Me on Broadway. Not a phrase that immediately comes to mind, and certainly not one that occurred to me in 1983 when I’d just started my career as a journalist at the New Statesman. But I feature, or at least my voice does, large and significantly in the play Giant, starring John Lithgow, that has now transferred from London to New York.
I would prefer it if people realised what a nasty old Jew-hater Dahl was
The reason is that back when I started at the Statesman, just out of university and somewhat in awe of pretty much everything, I was asked to interview children’s author Roald Dahl. He’d written about a book called God Cried, concerning Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and what was supposed to be a review turned into an antisemitic scream. Dahl wrote of “a race of people” who had “switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers”, and that Washington was “so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions” that the Americans “dare not defy” Israel.
Dahl was willing, even eager, to speak to me and in the interview went even further. “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews”, he said. “I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”
I told him that my father was Jewish, spoke of the impressive war record of my Jewish grandfather, of the number of Jewish men in all of the allied armies, but he was indifferent. Did he, I asked, want to clarify or rethink? “No thank you, I think I’ve made myself clear. Goodbye.”
This was before the internet and social media, and while my subsequent article in the magazine caused a reaction, it was largely ignored and since then mostly forgotten. Every few years, and long after his death, I’d be asked to comment on Dahl. I’d explain that I certainly didn’t believe in cancelling writers and had actually read the man’s work to my four children, but that I would prefer it if people realised what a nasty old Jew-hater he’d been.
Then another request for a comment, this time by dramatist and director Mark Rosenblatt. The comment became a long conversation, then another, and eventually to the play Giant, which has won numerous awards and sparkling reviews. But while most people appreciated the work’s nuance and balance, with Dahl having many of the best lines where he criticises Israel and presents the case for Palestine, others shouted about attempting to ruin Dahl’s name and reputation merely because he criticised Zionism. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
A reviewer in the Guardian wrote, “We hear how he has spoken passionately about Palestinian oppression in the past, and now is writing against Israel’s wholesale killing in Lebanon – in language that some deem antisemitic.” An interesting take because the piece also presents what Dahl would say to other journalists long after my interview, such as, “I’m certainly anti-Israeli, and I’ve become antisemitic. It’s the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There aren’t any non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media – jolly clever thing to do – that’s why the president of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel.” I suppose only “some would deem” that antisemitic.
That “some” have become many and become loud, perhaps louder than at any time since the 1930s. When Giant began its run in September, 2024, there were fanatics who argued that the director, Nicholas Hytner, was only involved because he was Jewish. It’s ironic because the highly respected Hytner had earlier appeared on a panel entitled “Antisemitism in the Arts” at a Jewish Labour Movement conference. He’d said that there was “the old English antisemitism that just doesn’t like Jews” but now “a form of antisemitism which ignorantly conflates the state of Israel with Jews more widely”.
Problem is, most Jewish people do in fact to varying degrees support Israel, partly because centuries of bigotry, violence, massacre, and attempted genocide have given them little alternative. They may oppose Israeli policy, may condemn the current government, may even want radical compromises, but there’s still support. And in the current climate of leftist and Islamist triumphalism, it’s all Zionism and none of it acceptable.
Giant is being produced in several European cities, a film is being discussed, and the New York run with its cast of stars will add yet another layer of profile and attention. It doesn’t provide any answers to the open wound of antisemitism but does ask why and who and what. For me, now an Anglican priest who attends opening nights of the play wearing a clerical collar, it’s all fascinating but also profoundly disturbing. I wish the situation could be otherwise. But who am I kidding? It was always thus, but now the sewers have found another way of breathing.
As someone who wrote to me two years ago after a photo appeared of me with John Lithgow, “You may disguise yourself as Christian and a priest but we know what you are.” I’m sure they do.
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