Maxine Peake and others read reports from Gaza that hit hard, but the lack of reference to Hamas and its atrocities was a glaring omission
: Getty
Almost a year on from the October 7 attacks and the ensuing Israeli invasion of Gaza, it’s striking – and concerning – how little the theatre and arts world has seen fit to respond to a crisis that is never out of the news, dominates public debate and has met with rolling street protests.
It’s as if everyone is keeping their heads down. That applies to artistic responses to the Hamas attacks themselves – and the fate of the hostages taken during the incursion; it applies to the dire situation of Palestinians enmeshed in the military campaign.
On Saturday, there was at least something to report on: the Barbican played host to a hard-hitting array of testimonies from Palestinian writers caught up in the conflict, with Maxine Peake among those reading the material. It was followed by a commendably measured Q&A chaired by the event’s organiser Ra Page, founder of Manchester-based Comma Press.
Even this modest affair, whose prevailing tone was more of sorrow and anguish than anger, wasn’t without its pre-emptive critics. Complaints about Voices of Resilience were made by UK Lawyers for Israel concerned about its use (in an online description) of the Amnesty phrase “signs of genocide”.
The Barbican resisted its related call to cancel; but an earlier iteration of the evening in April (at Home Manchester) was axed after an objection by the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester, only to be reinstated after counter-protests.
One complaint back then was that one of the contributing voices, Atef Abu Saif (the Palestinian culture minister), had engaged in “anti-Semitic Holocaust denial”. On Saturday, extracts from Abu Saif’s “Don’t Look Left – a diary of genocide” – the result of his being caught up in the war during a visit from the West Bank – were read by Nabil Elouahabi, alongside accounts by Nahil Mohana, Ala’a Obaid and Sondos Sabra (read by Peake, Hind Shoufani and Yusra Warsama).
Was I dismayed there was no reference to Hamas, its atrocities and the hostages? Yes. Glaring omissions. But that still didn’t invalidate these accounts of life on the edge, with death, destruction, corpses and body-parts omnipresent; in the absence of foreign journalists, what is this but necessary reportage?
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