Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

642 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:639The audience may not have been expert either in Shakespeare or inantisemitism. Most people think that The Merchant of Venice is anantisemitic play. Shylock is thought to be an antisemitic stereotype, createdby Shakespeare for audiences to hate. Are we supposed to enjoy the victoryof the antisemites and the humiliation of the Jew? But what was this audiencethinking? If it is simply an antisemitic play, why would we be watchingit, and why is the Israeli National Theatre performing it? And if it is acomedy, why aren’t the jokes funny, and why does Shakespeare offer us apuerile game show rather than some of his usual genius?I don’t think this audience really cared much. It was there to face downthose who said that Israeli actors should be excluded from the global communityof culture, while actors from all the other states that had beeninvited to the Globe were celebrated in a festival of the Olympic city’smulticulturalism. So, the audience was happy to laugh loudly and to enjoyitself. We saw on stage how Shylock’s daughter was desperate to escapefrom the Jewish ghetto, the darkness and fear of her father’s house, theloneliness of being a Jew. We saw how she agreed to convert to Christianitybecause some little antisemitic boy said he loved her; we saw how she stoleher father’s money so that her new friends could spend it on drunken nightsout. And we saw Shylock’s despair at the loss and at the betrayal and at theintrusion. Perhaps his unbearable pain was also fueled by guilt for havingfailed his daughter since her mother died.And then the audience laughed at silly caricatures of Moroccan andSpanish princes, and at Portia’s haughty and superior rejection of them.And now, not representations of antisemites but actual antisemites, hidingamong the audience, unfurl their banners about “Israeli apartheid,” and theirPalestinian flags, and they stage a performance of their own. How embarrassingfor Palestinian people to be represented by those whose sympathyand friendship for them had become hatred of Israel; to be represented by amovement for the silencing of Israeli actors; to be represented by those whoshow contempt for Jewish Londoners in the audience, who dehumanizethem by refusing to refer to them as people but instead simply as “Zionists.”And a “Zionist” does not merit the ordinary civility with which people in agreat city normally, without thinking, accord to one another.The artistic director of the Globe had already predicted that theremight be disruption. There often was, he said, at this unique theater.Pigeons flutter onto the stage, but we ignore them. And today, peopleshould not get upset, they should not confront the protesters, they shouldallow the security guards to do their job. One protester shouted “No violence”as the security guys prepared to take her away. They took a fewaway; the actors didn’t miss a word and the audience, largely Jewish butalso English, showed their stiff upper lips and pretended nothing had hap-