Category: In the Media - Page 335 - International Solidarity Movement

Rickman & Rachel Juggle Three Wins

My Name Is Rachel Corrie was the biggest straight play winner in this
year’s Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, triumphing in three categories:
Best New Play, Best Solo Performance and Best Director (See News, 31
Jan 2006). Alan Rickman, Megan Dodds and Katharine Viner – the trio
behind Rachel Corrie – reunited at the Royal Court, where the play
premiered in April 2005, to collect their trophies.

Why did a 23-year-old woman leave her comfortable American life to
stand between a bulldozer and a Palestinian home? My Name Is Rachel
Corrie recounts the real story of “the short life and sudden death of
Rachel Corrie, and the words she left behind.”

Alan Rickman took the idea to the Royal Court after reading an email
written by Corrie and posthumously published in the Guardian. With the
permission of Corrie’s family, he and Guardian journalist Katharine
Viner developed the play based on Corrie’s own writings. Megan Dodds
starred as Corrie in the 80-minute monologue.

Following its sell-out premiere season in the 80-seat Jerwood Theatre
Upstairs, My Name Is Rachel Corrie returned to the Royal Court’s
395-seat Jerwood Theatre Downstairs for a second limited season last
October (See News, 3 May 2005). Next month, it will receive its US
premiere – running from 22 March to 14 May 2006 at the New York
Theatre Workshop – ahead of a planned US tour and further
international dates.

Speaking to Whatsonstage.com over celebratory coffee and croissants at
the Royal Court, Rickman said: “The way I feel about My Name Is Rachel
Corrie winning these awards is, I think, what I felt every night in
the theatre – that the audience somehow owned the play. With the best
kind of work, you always feel like you give it away to the audience.
As an actor or a director, I’m just there to facilitate that.” He
added, with regards to his own personal Best Director win for the
play: “Thank you very much indeed. It’s really not about me, it’s
about Rachel. You have honoured her and her memory with these awards
and now her story goes on.”

Dodds, who collected the award for Best Solo Performance, said: “I
want to say thank you to the people who voted and the people who came
to see the show. It takes a certain level of commitment because it’s
not an easy piece and it’s not a typical play. But so many people
seemed to feel it wasn’t just Rachel’s story, it was their story, too.
Of course, it never would have happened if Alan hadn’t read about
Rachel in the Guardian one day. I’m so grateful to have been a part of
it.”

Rickman’s co-author Viner still seemed taken aback by the play’s
success. “My Name Is Rachel Corrie is the first play I’ve ever been
involved with,” she admitted. “To work with the material of such a
brilliant writer and with such a wonderful team was a dream come true.
I’ve loved doing it, it’s opened up a whole new area of my
imagination. Thank you to everyone who voted for us for honouring
Rachel’s memory in this very special way.”

As for triumphing over premieres by Neil LaBute, Richard Bean, Simon
Stephens, Aaron Sorkin and Helen Edmundson to win the title for Best
New Play, Rickman compared it to being “a bit like Krufts – you know,
when you’ve got a poodle up against a sheep dog. We feel like the
little poodle, but with the muscle of a much bigger dog. It’s for
other people to judge, of course, but I think this piece is so
important because it reminds us that we are part of the world we live
in.”

Bil’in Waiting for Justice

Palestinians of Bil’in, Israelis and Internationals waiting to enter the High Court of Justice, Feb 1st

High Court queries route of security fence near Bil’in
By DAN IZENBERG, Jerusalem Post

The High Court of Justice on Thursday issued a showcause order instructing the state to explain why it had chosen the specific route of the separation barrier near the Palestinian village of Bil’in and why the barrier should not be moved westward, closer to the nearby Jewish settlement of Modi’in Illit.

The court’s decision followed a hearing the previous day on a petition filed by attorney Michael Sfard on behalf of Bil’in Town Council head Ahmed Yasin.

Sfard asked the court for a show-cause order that would oblige the state to provide a more detailed response to the petition, along with an affidavit from a senior state official supporting the state’s argument.

The panel of three justices that heard Wednesday’s hearing – Supreme Court President Aharon Barak and Justices Dorit Beinisch and Eliezer Rivlin – rejected Sfard’s request for an interim injunction to prevent the Defense Ministry from completing construction of the threekilometer stretch of barrier near Bil’in, which is the subject of the petition.

Palestinians of Bil’in, Israelis and Internationals demonstrating outside the High Court of Justice, Feb 1st

However, the justices reminded the state that it had promised not to close the current opening in the barrier with a planned gate, which is earmarked to be the controlled entry point for villagers seeking to work their lands on the “Israeli” side of the wall.

The court gave the state 21 days to present its detailed response to the petition. It also ruled that a number of respondents should be added to the petition, which was originally directed at the government and the West Bank military commander.

The respondents to be added include the Modi’in Illit Local Council and several construction and management companies currently building housing on land the petitioners argue should be on the Palestinian side of the barrier.

The companies include Green Park, Greenmount, Hefzibah, the Fund for Redeeming the Land, Planning and Development of Settlements and the Ein Ami Initiating and Development Company.

In the petition, Sfard charged that the route of the fence near Bil’in cut the village off from hundreds of dunams of its agricultural land.

Bil’in claims it owns more than 2,000 dunams of land on the “Israeli” side of the barrier, including approximately 900 dunams upon which the construction companies are building housing for the planned Jewish neighborhood of Matityahu East. Sfard said that by all accounts, 700-800 dunams of land belonging to Bil’in farmers, including some within the housing project, are located on the Israeli side of the barrier, and therefore the route should be changed to allow the farmers free access to their lands.

The Land of Bil’in

Palestine Solidarity Activist Fined; Pie in the Face Humor not Appreciated

Pro-Palestinian activist fined for throwing pie at Sharansky
By The Associated Press

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, New Jersey – A man who threw a pie in the face of then-cabinet minister Natan Sharansky just before he was to speak at a packed Rutgers University lecture hall in 2003 was found guilty Thursday of a disorderly persons offense.

Abe Greenhouse, 27, was fined $200 and ordered to pay $155 in court fees and penalties. The case was heard in South Brunswick Municipal Court by Judge Mary Casey, who found Greenhouse guilty of causing public inconvenience or alarm because of “tumultuous behavior.”

Greenhouse, a pro-Palestinian activist, could have received up to 30 days in jail and stiffer fines. He declined to comment after the hearing but his lawyer, Leon Grauer of Nutley, said his client’s actions were a political act and that the verdict would be appealed.

At the time of the September 18, 2003 incident, Greenhouse was a Rutgers student and leader of Central Jersey Jews Against the Occupation; Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner, was Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs.

Sharansky, who was on the New Brunswick campus to speak to a crowd of about 500 at an event organized by a Jewish student group, was not hurt. After quickly cleaning himself off, he joked about the “good cakes” available in New Jersey and then gave his speech without further incident.

Israeli security guards grabbed Greenhouse, breaking his nose and giving him a black eye and a swollen lip, according to court records.

High Court Wants Answers from the State; Bil’in Decision Coming Soon…

(Israeli peace activists and Palestinians from Bil’in demonstrate together in front of the High Court of Justice)

1.High Court: State must explain why it won’t move separation fence in Bil’in
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent

The High Court of Justice on Thursday ordered the state prosecutor to explain why Israel won’t alter the route of the separation fence where it passes over land belonging to the West Bank Palestinian village of Bil’in.

The state was given three weeks to explain why the fence can’t be moved west, toward the Upper Modi’in settlement, so that it won’t pass over Bil’in agricultural lands.

The High Court issued the preliminary injunction at the request of Bil’in residents, who are petitioning the court to order the state to alter the fence route in the area.

On Wednesday, lawyer Michael Sfard told the court the current fence route was not determined by security considerations, as the state maintains. Sfard said the fence route was designed to allow the eastward expansion of Upper Modi’in.

He also said the fence route allows the building of the new Matityahu East neighborhood. As was first published in Haaretz, illegal construction, without any building permits or legal building plan, is currently underway on the neighborhood.

“We had thought that the fence administration was building a fence,” Sfard said. “But now it is clear that the fence administration is building new illegal neighborhoods in settlements.”

The fence separates the village of Bil’in from a large portion of its agricultural lands.

The Matityahu East neighborhood has 750 housing units and another 2,000 are planned. The lands on which the neighborhood is being constructed belong to Bil’in residents. Portions of the land were obtained using documents suspected to have been forged.

J.A.G., the Jerusalem Post & Kalandia

Jews Admit Defacing Kalandiya Sign
by MARGOT DUDKEVITCH

Photo: Civil Administration

Members of a group called Jews Against Genocide (JAG) claimed responsibility for defacing the newly erected sign to the Kalandiya terminal checkpoint north of Jerusalem, daubing on it the infamous Auschwitz inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (Work liberates).

Shlomo Bloom, one of the founding members of the organization, said the action was not to say that Kalandiya is equivalent to Auschwitz but to accentuate the frightening similarities between the two. “Kalandiya is not a cheerful place for Palestinians,” he told The Jerusalem Post . “There are disturbing parallels between the tactics used by the occupying forces and those of the Nazis,” he said. The sign, decorated with a painted flower and inscribed in Arabic, English and Hebrew with the slogan “The hope of us all,” is one of many being erected at checkpoints, security officials said.

But Bloom views the move as a degrading and humiliating message for the Palestinians. “If we were talking about a sovereign Palestinian state with a border checkpoint between it and Israel, it would be a different matter,” said Bloom.

Earlier in the week, security officials had suspected that women from the Machsom Watch checkpoint monitoring group were behind the graffiti, a charge that was vehemently denied by the movement’s spokeswoman Adi Dagan.

Bloom refused to accept that the West Bank checkpoints and terminals was a direct outcome of Palestinian terror.