(2017) Playwright Statement: Motti Lerner on The Admission
Facing the Trauma of 1948

The Admission was inspired by the Israeli Defense Forces’ May 23, 1948 occupation of the Palestinian village of Tantura during Israel’s War of Independence, and by the controversy between several Israeli historians who propose that, during the assault on the village and subsequent expulsion of its inhabitants, soldiers perpetrated a massacre on unarmed villagers. The play, however, is not a documentary. All characters and events are a fiction of the playwright’s imagination. The play doesn’t attempt to determine the historical validity of any one narrative of the Tantura occupation, nor does it present unequivocal facts with regard to what took place during the battle.

Set in Haifa in 1988, The Admission centers around two families, one Jewish, one Palestinian. Through their story we explore the suppression of the village’s occupation—a process that took place in both Jewish and Arab societies. We also examine the circumstances that led to the resurgence of this suppressed trauma in our consciousness 40 years later. This examination stems from the belief that coming to terms with the events of 1948 is imperative for all involved. Otherwise, the rectification so crucial to our continued existence will not be carried out on either the political, personal, or social level, and we will be unable to recover from the collective trauma we've undergone.

The Admission was written in the hopes that it might encourage more fair, open, and empathic discourse among us, and that it would generate honest, unifying, constructive dialogue between the different sects of Israeli society. Such dialogue about this shared trauma would accelerate the process of appeasement with the Palestinian people living with us and next to us. I hope that this dialogue promotes, even in a small way, the founding of a joint society in Israel whose sects live side by side, in mutual recognition and acceptance.

While writing was completed as early as 2006, all plans to produce The Admission were ultimately aborted in spite of the interest expressed by several theatres in Israel. These repeated cancellations likely had to do not only with the theatre managers’ fear of potential sanctions by the Ministry of Culture, but their concerns over an enraged public’s reaction to this “deviation” from consensus in showing the forbidden story of the 1948 war.

The Admission at last premiered in spring 2014 under the direction of Sinai Peter at Washington D.C.’s Theater J. Following rave reviews, one of the largest theatres in Israel made plans to produce it in the 2015-16 season. But then, on March 17, 2015, the election of the Knesset took place—a new government was formed, a new minister of culture was nominated, and the production was cancelled. However, in early 2016, the Jaffa Theater in Tel Aviv decided to produce the play (again with Sinai Peter directing) which premiered in September 2016 and has since been playing regularly and with great success, evoking intense public debates between Jews and Arabs striving to create a joint society in Israel.

(2017) Director Statement: Michael Malek Najjar on Motti Lerner’s The Admission
Accounting and Atoning for the Past

            Motti Lerner’s searing drama The Admission is the attempt by a playwright of conscience to both account, and atone, for the past. The occupation and evacuation of Palestinian villages in 1948 has been well documented with over 400 villages depopulated during the process.[i] For some, these expulsions were the aftermath of violent battles between Arab factions and the Haganah[ii] forces who began fighting one another shortly after the United Nations announced partition on November 29, 1947. Others believe Palestinians either left of their own volition or sold their lands to Jews. Still others believe this was a premeditated, Zionist strategy to rid the land of Palestinians. Regardless of these competing claims, the fact remains that during the 1948 War, up to ten thousand Palestinians and over six thousand Israelis were killed, eighty percent of Palestinians became refugees, and the bulk of these lands comprised the new Israeli state.[iii]  

            Lerner's play attempts to address one of the most contentious issues regarding the 1948 War of Independence: did Haganah and Irgun soldiers commit atrocities when overtaking Palestinian villages? Lerner, who was born in the village of Zichron Yaacov, near the historic village of Tantura, remembers growing up hearing stories about a massacre of Arabs that happened there during the 1948 War. He says he changed the name of the village in the play to Tantur because the play is fictitious, and he did not want to blur the line between history and fiction.[iv] The play revolves around the contested history of the Alexandroni Brigade that, during the battle of Tantura on May 23, 1948, was accused of massacring 250 Palestinians. A scholar, Teddy Katz, wrote a Masters of Arts thesis about this event claiming the massacre occurred; however, after Alexandroni veterans sued him for libel and, through pressure from family and friends, Katz signed a statement declaring there was no massacre. Lerner read Katz's thesis and, based on that study and stories he himself had heard, concluded that there are many narratives that differ from one another. His solution to untangle these conflicting accounts was to write a play.

As I said earlier, we, theater artists, cannot bring about a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our challenge is to create a public discourse that will lead to achieving it. How do we do it if the public discourse is so superficial and if our spectators are so deeply prejudiced, so deeply defensive, so deeply resistant to even hearing the narrative of the Palestinians? In other words, how do we transform our stubborn theater-goers into open-minded spectators who are capable of listening to the narrative of the "other"?[v]

Like other playwrights of conscience before him (such as Ibsen, Miller, and Soyinka), Lerner is attempting to dramatize historical events not for the purposes of historical accuracy, but rather to illuminate these events in a way that personalizes them, opening them up for reflection by contemporary audiences. This extraordinarily prescient play forces us to look back into the horrors of the past so we may, perhaps, turn to see the future more clearly.

[i] Davis, Rochelle. “Mapping the Past, Re-creating the Homeland” in Sa'di, Ahmad H., and Abu-Lughod, Lila. Nakba Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. Cultures of History. Web. 56. Also see Slyomovics, Susan. "The Memory of Place: Rebuilding the Pre-1948 Palestinian Village." Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 3.2 (1994): 157-68. Web.

[ii] The Jewish militia which was created to protect Jewish interests in Palestine in 1920. They were allied with the “Irgun” group in 1945. In 1948 the Haganah became Israel’s army.  "Haganah." World Encyclopedia: Philip's. Oxford Reference. 2004. Date Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.

[iii] www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/casualties.html

[iv] Holzel, Davod. "'A More Honest Discourse.'" Washingtonjewishweek.com. 19 March, 2014.

[v] Lerner, Motti. "The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict-The Challenge for the Israeli Theater." The writerintheworld.com/2016/04/13/motti-lerner-1/