Churchill, a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has said that anyone wishing to produce it may do so gratis, so long as they hold a collection for the people of Gaza at the end.
[1] The Board of Deputies of British Jews has criticized it as both "horrifically anti-Israel" and "beyond the boundaries of reasonable political discourse", while Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic called the play a blood libel and "the mainstreaming of the worst anti-Jewish stereotypes".
Churchill has been particularly criticized for a monologue within the play purportedly representing a hardline Israeli view: "tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel?
"[16] The journalist Robert Mackey wrote that "Mr. Billington’s sympathetic review describes the context of the cryptic play and points to some of the lines from the script that have disturbed readers like Mr.
"[17] The Times's Dominic Maxwell also awarded the play four of five stars and praised it for an "impassioned response to the events in Gaza that is elliptical, empathetic and illuminating".
[19] Noting comments by the Board of Deputies of British Jews that critiqued the play as antisemitic, award-winning dramatist and essayist Tony Kushner and academic journalist and critic Alisa Solomon, both Jewish American critics of modern Israeli politics, wrote in The Nation that: "We emphatically disagree.
"[3] Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian's chief arts writer, defended the work by writing: The play did not strike me as antisemitic....
I cleave strongly to the view that it is possible to be critical of Israel without being antisemitic, and I do not believe that Churchill is making or otherwise implying universal claims about the Jewish people in this play.
[28] Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, called the play "a libellous and despicable demonisation of Israeli parents and grandparents" and expressed fear that it would "stoke the fires of antisemitism".
[26] A letter from 59 well-known British Jews was published in the Daily Telegraph claiming that Seven Jewish Children reinforces "false stereotypes" and demonises Israel by depicting Israelis as "inhuman triumphalists" who teach their children "Arabs must be hated", and further that it is "historically inaccurate" since it "fails to say that the Six-Day War was a defensive war" and doesn't contain Israel's "withdrawal from Gaza in 2005" or the "more than 6,000 rockets" launched indiscriminately by Hamas.
Jonathan Romain argued that, "Assuming that Ramin Gray is an honourable person (as I am happy to do) and that he is not guilty of hypocrisy by favouring the mosque over the synagogue, there can be only one explanation for his reluctance: fear".
He gave example of their 2 plays staged along Seven Jewish Children [at that time]: The Stone that "asks very difficult questions about the refusal of some modern Germans to accept their ancestors' complicity in Nazi atrocities" running before Seven Jewish Children with Shades "set in contemporary London which explores issues of tolerance in the Muslim community" staging at their smaller studio theatre.
The characters are "covert and deceitful", they are constructing a "parallel hell" to Hitler’s Europe, they are "monsters who kill babies by design".
The cast for the play's premier production in February 2009 at London's Royal Court Theatre consisted of Ben Caplan, Jack Chissick, David Horovitch, Daisy Lewis, Ruth Posner, Samuel Roukin, Jennie Stoller, Susannah Wise, and Alexis Zegerman.
Jeremy Howe, the commissioning drama editor for Radio 4, said that both he and Mark Damazer, the channel's controller, considered the play a "brilliant piece", but agreed that it could not be broadcast because of the BBC's policy of editorial impartiality.
[40] The first staged reading of the play in New York City took place on 16 March 2009 at the Brecht Forum and featured Broadway actress Kathleen Chalfant.
Development coordinator for the festival Madeline Heneghan remarked that since the program was "planned months in advance" the request was "unrealistic at this point".
Due to its success the play was performed again twice in the university campus, once on 26 March in celebration of World Theatre Day and again on 21 April as part of an Arab Popular Culture seminar.
Horovitz has offered to allow any theatre that wishes to produce What Strong Fences Make free of royalties, as long as a collection is taken up following all performances for the benefit of ONE Family Fund, a charity that assists children wounded in attacks on Israel.