Egypt’s 12th annual National Theater Festival will feature a blatantly antisemitic play called “Christ Crucified in Palestine.”
The play is the official entry from the Egyptian Orthodox Church for the youth competition within the festival.
The play is a mock trial between Pontius Pilate, the Roman ruler of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time, and Caiaphas, the Jewish leader who is cast as a villain and stand-in for the evils of Jews throughout history, from “killing the prophets” through killing Jesus and on through Israel’s crime of existence.
Jesus is characterized in the play as having called to destroy the idea of Jews as the “chosen people” while the Jews continue to act in this arrogant manner.
The play was originally written as a response to the ‘Nostra Aetate’ of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent Six Day War. The ‘Nostra Aetate’ is characterized as being written “to absolve the Jews of the crimes committed against the prophets and unarmed Palestinian people.” Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser stood next to the Egyptian National Church and denounced the document in 1965, which is as good a proof as any of the antisemitism in the Arab world.
The performance has been updated with new “crimes” of the Jews, up to and including the US embassy opening in Jerusalem and the “Judaization of Palestine.”
“Christ Crucified in Palestine” was staged last year in a number of Coptic venues, and its popularity prompted it to be revived for this year’s festival.
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