A while back, I raised the question of whether by making Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children available to visitors to its website the Guardian had taken the view that the play wasn't anti-Semitic or had left the issue open. Today Siobhain Butterworth, Readers' Editor for the paper, gives a reply of sorts. She allows that it's 'one possible interpretation' that the play is anti-Semitic, mentioning that some think 'the text contains antisemitic tropes'. But (Butterworth continues) it's not the only possible reading.
Doesn't that tell you that both she and whoever was responsible for giving Seven Jewish Children a home at the Guardian either don't care whether it is anti-Semitic or else take back with one side of their mouths what the other side of them has allowed - namely, that it might be anti-Semitic, that this is a possible interpretation? We are to believe, otherwise, that the Guardian would give house room to a drama which some, including many black people, thought to be disfigured by the tropes of anti-black racism. I don't think so somehow. The plea of contributing to a debate doesn't wash here, either. The Guardian could have hosted opinions on both sides of the debate about Churchill's play without publishing the play itself, which was already widely available elsewhere.