1800)
Tell him how we used to rule
Tell him how the world changed
Tell him it was the Europeans’ fault
Don’t tell him it was the Europeans’ fault
Tell him we will go back to al-Andalus and all the other lands one day
Don’t tell him about al-Andalus

3 (circa 1900)
Tell him the Jews are coming back
Don’t tell him the Jews are coming back
Don’t tell him they were ever here
Tell him they’ve always been here
Don’t tell him they’ve always been here
Tell him they want to live as a free people
Tell him they are buying the land
Don’t tell him they’re buying the land
Tell him they’re stealing our land
Tell him they love the land and are draining the swamps
Tell him we want to live where they have built hospitals and schools and roads
Don’t tell him that we didn’t build anything
Don’t tell him they love the land
Don't tell him they have prayed every day for hundreds of years to return to the land

4 (1948)
Tell him to get his gun
Tell him to shoot the Jews
Tell him to block the road
Tell him to shoot the convoys
Tell him they can’t have a country here
Tell him we were going to have a country too
Don’t tell him we were going to have a country too
Tell him the Jews will slaughter him
Tell him about Deir Yassin
Tell him about Deir Yassin
Tell him about Deir Yassin
Don’t tell him about Kfar Etzion
Don’t tell him about Latrun
Don’t tell him about “itbach-al-Yahud”
Tell him “itbach-al-Yahud”
Tell him we will drive them into the sea

5 (1967)
Tell him we’re going to go back
Tell him we’re going back to Jaffa one day
Don’t tell him we’re never going back to Jaffa
Tell him our Arab brothers will help us
Don’t tell him our Arab brothers refuse to help us
Tell him how our Arab brothers kicked out all their Jews
Don’t tell him that the Zionists took in their Jews
Don’t tell him why we can’t leave the camp
Don’t tell him why we can’t live in Cairo, or Beirut, or Damascus
Don’t tell him that it's because they hate us
Tell him they are doing this for our own good
Tell him they will help us go back to Jaffa
Tell him we’re going to go home soon
Tell him Nasser will take us home
Tell him the armies are ready
Tell him the Jews are scared
Tell him we will slaughter all of them
Don’t tell him we will slaughter all of them, even the children
Don’t tell him…..that we lost again
Don’t tell him that they’ll give it all back for peace
Tell him “no, no, no”

6 (2002)
Tell him to put on the bomb belt
Tell him he will have 72 virgins
Don’t tell him that he must die
Don’t tell him that he must kill children
Tell him the Jews aren’t human
Tell him they’re the sons of apes and pigs
Tell him they are infidels in Dar al-Islam
Tell him they let their women be free
Tell him their gays are free
Don’t tell him their gays are free (just in case…)
Tell him Allah will bless him
Tell him we will call him a hero
Don’t tell him how they will die
Don’t tell him how they will be scarred
Don’t tell him they have parents too
Don’t tell him they offered us a country again
Tell him they have no right to a country
Tell him it’s better to die than to admit it
Tell him how we danced in the streets on 9/11
Don’t tell him we danced in the streets on 9/11
Tell him it’s better to kill them than live with them

7 (2008)
Tell him to launch the rockets
Tell him to use the school yard
Don’t tell him to use the school yard
Tell him they’re afraid to fire back because the world will hate them
Don’t tell him they might fire back anyway
Tell him they must all die
Don’t tell him they might attack
Tell him we’re living in the Warsaw Ghetto
Tell him what the Warsaw Ghetto was
Don’t tell him what really happened in the Warsaw Ghetto
Don’t tell him about Auschwitz and Treblinka
Tell him they’re afraid of us and won’t attack us
Tell him we can shoot off rockets forever.
Tell him if he’s lucky the rocket will hit a kindergarten
Tell him “itbach-al-Yahud”
Tell him “Filastin hi arduna, Wa al-Yahud kilabuna”
Tell him we will go back to al-Andalus
In the Name of the Prophet

Notes:

All definitions, unless otherwise hyperlinked, are from mideastweb.org

Andalus: Al Andalus (Spain), and other former Muslim conquests are considered by radical Islamists to be Islamic lands lost to the infidels.

Dar al-Islam: Dar al Islam (Arabic: دار الإسلا) is the area of the world under the rule of Islam , literally, "the home of Islam" or "the home of submission." This is often used by extremists to include areas that used to be part of the Muslim world such as Al-Andalus (Spain) as well as the Muslim world.

Deir Yassin a village near Jerusalem, site of a massacre by Jewish Irgun/Lehi forces (April 9, 1948)

Dhimmi: (Arabic: ذمي) (often pronounced "Zimmi") are Christians, Jews, and sometimes Zoroastrians and people of other faiths living in a Muslim state and enjoying special protection not afforded to other non-Muslims. Dhimmi are supposed to wear special dress and pay the jizyah tax. They are exempt (or rather forbidden) from fighting and from paying the Muslim Zakah tax. The dhimmi were often forced to wear special dress. A dhimmi could not testify against a Muslim in a court of law, meaning that non-Muslims had virtually no legal relief against injustice by Muslims. Many Dhimmi converted, usually because of the social pressure, but also because of forced conversions under various Muslim rulers.

“Filastin hi arduna, Wa al-Yahud kilabuna”: Arabic for "Palestine is our land, and the Jews are our dogs."

Itbach-al-Yahud: Arabic for “slaughter the Jews”;

Both were chanted by Arabs during the 1920 Nebi Musa pogrom and on many occasions since then, including at anti-Israel demonstrations in the US

Kfar Etzion site of a massacre of surrendered Jewish defenders by Palestinians on May 14, 1948

Latrun is the site of a fort and monastery. The position was controlled by the Jordan Legion in 1948, and enforced the blockade of Jewish Jerusalem by the Arab forces.