Rachel Corrie play blocked in NY

[mxmendo]

hopefully this will eventually get a showing in the US...<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/33669/">www.alternet.org/story/33669/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>...Corrie's words appear to have had more impact than her death. The House bill calling for a U.S. investigation of her killing died in committee, with only seventy-eight votes and little media attention. But the naked admission by a left-leaning cultural outlet that it would subordinate its own artistic judgment to pro-Israel views has served as a smoking gun for those who have tried to press the discussion in this country of Palestinian human rights. <br><br>...<br><br>But Nicola's statement about a back channel to Jewish leaders suggests the presence of a cultural lobby that parallels the vaunted pro-Israel lobby in think tanks and Congress. I doubt we will find out whether the Workshop's decision was "internally generated," as Kushner contends, or more orchestrated, as I suspect. What the episode has demonstrated is a climate of fear. Not of physical harm, but of loss of opportunities. "The silence results from fear and intimidation," says Cindy Corrie. "I don't see what else. And it harms not only Palestinians. I believe, from the bottom of my heart, it harms Israelis and it harms us."<br><br>Kushner agrees. Having spent five months defending Munich, he says the fear has two sources: "There is a very, very highly organized attack machinery that will come after you if you express any kind of dissent about Israel's policies, and it's a very unpleasant experience to be in the cross hairs. These aren't hayseeds from Kansas screaming about gays burning in hell; they're newspaper columnists who are taken seriously." These attackers impose a kind of literacy test: Before you can cast a moral vote on Palestinian rights, you must be able to recite a million wonky facts, such as what percentage of the territories were outside the Green Line in 1949. Then there is the self-generated fear of lending support to anti-Semites or those who would destroy Israel. All in all, says Kushner, it can leave someone "overwhelmed and in despair -- you feel like you should just say nothing."<br><br>Who will tell Americans the Middle East story? For generations that story has been one of Israelis as victims, and it has been crucial to Israeli policy inasmuch as Israel has been able to defy its neighbors' opinions by relying on a highly sympathetic superpower. Israel's supporters have always feared that if Americans started to conduct the same frank discussion of issues that takes place in Tel Aviv, we might become more evenhanded in our approach to the Middle East. That pressure is what has stifled a play that portrays the Palestinians as victims (and thrown a blanket over a movie, Munich, that portrays both sides as victims). I've never written this sort of thing before. How moving that we have been granted that freedom by a 23-year-old woman with literary gifts who was not given time to unpack them. <br> <p></p><i></i>

[Gouda]

However you may feel about an idealistic young american woman immersing herself as an activist in the affairs of the most complicated, explosive, and tragic spots on earth, the blocked production of this play is unconscionable. <br><br>Some excerpts from her <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~plip1/RachelLetters.htm">letters</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> : <br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>…Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it…<br><br>I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation...If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours - do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed - just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would. You asked me about non-violent resistance...<br><br>The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities - but in focusing on them I'm terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon's possible goals), can't leave...<br><br>I think I could see a Palestinian state or a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state within my lifetime. I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes, which the US supports...<br><br>I look forward to increasing numbers of middle-class privileged people like you and me becoming aware of the structures that support our privilege and beginning to support the work of those who aren’t privileged to dismantle those structures... <br><br>…I look forward to more teachers emerging like Matt Grant and Barbara Weaver and Dale Knuth who teach critical thinking to kids in the United States. I look forward to the international resistance that’s occurring now fertilizing analysis on all kinds of issues, with dialogue between diverse groups of people. I look forward to all of us who are new at this developing better skills for working in democratic structures and healing our own racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and ageism and ableism and becoming more effective.<br><br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>I think she was a good person, just getting a handle on the reality of this world. I find her letters thoughtful and lucid. She was only 23, and I have to say, she knew a hell of lot more and had a hell of a lot more courage and conviction than I did at that age. You can condemn her as reckless and naive, in over her head, whatever. A bulldozer did as well. Then an Israeli investigation did. Then the US Congress. Now her words/life are blocked from artistic production. Her death hangs there, unresolved & her life bandied about for political reasons - another loss for both truth and justice. <br><br>Meanwhile, i think she would be the first to point us away from herself and remind us of the daily atrocities being committed by the IDF and Israeli policy in general. The atrocities in Iraq and Israel/Palestine are morphing together. Hopefully Iran will not soon join this widening blob of injustice, this blot. <p></p><i></i>

[darkbeforedawn]

Plainly we have come to the point in time where "to remain silent is a betrayal." I wonder how many "humanist" and "liberal" commentators will say nothing about this outrage. Every community, school and college needs to run its own production of this play. <p></p><i></i>