From Israel to Canada: yesterday’s soldier looks back with regret
Photo, Itai Erdal: Matt Reznek
Daniel Nelson
What a tragically sad title for Itai Erdal’s monologue at the Finborough Theatre: Soldiers of Tomorrow.
Tragic and sad because it comes from the ex-Israeli soldier’s memory of his eight-year-old self being given an empty box to fill with gifts. In the box, his teacher had written: “To the soldiers of today from the soldiers of tomorrow.”
Years later, like most Jewish Israelis, Erdal served his mandatory three-year military service, some of it in Gaza and Lebanon. He believed it was the most moral army in the world.
This is deadly serious material, but engaging. He’s genial, affable, witty, honest. He talks about Israel’s history, about some of his own experiences (though little about what he did in the army, beyond a lengthy woman-and-baby checkpoint anecdote (“‘Show me your ID.’ I came to hate that phrase.”), and about his conflicted beliefs: “I want to be a pacifist … but this army protects everyone I love.”
His mother told him, ‘If you go [into the military], you can be kind to people.” But in the post-show discussion that follows every performance, he admitted, “There is no way of being a good soldier, a nice soldier.”
The 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a key turning point: “I knew immediately the chance of peace was over.”
He moved to Vancouver, where he now lives, working as a lighting designer, performer, writer, photographer, theatre-founder.
He’s proud to be Jewish but sees that Israel has lost its moral compass and has been drifting to the Right for 70 years, that Gaza is the largest open aid prison in history, that terrible crimes are occurring in the West Bank, that Jews know what it is to be discriminated against but created a country that discriminates against others. He delivers an excoriating critique of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He speaks of “ongoing injustice, a genocide.” He understands the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, despite Israeli government attempts to blur the distinction around the world.
Sadly and tragically, in these days of intolerance and holier-than-thou finger-pointing, it’s proved hard to find a venue for this modest show, in which Erdal shares the stage with Syrian-Canadian musician Emad Armoush. It is condemned — often by people who have not seen it — by both Left and Right.
So take a bow, Finborough Theatre. Says Erdal: “Since [the production’s] original run in 2023, it has been nearly impossible to find a theatre brave enough to present Soldiers of Tomorrow, and I am glad to be able to finally bring the show back to the UK at the ever-courageous Finborough Theatre.”
Post-show discussion after every performance. 2 July, Theatre in a Post-7 October world, Sally Gimson, Index on Censorship editor.
Soldiers of Tomorrow, £20-£29, is at the Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, SW10 9ED until 4 July. Info: Finborough