Let's blame the Jewish Zionists for the delays and sabotage that almost halted the production and performance of this great play! :sarcasm:

Interesting outlook on how there internal Palestinian division that negatively affect the lives of many Palestinians ... BEFORE they face the negatives from the Israelis. Good point raised - Palestinians will not be free from Israelis before they become free from their own internal restrictions on life ...

Animal Farm rankles the West Bank

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7968812.stm

quote:

George Orwell's 1945 fictional satire of Stalinist Russia, Animal Farm, is being performed in the West Bank with a decidedly Palestinian twist. The debut production by the drama students of the Freedom Theatre is being staged in the Jenin refugee camp. Not that long ago Jenin was a stronghold for Palestinian militants and widely considered a no-go area for foreigners. Now, Freedom Theatre, the West Bank's only full-time drama school, is bussing in audience members from Ramallah, Bethlehem and surrounding villages - even from Israel. The play is a sign of a slow return to normality for a camp once renowned for its violence and bitter battles with Israeli troops. But the production has not been welcomed by all. Controversial Both the theatre's director, Juliano Mer-Khamis, and the director of the play, Nabil al-Raee, have been targets of violence, and just days before the production opened, someone tried to burn down the theatre. We planned to make the play really suitable for our situation Nabil al-Raee, Director "The main entrance was set on fire, which was meant to set on fire the whole theatre, but we were very lucky and the fire didn't catch... I don't think we need to say more," explains Mr Mer-Khamis. The company also planned to tour the production to Ramallah, but the theatre there has withdrawn its co-operation. An application for funding for the production from a Palestinian cultural foundation was also declined. So why is the production proving so controversial? Mr Raee says much of the anger stems from the choice of play - with its theme of revolutionaries imitating their oppressors. But the group has also updated it so that it now also includes references to Palestinian politics. "We planned to make the play really suitable for our situation, we [adapted it] it to be Palestinian," says Nabil. So for example, there is an "intifada" rather than a revolution. And the pigs don't just learn to walk, they also learn Hebrew as well. There also references to corruption and collaboration. Mr Mer-Khamis says the production wants to challenge Palestinian traditions and Palestinian views of the "occupation". The aim, he says, is to look at Palestinian society and the politics of the West Bank rather than Israel and its occupation. But their take on it has proved too challenging for some, and the play and its cast and director have become a target for protests, some of them violent. "We are fighting here a generation who is rejecting what we are doing. We are fighting a lot of fundamentalists that see what we are doing as a disgrace," Juliano says. "We are fighting a lot of enemies, before, before we get to the Israeli soldiers." The Palestinian Authority has varying degrees of control in the West Bank, but Israel ultimately controls the Occupied Territories. The Israeli army, in occupation of the area since it seized it in the 1967 war, restricts all travel with more than 500 checkpoints, roadblocks and earth mounds, which it says are necessary to prevent Palestinian militant attacks and suicide bombings. But for Mr Mer-Khamis, the most present and immediate enemy is not Israel or Israeli troops. Instead, he says, it is the unspoken restrictions Palestinian society imposes on those who want to challenge the Territories' political leadership. "I believe that if Nabil or me will not be free as individuals, will not be independent as people, we will not be able to free ourselves from Israeli occupation." The two directors want to break what they call the "internal siege". "To be free is to be able to criticise, to be free is to be able to express yourself freely, to be free is to be free first of all of the chains of tradition, religion, nationalism - in a dark way I mean - then you can start for yourself," Mr Mer-Khamis says.

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

quote:

"Exterminate all the Brutes": Gaza 2009 Noam Chomsky chomsky.info, January 19, 2009 On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended. That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee. In his retrospective "Parsing Gains of Gaza War," New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner cited this achievement as one of the most significant of the gains. Israel calculated that it would be advantageous to appear to "go crazy," causing vastly disproportionate terror, a doctrine that traces back to the 1950s. "The Palestinians in Gaza got the message on the first day," Bronner wrote, "when Israeli warplanes struck numerous targets simultaneously in the middle of a Saturday morning. Some 200 were killed instantly, shocking Hamas and indeed all of Gaza." The tactic of "going crazy" appears to have been successful, Bronner concluded: there are "limited indications that the people of Gaza felt such pain from this war that they will seek to rein in Hamas," the elected government. That is another long-standing doctrine of state terror. I don't, incidentally, recall the Times retrospective "Parsing Gains of Chechnya War," though the gains were great. The meticulous planning also presumably included the termination of the assault, carefully timed to be just before the inauguration, so as to minimize the (remote) threat that Obama might have to say some words critical of these vicious US-supported crimes. ..... One of the wisest voices in Israel, Uri Avnery, writes that after an Israeli military victory, "What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet. In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel." There is good reason to believe that he is right. Israel is deliberately turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long. Decades ago, I wrote that those who call themselves "supporters of Israel" are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. Regrettably, that judgment looks more and more plausible. Meanwhile we are quietly observing a rare event in history, what the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called "politicide," the murder of a nation -- at our hands.

Full article here: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20090119.htm

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"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

I'm sorry, Shaolin, the article you posted was interesting and shocking, but its not related to the thread or the original post

Thw article you posted is of absolute necessity to the Israeli Attack on Gaza type of thread. Don't mean to burst your bubble, bud.

___________________
Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

quote:

Originally posted by Magnetonium I'm sorry, Shaolin, the article you posted was interesting and shocking, but its not related to the thread or the original post Thw article you posted is of absolute necessity to the Israeli Attack on Gaza type of thread. Don't mean to burst your bubble, bud.

I don't know where that thread is, I don't come here often enough anymore to keep up with all the threads. This is the most recent thread I found on "Israel / Palestine," so I stuck it in here instead. Here's some more

quote:

Report: Israel Built 9,000 Homes in Occupied Territories under Olmert A new report has determined the Israeli government under Ehud Olmert built or issued bids for some 9,000 settlement homes for Israelis in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. The Israeli watchdog groups Peace Now and Ir Amim urged President Barack Obama to step in quickly and pressure Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to halt further settlement expansion. Group: 2008 Was Deadliest Year for Palestinians since 1948 The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed in 2008 in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, making it the deadliest year since Israel was founded in 1948. A total 860 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops in Gaza and the West Bank. Another 161 Palestinians were killed in factional fighting.

Source: Democracy Now

Unfortunately, as usual, the illegal land grabbing policy continues coupled with significant atrocities under the same old tired, hypocritical and disingenuous pretext.

___________________
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller