A play telling the harrowing stories of victims, and heroes, of the October 7 attacks on Israel opened in New York this week — described by playwrights Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney as “a cultural moment” and “a story of resilience.”
The show, which is being put on in Midtown Manhattan beginning this week through June 16, relays the blood-curdling accounts of the worst attack in Israel’s history, in the exact words of those who experienced it, collected in a series of interviews conducted by McAleer and McElhinney. The venue is under permanent police protection.
“What we have in this theatre is a piece of magic, a piece of history,” McAleer told Breitbart News Daily on Wednesday. “We’re journalists, our background is journalism, and we thought about journalism being the first draft of history, and here it is and its history that people need to see. They need to know.”
“This is a cultural moment in New York,” he continued. “It’s the only play opening in New York that needs permanent police protection. The world has changed, let me tell you.”
Following the October 7 attack which saw the slaughter of over a thousand people in Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, and the kidnapping of hundreds of Jewish hostages, New York City has become the epicenter of left-wing protests of Israel’s military operations that followed, with marches continuing through the streets of Manhattan for months, calling for “liberation” of “Palestine” — and “intifada.”
Pro-Palestinian supporters continue to demonstrate with a protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University on April 30, 2024, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“We wanted to put it on stage in New York because New York needs to hear it. New York needs to know this day happened. The encampments in New York, the campus protests in New York, they look at October 8th and beyond — what’s happening in Gaza, what’s happening in Palestine — there would be nothing in Gaza, people would be living in peace in Gaza if it had not been for October 7,” McAleer said on Breitbart News Daily. “It’s very important to remember, there would be no October 8, if there weren’t October 7.”
The play relays over a dozen personal accounts from the pogrom — from mothers and grandmothers who hid for hours with their young children, a policeman, off-duty soldier, protecting those around them, young people watching their friends being slaughtered, and the everyday people who ran toward the incoming fire to save them — telling a story of survival and resilience through their testimonials.
Speaking to Breitbart News Daily, McElhinney recalled speaking with one man — whose story is featured in the production — an Orthodox Jew who broke the laws of Shabbat to save lives after he heard the sound of terrorists flying in over the Nova Music Festival on paragliders, blasting weapons. He loaded partygoers into his truck in multiple trips, saving over 100 lives. In the religion, an Orthodox Jew is obligated to break Shabbat to save someone in a life-threatening situation.
In this picture taken during a media tour organised by the Israeli military on October 22, 2023, paper and debris are strewn outside a burnt house riddled with bullets as it stands empty in the Israeli Kibbutz Beeri along the border with the Gaza Strip, in the aftermath of a Palestinian militant attack on October 7. (THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images)
“He said, ‘maybe people will learn something about the Jewish religion, that the most important thing, the central, most important thing for a Jewish person to do, and the highest calling, is to save a soul,’” McElhinney relayed on Breitbart News Daily.
McAleer and McElhinney, who both are journalists, traveled to Israel immediately after the attack for three weeks, to conduct a series of interviews and collect stories and first-hand accounts for the play, visiting scores of victims in hospitals and their homes. Their words have not been altered or edited whatsoever, in producing the performance.
“Ultimately its a story of resilience, as one of the characters say, ‘Abraham our forefather gave this country to us, this is the land of Israel for the People of Israel, for the Jewish people,’ and there is no doubt about that when you watch this play,” McElhinney said on Breitbart News Daily.
Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.
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