Three soldiers sit, M16s slung over their shoulders clutching combat helmets to their chests. “When did you start thinking about these incidents?” asks an ominous voice over a public address system. The soldiers are not Americans, but Israelis. Their answers are accounts of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, as told by the IDF soldiers doing the occupying.
“It’s What We Do:” A Play about the Occupation is a stage dramatization of the nonfiction “Our Harsh Logic.” The book is a publication from the non-profit group Breaking The Silence, an organization of “veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.”
The play is written and directed by Pamela Nice and co-sponsored by The Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace and the DC-Metro Area chapter of Jewish Voice For Peace. In her director’s note, Nice tells us that the play “is drawn directly from the testimonies in the book: all the soldiers’ reflections are verbatim; the enacted stories are the ones they tell…as they recount their stories, they face their roles as instruments of injustice against Palestinians.”
Now, back to the soldiers. Played by Olivia Haller (Sarah), Tariq Triano (Avram), and Keanu Ross-Cabrera (Ilan), each soldier reacts to inquisition from “The Voice” (Dior Ashley Brown) about their time with the IDF and their feelings after the fact. As they recount these memories, they relive them with a chorus of civilians as their victims. In this way, the atrocities of the occupation are put on full display – the bureaucratic nightmares involved in border crossing, the wanton destruction of Palestinian land and homes, and the personal violence enacted against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and the IDF alike.
For their part, Haller, Triano and Ross-Cabrera are empathetic conduits toward our understanding of these soldiers. Their collective confusion, sadness and anger with themselves and their acts are certainly the most engaging part ofIt’s What We Do. In particular, Haller’s harrowing account of the “change of address” operations left the audience in stunned silence.
“It’s What We Do:” A Play about the Occupation
written and directed by Pamela Nice
Details and tickets
That being said, Nice’s script is unrelenting in tone and her staging deliberately cruel in pace. Except for a brief moment of levity stemming from a game of bureaucratic phone-tag, the depictions are somber and unrestrained. This stark tone can effectively build upon itself in nonfiction writing that can be picked up and put down. It is more difficult for theatrical audiences to digest as constant atrocities can blend into one disillusioning hour of anguish.
Atrocities aside, we only get vague notions of who these people were before they were soldiers, and no idea of what they will do now that they’ve discovered they no longer wish to be. For all their current regrets, these depictions exist only because these soldiers perpetrated these acts. Some insight into their initial motivations or their future goals might help us better contextualize their actions and provide some much needed contrast.
In a post-show discussion one woman in blue addressed her question toward Nice. She noted that, “[the play] did not seem to be very balanced…” and then asked (emphasis added), “I mean, why is it that the IDF built the wall to begin with? This depiction seems like a partial view.” Nice’s response: “All storytelling is a partial view. I had no intent to present the issues as a whole. We need to hear other voices, yes, but its all a partial view. We have to put them together. This is just a piece.”
The problem with this play is that it so grossly overplays its hand by its one-sidedness, painting Palestinians as all victims and Israelis as all monsters (some of whom now feel guilty), it is hard not to believe that the real intent is to discredit Israel and encourage the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (which at least one of the sponsoring groups of this play supports).
By watching this play you would never know that there really are terrorists that come from the West Bank to blow up Israeli civilians in busses and restaurants and markets. You would never know that there is a real security reason for border checkpoints into Israel and for the wall. To the extent that soldiers exceed their task to protect Israel from a terrorist threat and harass innocent Palestinians and destroy their property, they should be punished. However, Israeli citizens have a right to be protected from actual terrorist activity when it presents itself from a people that have, in large part, consistently sought Israel’s total destruction.
The play also is not above relaying distortions of facts to make its points. One soldier says that the reason for Israeli activities in the West Bank is because of the settlements there (in reality, Israel first occupied the territory during the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel defended itself from a mobilization by Egypt and subsequent attacks by Jordan and Syria). Another actor says that nobody in Israel cares about Palestinians (tell that to Israelis outside of the Likud or other right-wing parties).
There are many more points of this kind I could make (I took five pages of notes) but you get the idea. At the discussion period afterwards, the presenting group also trotted out the explanation that the play was not meant to tell all sides of the conflict. but is meant to be a “small story”, only one part. This is a disingenuous defense of a play in which ALL of the characters (yes, I know this is based on real people), scenes, statements and actions present the same view–the Palestinians are all victims, the Israelis are all monsters (except when the soldiers stand against the Israeli settlers). Imagine the reaction from Palestinians if a play was presented in which they were only portrayed as terrorists and the Israelis could do no wrong.