Digest: Normal Oppression

1. Thousands of olive trees are being planted on land day demonstrations March 30th
2. Human Rights Worker Attacked near Hebron Settlement March 27th
3. Border Police enter home And beat Palestinians and 75 year old Australian volunteer March 26th
4. Palestinians, U.S. citizen complain of Hebron settler violence from Haaretz March 27th
5. Normal Oppression March 28th By Jane
6. Notice at Kalandia Checkpoint: Al Ram is Now Israel March 25th
7. Rachel Corrie is the new Anne Frank. by Katharine Viner
8. Democracy Now, Debate Between The New York Theater Workshop, and “My Name is Rachel Corrie” Editor Katharine Vine
9. Democracy Now, Rachel Corrie’s Parents Reaction to postponement
______________

1. THOUSANDS OF OLIVE TREES ARE BEING PLANTED IN LAND DAY DEMONSTRATIONS

On Land Day, Thursday March 30, thousands of Palestinians, along with Israeli and International activists will hold a series of large-scale peaceful protests.

Demonstrations against ongoing Israeli land confiscation are taking place in the villages of Beit Sira (Ramallah area), Zabda (Jenin area), Rafat (Salfit area) and Jbara checkpoint (Tulkarm area) with marches alongside the annexation barrier where local residents will plant 1000’s of olive trees.

Some of Today’s Demonstrations are taking place in:

Beit Sira. Since 1967 the village has lost 65% of its land to expanding Israeli settlements. As a symbolic act villagers will march carrying a coffin on their shoulders containing olive tree saplings which will be planted in the confiscated land

Rafat. 3000 Dunams out of a total land area of 3500 has been isolated from the village by the Annexation Barrier. The Israeli army has announced 300 Dunams of the remaining land are a closed military zone

Zabda. 6000 villagers are cut off from the West Bank behind the annexation barrier. Many more are excluded from their land by gates open for only 2 hours in the early morning and late evening. Out of 1722 farmers that applied for permission to access their own land 150 were granted permits

Jbara checkpoint.. March and demonstration against the wall, land-grab and collective punishment. Tulkarm has been completely closed for more than five moths as a collective punishment. In addition Many villages including Jbara are isolated by the annexation barrier.
_________________

2. HUMAN RIGHTS WORKER ATTACKED NEAR HEBRON SETTLEMENT

Jewish settlers attacked American Human Rights’ activist Brian Morgan, outside the Beit Haddasah settlement on Saturday March 25.

About 20 settlers, adults and children as young as eight years, kicked, punched and hit Morgan on the head with rocks. He later received sutures in hospital in Tel Aviv.
An Israeli soldier at his post outside the settlement close to the attack, repeatedly ignored Morgan’s requests for help.

‘I judged the situation was not life threatening,” commented a soldier from a nearby checkpoint.
Morgan described the incident as unprovoked: “We were not filming, but I think they did not want any international witness in the area,” he said. He believes the attack was premeditated.
Morgan works with the Tel Rumeida project, which accompanies Palestinian families and their children to and from school, shielding them from harassment by settler children.
Most attacks on Palestinians and internationals occur on the Sabbath day when settler youths are not in school.

“There has been a considerable rise in settler violence during these pre-election weeks,” said a spokesman from Tel Rumeida, But we and other Human Rights’ activists will remain in this area to do our job.”

_______________

3. Border Police enter home And beat Palestinians and 75 year old Australian volunteer
By Jane

Sunday 26th March, 25 soldiers and Border Police entered a Palestinian home And beat two Palestinians and 75 year old international volunteer for no apparent reason.

My first evening in Al Khalil/Hebron. I have just poured myself a cup of tea and Mary is telling me about the situation here. There’s a commotion outside and we go to investigate. As we come down the stairwell a young boy says “soldiers, soldiers” and points into the apartment.

On entering the apartment of Radey Abu Aesheh I see first one soldier, gun raised and pointing at people, then I see another and another, 6 altogether. All with guns raised. The apartment seems full of women and men shouting, there are 5 or 6 children. Radey Abu Aesha had been hit in the mouth. Hasan Abu Aesheh tells Mary the soldiers kicked him.

Suddenly the soldiers decide to leave and back down the stairs. Perhaps there were too many people for them. Many people follow, shouting their greivances at the soldiers for entering their home and their violent behaviour. The soldiers are shouting back. The Captain of the soldiers says they went into the house because they heard shouting, nobody believes this.

More soldiers and Border Police arrive until they are very many. The Captain confers with his men. They decide they want to take Bilal Abu Aesheh. In the chaos I don’t know if the soldiers reentered the building. What I saw was 4 soldiers wrestle Bilal to the ground and handcuff him with plastic cuffs behind his back, using aggressive force, banging his head on the ground. After he was cuffed a soldier approached him and kicked him. The Police arrived and he was taken away. Besam persuaded everyone to go back into the building. We stood at the entrance. The soldiers decided they wanted Husan. Soldiers surrounded the doorway, they tossed me aside.

Mary refused to let them enter saying “ these people are my family, you can’t come into my house”. They hesitated, they yelled at the Palestinians inside. Husan appeared on the stairwell. They grabbed Mary very roughly twice and threw her aside and grabbed Husan. They pushed him up against the outside wall of the building and rubbed his face across the stone. They hit him and threw him on the ground, they kicked him. They cuffed him behind his back. The women are screaming out of the windows. They take Husan behind one of their vehicles.

When I see a Palestinian being taken behind a vehicle I think he will get beaten so I stood nearby, the 2 soldiers guarding him demanding ‘get back, get back’. A large man in civilian clothes shone a bright video camera light in Husan°s eyes and filmed him. He stood right over him as Husan was crouched down on a low ledge. I turned my back for a second, on turning round Husan signaled with his eyes and motioned that the man had spat at him. An action I had half caught in the corner of my eye. Then I understood the man was a settler. The soldiers continued to let him stand over Husan and verbally abuse him. Soldier had lined up behind vehicles and trained their guns on the building. It seemed to take forever before the Police arrived again and Husan was put in the back of their vehicle. Mary said she wanted to go with Husan and the Police did not object, so she climbed in too.

In Radey Abu Aesheh’s home the wait began. The street had been closed but now people began to arrive. The older men clicked their prayer beads whilst they talked. Women made coffee, peeled oranges and apples. Yechye, a lawyer, regularly rang the Police. No news, no news and then bad news, Bilal and Husan were accused of attacking the soldiers. Radey Abu Aesheh says “Bush is claiming we are the terrorists and all the Euopean Governments go along with him and support him. But look how Palestinians are treated, you can see the reverse is true”. Rajab Abu Aesheh says “The settles want the Palestinians to leave the area but the people will not follow this plan, so they are harassing us to force us to leave, but we will not leave until we die and this will be transmitted from son to son”.

Suddenly the police tell Yechye good news, Mary, Bilal and Husan are all being released. It’s a fast walk up hill to get to a car. It’s parked outside the Israeli controlled area, where Palestinians are not allowed to drive. We skirt round Tel Rumeida in the car, to get back to almost where we had left the house and on to the Police station. At the gates of the Police station, Yechye has to stick his fingers though the metal gate to use a phone to communicate with the Police inside. At midnight, the 3 are released. Mary who mis seventy five years old has also been accused of attacking the soldiers. Husan is very sore and bruised, he has blood in one of his eyes.

Living in the settlement building just up the road a few hundred yards from this violent episode is Baruch Marzel, extreme right winger, well known for his hatred of Arabs and support for transferring all Palestinians to Jordan. His wife and son are among the worst for attacking the Palestinian inhabitants of Tel Rumeida. He is standing as a candidate in Tuesday’s Israeli elections.

____________________

4. Palestinians, U.S. citizen complain of Hebron settler violence

By Amos Harel and Michal Greenberg, Haaretz Correspondents for Haaretz

Several Palestinians and an American volunteer in the West Bank on Sunday filed complaints with the police, accusing settlers of violence toward Palestinians in the Hebron area on Saturday, after three people were wounded in two separate incidents.

In one of the incidents, Palestinians said about 10 masked, Hebrew-speaking youths had raided a tent encampment near the settlement of Sussia, on the border of the Havat Yair outpost on
Saturday night. They allegedly attacked two Palestinian brothers with clubs and knives and then escaped. The brothers, Abdelrahman and Aziz Shanaran, were lightly to moderately wounded and were taken to Alia Hospital in Hebron for treatment.

Another Shanaran relative, who said he had witnessed the incident, filed a police complaint on Sunday.

Also Sunday, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel asked the state prosecution to intervene immediately in an effort to bring the assailants to justice.

Left-wing activists familiar with the area said they thought the assailants were settlers from Sussia, and said settlers had been attacking Palestinian villagers in the area for a long time, in an attempt to steal their land.

Abdelrahman Shanaran told the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem that the assailants had hit him on the head with a sharp object while he was sleeping in his tent. He said they continued to beat him and removed him from the tent.

His brother, Aziz, heard the screams of his wife and children and rushed to his assistance. According to the testimony, some of the assailants then began beating Aziz.

Aziz Shanaran told B’Tselem that the assailants appeared to be young and that some had earlocks and rifles. He said that after the attack, they escaped in the direction of Sussia.
Hospital records show that Abdelrahman Shanaran was treated for three cuts on his head and a leg wound, and that his brother received orthopedic treatment.

In the second incident, which took place Saturday afternoon, an American volunteer assisting Palestinians in Hebron as part of the Tel Rumeida Project said he was attacked by a group of about 20 Israeli children and youths. He said they threw stones at him, kicked him and spat at him. He was taken to a Hebron hospital shortly after the incident and underwent additional tests at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv on Sunday. He was hit in the head and doctors are concerned he may have a concussion.

The volunteer said he ran from his assailants to a nearby Israel Defense Forces post, but charged that the soldiers on duty refused to assist him.

However, IDF sources said the soldiers reached the site of the attack without being summoned and then dispersed the settlers. Police said they showed him mug shots but that the volunteer was unable to identify the people he said had attacked him.

Police said they would continue their inquiry into the attack on the American volunteer, but admitted that they had encountered difficulties.

_______________

5. Normal Oppression
By Jane
28th March 2006

Tel Rumeida- Today at the Tel Rumeida check point, an Israeli soldier lashed out injuring a Palestinian man by kicking him and hitting him with his rifle.

Everyone is saying that it is tense here in Tel Rumeida. As today is the Israeli election the settlers are not at work and the children not in school. In Tel Rumeida this translates into a high possibility of settlers on the streets, encouraging their children to throw stones at the Palestinian children going to and from school.

Things were quiet and calm at the check point through the morning. I said hello to the 2 soldiers on the check point to establish some contact and they were polite and pleasant. They were allowing Palestinians to pass the check point with relatively little hassle. The children came out of school through the check point, or up the hill to their homes. At about 12.30 pm the teachers approached the checkpoint. They have established with the soldiers previously that they will not pass through the check point portacabin with the doors remotely controlled a soldier behind a glass screen. They use a small metal gate at the side.

Three young Palestinian men were being kept waiting, leaning against the wall by the gate, on the other side of the check point. One was Abu Shakhdam. After the teachers had passed by, the gate was not completely shut.

One of the soldiers said something to the 3 Palestinians waiting the other side. Abu Shakhdam
responded. The soldier shouted, Abu Shakhdam banged his hand on the gate. In a flash the soldier erupted. He rushed up to Abu Shakhdam shouting, pushing his gun a hairs breath from Abu Shakhdam’s face. Abu Shakhdam backed off, running back into the street, his side of the
check point. The soldier yelled, following and threatening him by aiming his gun. The soldier made him kneel down in the middle of the street. The 2nd soldier ran up, forcefully kicking Abu Shakhdam before swung his rifle and hit him on the side of his head. Meanwhile I’m
shouting ” I’m filmimg you, stop hitting him”. One soldier shouted “shut the fuck up”. The soldiers bring Abu Shakhdam through the gate, he has blood flowing down the side of his head.
Abu Shakhdam was taken away in an army vehical. At the Police station he was accussed of attacking the soldiers. Hageet, from Machsom Watch, made a complaint about the soldier’s behaviour. She informed the Police that we have on film the soldier attacking Abu Shakhdam but
still they refuse to release him.

A soldier attacking a person is just a part of a “normal” days events here. A call came shortly after to say that settler’s children were throwing stones at Palestinian kids. Children under 14 year of age are not arrested or dealt with by the Israeli criminal justice system, as an adult would be. It is an incredibly sad sight to see little Israeli children, as young as four or five, throwing stones at little Palestinian kids, while their communities adults stand behind them.
_______________

6.Notice at Kalandia Checkpoint: Al Ram is Now Israel
For a picture of the notice see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/26/notice-at-kalandia-checkpoint-al-ram-is-now-israel/

On Saturday March 25 Israeli military placed a notice at the Kalandia checkpoint announcing that from March 27, 2006 only holders of a permit to enter Israel will be allowed to cross the checkpoint to the West Bank village of Al Ramm.
By restricting Palestinian access in this way, the Israelis have effectively annexed the village minus its West Bank residents to Israel. cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. The restriction will also cement the illegal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem.
The Kalandia checkpoint is flanked on both sides by the annexation Wall. Olmert’s Kadima party has admitted that the Wall is not a temporary security measure as Israel originally claimed but will be Israel’s “permanent border”.

_________________

7. Rachel Corrie is the new Anne Frank. by Katharine Viner
co-editor of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, on the controversy over the postponement of her play. Link: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2006/03/23

Excerpt:
“There is a particular entry in Rachel Corrie’s diary, probably written some time in 1999, four years before she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes. She is aged 19 or 20. “Had a dream about falling, falling to my death off something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah,” she writes, “but I kept holding on, and when each foothold or handle of rock broke I reached out as I fell and grabbed a new one. I didn’t have time to think about anything – just react as if I was playing an adrenaline-filled video game. And I heard, ‘I can’t die, I can’t die,’ again and again in my head.”

___________________

8) Democracy Now, Debate Between The New York Theater Workshop, and “My Name is Rachel Corrie” Editor Katharine Vine

Transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/22/1435259
MP3 Download: http://www.archive.org/download/dn2006-0322/dn2006-0322-1_64kb.mp3

Katharine Viner, co-creator of the multiple award winning play, My Name is Rachel Corrie debates the controversy over the postponement of the plays US debut at the New York Theatre Workshop with the 2 theatre directors – James Nicola & Lynn Moffat responsible, in a Democracy Now broadcast hosted by Amy Goodman
The play My Name is Rachel Corrie was due to open recently at the celebrated New York Theatre Workshop but has been indefinitely postponed.
James Nicola said “After Ariel Sharon’s illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation…our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn’t want to take.”
Actor Alan Rickman – Katherine’s co-writer – responded by saying, “This is censorship born out of fear” and Literature & Pullitzer Prize winning writer Harold Pinter and others in a letter to the New York Times asked: “What is it about Rachel Corrie’s writings, her thoughts, her feelings, her confusions, her idealism, her courage…that New York audiences must be protected from…Rachel Corrie gave her life standing up against injustice”

Interview Excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: Today, in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we host a discussion between one of the creators of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie and the New York theater group that postponed the production of the play. In London, we’re joined by Katharine Viner. She’s the co-editor and co-producer of My Name is Rachel Corrie. She’s editor at the Guardian newspaper in London. Here in our New York studio, we’re joined by James Nicola. He is the artistic director at the New York Theatre Workshop, as well as the theater’s managing director, Lynn Moffat. And we welcome you all to Democracy Now!

Well, why don’t we begin with you, Jim Nicola, about this play, about My Name Is Rachel Corrie, about its plans for production, opening night tonight, and why it was cancelled or indefinitely postponed?

JAMES NICOLA: Sure. Well, I would want to go back a little bit to my original reading of the play, which was inspiring and moving, and I really connected to what Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman were trying to do in their portrait, which, in any artist who is approaching a character or subject, shapes the material into something. And they said, as in Katharine said, what did she want people to feel or think about when they walk out of the play; she said to feel inspired to go out and do something about the world’s inequalities. And I thought that was an excellent thing to put forward in New York.

All of us Americans, myself included, live in some sort of fog of avoidance and denial, and here was a beautiful example of someone who pierced through that and did something and made a commitment. I also thought a lot about my nieces and nephews who are roughly her age now, and I see how they’re living, and I thought she would be a wonderful example to them, to all of us. But this portrait that they wanted to create was about — they had a very particular view, which I really supported and believed in, which is the example she set with her life. And they wanted to keep at bay, for the sake of this argument, this portrait, many — anybody who would walk in with any particular idea or bias or view and say, just for the sake of this argument, ‘Look at this beautiful act of commitment and courage and idealism, and let’s hold our thoughts and just study that example.’ And that was what we were trying to fight for. And on this very short time frame that we had to mount this, we didn’t realize at the beginning the complexity of that task.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, before we talk about the controversy over the staging of this and what happened, let’s turn to Katharine Viner, co-editor and co-producer of My Name is Rachel Corrie, and start at the beginning. Tell us about this play, how you came to edit it, and why we call you co-editor, as opposed to playwright.

KATHARINE VINER: Right. Well, it all began just after Rachel was killed. Her family released lots of her emails home from Gaza, and they were published around the world, including in the Guardian, which is the newspaper I work for in London. And they were astounding. They were so powerful and evocative and moving. And Alan Rickman, the Hollywood actor, he saw them and got very excited and took them to the Royal Court Theatre and said these should make a play. These are fantastic. And I was asked to get involved at that point. And we approached Rachel’s family to ask for permission, and obviously that was a very hard time for them. And they said, “You know, we love theater, but, you know, give us some time. We need to think about this.” And then, I think it was about a year later, they came back to us.

And in that meantime, we had been really thinking about how we could do this. We were thinking of doing a patchwork of voices, voices from Rachel’s friends in Olympia, Washington, which is where she was from, her friends in Gaza, fellow activists, Israeli soldiers. We were imagining sort of creating a whole patchwork of a play. But then, suddenly there landed on our doorstep 184 pages of Rachel’s words, and her family had gone and discovered all these journals that she had left behind in her bedroom, and they had typed them up for us, which was a real emotional task, as you can imagine. And they were her journals from the age of ten.

And you can imagine, we were so excited about this, and we realized that we didn’t need to be playwrights. We just needed to edit Rachel’s words, that Rachel could tell her story all on her own. And so then, the patchwork was just moving around Rachel’s words, timings. And, in fact, the first third of the play is before she even goes to Gaza, and it’s her packing in her bedroom, finding old journals, telling stories about bumping into ex-boyfriends or her job or female friends or just being an ordinary teenager, before she made the big decision to go to Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you staged this at the Royal Court Theatre in London?

KATHARINE VINER: That’s right, yes. Now, we staged it in April last year and, in fact, it was sort of this huge success immediately. We were very shocked, because obviously it was a small play about, you know — and a political play. I mean, there was a trend for political theater in London at the moment, but we hadn’t realized quite how successful it would be. And, in fact, the Royal Court said it was their fastest sellout in their 50-year history. And this is the theater — Look Back in Anger – their biggest sellout in their 50-year history, which is fantastic. And there were lines of people waiting outside the theater every night for returns. So, we quickly brought it back to a larger theater, also at the Royal Court, which was also a sellout. And next week, in fact, when the New York transfer was canceled, a West End producer stepped in, and now the play is transferring to the West End next week. The West End is the equivalent of Broadway. So, we’re hoping it’s going to be a major commercial success, as well as a major artistic success.

AMY GOODMAN: So, now let’s go to what happened in New York. The play was presented to the New York Theatre Workshop. You read it, Jim. You loved it. You said, ‘Let’s go with it.’

JAMES NICOLA: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And the schedule was set. Then what happened?

JAMES NICOLA: Well, we started onto our usual process of how do you make the pathway for a writer’s voice, you know, publicly, from — it goes from the page to the stage, and then you have to bring people to it. And I took very seriously this desire of Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman to find this place where people could feel safe and free to suspend their points of view, to listen to Rachel and to look at Rachel in this particular way. And then — certainly I am more educated now on this whole conflict than I was at the start of it. And, in fact, I look back six, eight weeks, and I feel like I’m a different person. But as we started to learn and listen, that task just seemed to get bigger and more complicated. In addition to other production logistical questions because of the short timeframe, were also growing concerns. So — we — maybe, Lynn, you might want to talk a little about that.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s a letter today in The New York Times. It’s written by Harold Pinter, who is the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Gillian Slovo. Stephen Fry, and it’s dated March 20. The letter was signed by 18 others, and it says, “We are Jewish writers who supported the Royal Court production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie. We are dismayed by the decision of the New York Theatre Workshop to cancel or postpone the play’s production. We believe that this is an important play, particularly, perhaps, for an American audience that too rarely has an opportunity to see and judge for itself the material it contends with.

“In London it played to sell-out houses. Critics praised it. Audiences found it intensely moving. So what is it about Rachel Corrie’s writings, her thoughts, her feelings, her confusions, her idealism, her courage, her search for meaning in life — what is it that New York audiences must be protected from?”

The letter goes on to say, “The various reasons given by the workshop — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coma, the election of Hamas, the circumstances of Rachel Corrie’s death, the ‘symbolism’ of her tale — make no sense in the context of this play and the crucial issues it raises about Israeli military activity in the Occupied Territories.”

And the final line of the letter says, “Rachel Corrie gave her life standing up against injustice. A theater with such a fine history should have had the courage to give New York theatergoers the chance to experience her story for themselves.” Signed Gillian Slovo, Harold Pinter, Stephen Fry, London, March 20, 2006. Harold Pinter this year won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Lynn Moffat, your response to the letter?

LYNN MOFFAT: To the letter? It’s a beautiful letter. It actually addresses the issues that we were concerned about. We believe in Rachel’s voice, as they believe in Rachel’s voice. We want it heard by a New York audience, but we want the voice heard by the New York audience, not the ancillary events that can pollute that voice. So that is the — that is the purpose of the methodology that New York Theatre Workshop employs when it uses — when it develops context for a play. I know “context” has become a much maligned word in the last few weeks, but that is what we do, because ultimately the purpose of the workshop in producing art is to foster community dialogue, and to do that requires a lot of work just beyond the play that is seen on stage.

AMY GOODMAN: But now, you did agree to produce the play, and it was going to have its opening night tonight?

LYNN MOFFAT: And we still want to produce the play.

JAMES NICOLA: Yep.

LYNN MOFFAT: We still want to produce the play, and the word “indefinite,” we don’t know where that word came from. We really – and we never canceled the play. We were having a conversation with our colleagues at the Royal Court about the difficulties that we were having, not only just with the research that we were doing about the project and about the play, but also about, you know, contracts and budgets and fundraising, and all that sort of stuff.

JAMES NICOLA: Visas.

LYNN MOFFAT: Visas. We were having a conversation with them, and then Katharine’s letter appeared in the Guardian.

AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner, your response.

KATHARINE VINER: Yeah. I mean, I’m actually not a co-producer of the play. I was just the co-editor, so – but as I understand it, we had everything set. Our tickets — our flight tickets were booked. I was due to fly out yesterday to New York. The production schedule was finalized. Both sides of the Atlantic had agreed on a press release that was going to go out to the press, announcing the production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, and then the Royal Court, as I was told, received a telephone call saying that the play was to be postponed indefinitely. That’s where the phrase came from. We said we regarded that as a cancellation, because everything was ready, and there were barely – I think it was five or six weeks to go. And then they asked us, the New York Theatre Workshop asked the Royal Court to give them time in order to work out how to present this “postponement,” as they called it — “cancellation,” as we took it to be — and we gave them that time.

But then Mr. Nicola started talking, saying that it was a tentative arrangement. He started giving quotes, saying it was actually a tentative arrangement, and we felt at that point that we had to go public with the story, because it was not a tentative arrangement. This was a definite arrangement. But, you know, I don’t think – I think we could get into the, you know, “You emailed on this day, you telephoned on this day” conversation, but actually there’s a much bigger picture here and a much more important story, which is about the political smearing of Rachel Corrie, and there’s no doubt that the New York Theatre Workshop was the victim of a political smear campaign.

And I could have – you know, I understand this about contextualization. I personally think that works of art should be able to stand on their own, and consultation isn’t necessary. However, if that’s how things are done in New York, then I understand why, you know, say, Jewish community groups may have been contacted. I don’t quite understand why Arab American groups weren’t contacted, and I also don’t understand why I wasn’t consulted. You know, I was brought in to do this play, because I understood the political context, and I know about narrative, but also mainly because I understand about the political context, and I could have warned the New York Theatre Workshop all about the misinformation there is about Rachel Corrie on the internet. I could have told them why — I understand why that happens. She’s a very powerful figure, and I could have helped them.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response.

JAMES NICOLA: Well, it’s deeply regrettable. I would have loved to have been consulting with Katharine. It would have been immensely helpful, but in the time frame that we were on, I had various phone calls with Diane Borger at the Royal Court, two visits from Alan Rickman, and we were underway, and I felt we should consult with – and most of the people around that table, myself, Alan, were of a similar mind about issues, and it seemed the logical next step would be to speak to people who might have a different point of view, and that’s when we went and we did a lot of internet research. We saw all of what Katharine mentions about this terrible misinformation out there, which made me only more certain that we had to have very strong plans to neutralize that or make it go away or answer a question when it was posed.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you mean by contextualization? You would present the play, and then what?

JAMES NICOLA: Well, we were discussing the idea of, after every performance, having – giving the audience an opportunity to discuss what they had just experienced.

LYNN MOFFAT: In a very structured format.

JAMES NICOLA: Right.

LYNN MOFFAT: We don’t just have post-performance discussions, where audience members just simply react to the play. We actually were talking about bringing in scholars, bringing in various voices from the communities, and having very structured discussions that would not — that would help people understand the complexities of the situation. Rachel’s voice is very clear. There is no question about that, but it sits in a larger world.

AMY GOODMAN: And that larger world is?

LYNN MOFFAT: That larger world is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There’s no question about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner?

KATHARINE VINER: It’s almost as if you’re suggesting that people need to, you know, read the full history of Israel from 1948 to the present day before they are even allowed to see this play. It’s a work of art that can stand on its own and, you know, can I ask you who you consulted before canceling the play?

LYNN MOFFAT: It was a lot of different people from – that were colleagues and colleagues of colleagues who we consulted, but I do want to say that the Royal Court did an absolutely brilliant job of contextualizing the play, including giving that history from 1948 of the conflict through its Young Writers Program. We were, at the workshop, very impressed with the work that the – that our colleagues at the Royal Court had done.

KATHARINE VINER: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Who – on that question of who you consulted, The Nation magazine’s cover story is about tickets too not handle, and it talks about a P.R. firm, consulting firm, Finn Ruder, saying they were involved in advising you against this play. Is this true?

LYNN MOFFAT: We used a lot of consultants. I mean, not-for-profits have to, because we don’t have the money to keep such expertise on staff. I mean, it includes legal, accounting, advertising, marketing, press, P.R. There’s a lot that we – we need these people; we rely on these people. In the case of Ruder Finn, we have been working with Ruder Finn for over ten years, and we are working with them on a project, but it is not related to the play.

AMY GOODMAN: Since you had agreed to go ahead with the play, and it was going to open tonight, at what point did you change? What was the, not particularly the date, but the reason where you said, “We’re pulling it for now”?

LYNN MOFFAT: There were several. Jim came to his conclusion, and I came to my conclusion that we needed to ask for a postponement. We needed more time for different reasons. It wasn’t simply the contextualization. I was also very, very concerned, as the managing director, about the business deal. It hadn’t been completed, and that is a – I mean, you know, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: But you were – but the tickets were up on Telecharge, and you were moving forward tonight.

LYNN MOFFAT: Well, that, you know — that’s sort of just, you know, that’s sort of theater business. You can put tickets up on – we weren’t – they weren’t on sale. The computer program had been built. Drafts were going. We were trying to get a lot of work accomplished in a very short period of time, so I had all the – I didn’t go a, b, c, d. I just said, “Everybody, just do your jobs, and lets try to get this done.” We really moved forward with the best intent.

AMY GOODMAN: Has this happened to you before, where you set a play, you set a schedule, you say what the opening night is, the tickets say they are going to go on – the Telecharge says they’ve got the tickets, and then it’s pulled?

JAMES NICOLA: Yes.

LYNN MOFFAT: I would say – well, pulled is a rough word, but I would say that 50% of the productions that we schedule do not happen in the schedule that we had originally intended. That’s a lot. That’s half.

KATHARINE VINER: But with six weeks notice, Lynn?

LYNN MOFFAT: Yes, with six weeks notice. Well, I mean, Katharine, you have to remember, you know, Rachel Corrie wasn’t coming into an empty spot in the theater. There had been another artist booked there, and we had come to an agreement with him to —

JAMES NICOLA: Move him.

LYNN MOFFAT: — move him, move his show into the next season, so we could do Rachel Corrie.

KATHARINE VINER: So, if this was just about theatrical logistics, why then, in your first interview, did you say it was because of the election of Hamas in the Palestinian elections and Ariel Sharon’s ill health?

JAMES NICOLA: It was a part – it was – I regret that I was naive in talking to the press at that point. It was a part of something, and there was a much bigger picture, and that was sort of pulled out. So I have to take some responsibility for being an imprecise speaker.

AMY GOODMAN: But at a time you were concerned about these political developments?

JAMES NICOLA: Yes. I was concerned about: How do we keep focus on this thing that we all agree is the center, this idealistic, inspiring example?

AMY GOODMAN: Now, of course, the Middle East is mired in controversy and has been for many, many years. Why is this different right now?

LYNN MOFFAT: I think we weren’t cognizant of how Rachel was being viewed on all sides of the spectrum, and that is something that we were learning as we went through this process.

AMY GOODMAN: What is it that you heard about Rachel Corrie that was a different picture than you had than was presented in the play with just her own words, My Name is Rachel Corrie?

JAMES NICOLA: Well, I can speak to one very terrifying, I guess, conversation I had with a very good friend, who is Jewish, and certainly every conversation I’ve ever had with him about Israel, he’s been extremely critical of policy and action, and I gave him this play, and he read it, and he was really – he had real problems with it, and I was really surprised to hear it from him, and I was really surprised because I had such a love for this play and this young woman, that it hurt me that there would be a question of it. And he said to me, “Did you know she was member of Hamas?” And I didn’t know what that — I hadn’t heard that, and it didn’t seem to be true to me, and I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, it’s on the internet that she was.” And in that moment I realized, well, there’s a lot — because in my position, I have to try and prevent that from taking hold. I have to be able to answer that question, and then as we went on to the internet, there was much more that, you know, [inaudible].

KATHARINE VINER: You’ll never be able to get at the truth on the internet.

LYNN MOFFAT: Yes, I thought the Mother Jones article was particularly intriguing, because the author of that article lays out a lot of different perspectives.

AMY GOODMAN: Newsweek reporter Joshua Hammer.

LYNN MOFFAT: Yes. It was really fascinating.

AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner.

LYNN MOFFAT: But this is all part of a really big smear campaign against Rachel Corrie and against many – as happens with many activists, and I can sort of see why. You know, she was the first American citizen, perhaps the only American citizen — I don’t know — but to be killed by the Israeli army. She wrote so powerfully and so brilliantly about life under occupation, which is terrifying to hear if it’s not something you hear very often, but also, you know, she’s young, beautiful, blond, white, American. She’s completely easy to relate to for a vast majority of Americans, and that makes her very dangerous, and that’s why there’s been so much misinformation about her on the internet and elsewhere. But again, I would have loved to have helped you with that. I knew about all of that. I’m one of the people who has read every single word that Rachel wrote, and I’ve read a huge amount of what’s been written about her, and I can see the gap between the two, and surely one has to go for the truth rather than these kind of myths that surround people who are dangerous.

LYNN MOFFAT: Right.

JAMES NICOLA: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Jim, let me ask something. So this one conversation with a friend who alleged that Rachel was a member of Hamas turned this whole play around and led to the postponement of it?

JAMES NICOLA: No. It was the beginning of the dawning of the scale of this task in the – and then in the sense of four weeks before a proposed first performance that I had a lot of learning to do. We had a lot of planning and plotting and strategizing to do to make this happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you also consult with members of the Palestinian community in New York or the Arab American community?

JAMES NICOLA: We did not at that point, because we were at the beginning of this. We certainly would have, and we were certainly looking on the internet, and frankly, because we were at the beginning of this, as I said earlier, the people that were sitting around the table in this conversation were of a particular mind. We were of a similar point of view.

LYNN MOFFAT: I’d also like to point out, though, sitting around that table were Americans and British and Rachel’s voice, which is, as you’ve said, Katharine, American. We had no Palestinian voices yet, and that was one of the reasons we needed more time was because we needed to explore all of the voices that were coming out of that community, and that takes time.

AMY GOODMAN: So where do you go from here? Are you sorry you put this off?

LYNN MOFFAT: No. I’m not sorry. I think we did the responsible thing. We did the responsible thing for the play.

JAMES NICOLA: You know, I would still love to see it happen. I would really love to see it happen. I so believe in this voice and the importance of this voice being heard now here.

AMY GOODMAN: Tony Kushner also condemned the postponement of the play, whose play you had produced on Afghanistan, on Kabul. Your response to that.

JAMES NICOLA: Well, I think, you know, everyone should have a point of view, and I’m glad, in a certain way, that he has taken that stand, because I think it starts to provoke an important dialogue in our community about how do we talk about difficult, complicated issues and ideas. And I hope this is leading to that kind of conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of Vanessa Redgrave. We were in London, and we spoke to her, and Vanessa Redgrave, of course, was involved in supporting the Royal Court Theatre production, and this is what she had to say.

VANESSA REDGRAVE: The essence of life and the essence of theater is to communicate about lives, either lives that had ended or lives that are still alive, beliefs, what is in those beliefs, and this was an extraordinary young girl. It wasn’t — she didn’t take sides, although she went to defend Palestinians. It isn’t about taking sides. It’s about defending human life. That’s the basis of all human rights. That’s the basis of what every country proclaims it stands for.

I don’t know of a single government that actually abides by international human rights law, not one, including my own. In fact, violate these laws in the most despicable and obscene way, I would say. But to cancel a play, and it wasn’t really a play, to cancel a voice, because it was her voice, is an act of such catastrophic cowardice, because we are living in times when people are quite fearful enough about speaking out, for losing their career or, you know, whatever, and I think it’s — people in the theater, in film, radio, television, dance, music, we have to do what we must do.

AMY GOODMAN: Vanessa Redgrave, speaking at her home in London. Your response, Jim Nicola.

JAMES NICOLA: Well, I would just repeat, we did not cancel the play. We asked for more time to do our job as we understood it to make this voice ring out loud and clear, and I think that’s, you know, at some point everyone has to make a personal decision about when they are going to fight a battle, when they are going to take it on, how they are going to take it on, are they fully prepared to fight that battle.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you have a date set for when you’ve offered the Royal Court Theatre to —

JAMES NICOLA: We do not – we have not had any communication with the Royal Court, so there is no – and we do not have the rights. They have the rights.

KATHARINE VINER: Yeah, I’m afraid to say, I think that there’s just been such a breakdown of trust with what’s happened that I don’t think that the Royal Court, and I certainly don’t think Rachel’s family, would be keen on the play coming to the New York Theatre Workshop. However, the theater has been inundated with requests from other theaters throughout America and many theaters in New York, and we really do hope we will come to New York this year.

________________

9. “Democracy Now”- Rachel Corrie’s Parents Reaction to postponement.

Transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/22/1436203
Mp3 download : http://ia310137.us.archive.org/2/items/dn2006-0322/dn2006-0322-1_64kb.mp3

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined in our studio by Rachel Corrie’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie. They have traveled to New York to attend a public reading of Rachel’s writings tonight at Riverside Church. It was supposed to have been the opening night of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, at the New York Theatre Workshop, as we just discussed. Last year, the Corries initiated lawsuits against the state of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces and Caterpillar, the manufacturer of the Israeli military bulldozer that crushed Rachel to death on March 16, 2003, just a few days before the invasion of Iraq. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
CINDY CORRIE: Thank you.
CRAIG CORRIE: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’ve been listening to the discussion. Your response? Would you be willing for the New York Theatre Workshop to move ahead with the play based on Rachel’s writings?
CINDY CORRIE: We really defer to the Royal Court Theatre in deciding what the next step should be with the play. It’s actually going to be playing in the West End in London again, starting at the end of this month. I think Katharine, when she talked about the breakdown of trust, I think that’s a real concern. We know that the original intentions of the New York Theatre Workshop were good intentions. They wanted to bring the play here, and we respect that, and we certainly, you know, we don’t wish any ill towards them or towards any of their staff around this, but I think — I have some real concerns about the amount of contextualizing, and so forth, that they wanted to do. Mr. Nicola spoke about wanting to sort of set the stage to get Rachel’s voice out there. And I would just say, in London that happened just by presenting the play, by allowing people to come to see it. And I would say, let Rachel do that. Let her get her words out.
AMY GOODMAN: You saw the play in London?
CINDY CORRIE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you speak to people who watched it?
CRAIG CORRIE: We did once, and then afterwards, but most people don’t really want to talk, coming out of the play. It’s very quiet at the end of the play. And people came for a variety of reasons. My daughter Sarah and I sat next to a woman who came from a very small town in northern England. She just came because she loved Alan Rickman and wanted to see what he put on, had no idea what she was going to see. Cindy spoke to a couple that came from Israel and saw that My Name is Rachel Corrie was the pick of the week, so they decided they had to see it. They told Cindy that they were members of the Likud Party, a very conservative party in Israel. But they loved the play, because it was not against Israel, but it was against violence.
I listen today, and I hear these people talking about trying to put a context in advance around this play, and it sounds like they are apologizing for the play. Why would you apologize for a piece of art in which you believed in? You would just present it. That’s all they have to do is let Rachel speak for herself. And I’m very sorry, but it seems like now that we have this cacophony of sound around Rachel’s words, of what side is it on. This is a play really about my daughter. It’s about from when she was ten years old until she died. It’s through her words and a little bit of Cindy and me and somebody else. To me, they should just let that — let those words come out. Let our daughter talk for herself.
AMY GOODMAN: And what they were – what Jim Nicola raised, when he was speaking with someone who said, “Did you know that Rachel was a member of Hamas?” Your response?
CINDY CORRIE: Well, just outrageous, untrue things. And if you go to the internet and google, you will see outrageous, untrue things. I mean, Rachel went there with the International Solidarity Movement, which is a Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance movement, a direct action resistance movement. The two things that it calls for are believing in the rights of the Palestinian people to freedom and to use only nonviolent direct action means of resistance. There are outrageous things on the internet about many people, but to make a decision based on — you know, what should happen to this piece of art, this play, based on those kinds of things, is very troubling to me, more troubling than I thought it would be.
CRAIG CORRIE: I guess I would urge Mr. Nicola to go to the U.S. State Departments’ website, and on there you can find the human rights reports for the last three years. There, Rachel is listed as a human rights observer. Her killing, of course, is a human rights violation and is listed in their report, but under an observer of human rights, and that’s how our State Department and our government looks at Rachel.
AMY GOODMAN: Your description of what happened to her? This is just past the third anniversary of her death, March 16, 2003, three days before the invasion of Iraq. If you could bear to tell us.
CINDY CORRIE: You mean what happened to Rachel? On March 16, 2003, Rachel was with seven other members of the International Solidarity Movement from the United States and from the U.K. They had been working in front of a home, one of the homes that was threatened with demolition because of where it was located on this border strip that was being cleared. Bulldozers were working in the area, two bulldozers, each with two operators aboard, and an APC vehicle. They would come up to the activists and stop at their feet and then retreat. They went back to the border at one point, and the activists thought they had been successful in stopping a demolition that day, but then they returned, and after they came back, within five minutes, Rachel was killed. A bulldozer — she took a stand in front of the Nasrallah house. She knew that there was a family with five young children behind the walls of that house. And a bulldozer proceeded. She took a stand, showed — raised her arms, showed that she wasn’t moving. The bulldozer came forward, continued over her, and according to the ISM reports, even though they were screaming and yelling, the bulldozer stopped and then backed over her again. And that’s what the photographs also show happened.
CRAIG CORRIE: Amy, I’d just like to point out something, because we’ve talked about what’s out on the internet, and sometimes this family is referred to as terrorists that Rachel was protecting, and members of that family were actually on your show, and that was beaming from Des Moines, Iowa, where they were. So, a 34-year-old man and his wife and their small baby that wasn’t born when Rachel was killed came to the United States to do that. They had to go to Tel Aviv to get a visa. So they got a visa from the Israeli government to go walk the streets. At Tel Aviv they got a visa from the United States to walk in Des Moines, Iowa, and neither one of those countries had anything against this family whose home they destroyed and lives they threatened. And that, to me, is telling a story that we don’t hear in the United States, and I think it changes everything. Rachel was standing in front of a home, protecting the home and the lives of a family for whom Israel had nothing against them, besides their home was where they wanted to destroy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, certainly, this controversy has launched events all over the world of the reading of Rachel’s words, and people can go to their website at rachelswords.org to see all of these events. You’re here for tonight’s event at Riverside Church.
CINDY CORRIE: Right. There’s been a wonderful response from people who just believe that Rachel’s voice should be heard, and a group of those people are here in New York City, and there will be this event at 8:00 tonight at Riverside Church. There are a wonderful group of performers and readers that are going to be there. We’re going to be there, and we’re very excited about this and very heartened by the response from all over the world. This has been true really since Rachel was killed, that we hear from people all over, but this is a particularly exciting event.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of Rachel.
ould come in here.

AMY GOODMAN: Katharine Viner?

KATHARINE VINER: Yeah, I’m afraid to say, I think that there’s just been such a breakdown of trust with what’s happened that I don’t think that the Royal Court, and I certainly don’t think Rachel’s family, would be keen on the play coming to the New York Theatre Workshop. However, the theater has been inundated with requests from other theaters throughout America and many theaters in New York, and we really do hope we will come to New York this year.

________________

Rachel Corrie is the new Anne Frank

1) Katharine Viner, co-editor of the play, “My Name is Rachel Corrie”, on the controversy over the postponement of her play. Link
2) Debate Between NY Theater Workshop and Katharine Viner. Transcript
MP3 Download
3) Democracy Now, Rachel Corrie’s Parents Reaction to postponement. Transcript
Mp3 download

_____________

1) Katharine Viner, co-editor of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie

Excerpt:
“There is a particular entry in Rachel Corrie’s diary, probably written some time in 1999, four years before she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes. She is aged 19 or 20. “Had a dream about falling, falling to my death off something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah,” she writes, “but I kept holding on, and when each foothold or handle of rock broke I reached out as I fell and grabbed a new one. I didn’t have time to think about anything – just react as if I was playing an adrenaline-filled video game. And I heard, ‘I can’t die, I can’t die,’ again and again in my head.”

2) Democracy Now, Debate Between The New York Theater Workshop, and “My Name is Rachel Corrie” Editor Katharine Viner

Katharine Viner, co-creator of the multiple award winning play, My Name is Rachel Corrie debates the controversy over the postponement of the plays US debut at the New York Theatre Workshop with the 2 theatre directors – James Nicola & Lynn Moffat responsible, in a Democracy Now broadcast hosted by Amy Goodman

The play My Name is Rachel Corrie was due to open recently at the celebrated New York Theatre Workshop but has been indefinitely postponed.

James Nicola said “After Ariel Sharon’s illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation…our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn’t want to take.”

Actor Alan Rickman – Katherine’s co-writer – responded by saying, “This is censorship born out of fear”.

Literature & Pullitzer Prize winning writer Harold Pinter and others in a letter to the New York Times asked: “What is it about Rachel Corrie’s writings, her thoughts, her feelings, her confusions, her idealism, her courage…that New York audiences must be protected from…Rachel Corrie gave her life standing up against injustice”

3) “Democracy Now”- Rachel Corrie’s Parents Reaction to postponement.

excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined in our studio by Rachel Corrie’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie. They have traveled to New York to attend a public reading of Rachel’s writings tonight at Riverside Church. It was supposed to have been the opening night of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, at the New York Theatre Workshop, as we just discussed. Last year, the Corries initiated lawsuits against the state of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces and Caterpillar, the manufacturer of the Israeli military bulldozer that crushed Rachel to death on March 16, 2003, just a few days before the invasion of Iraq. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

CINDY CORRIE: We really defer to the Royal Court Theatre in deciding what the next step should be with the play. It’s actually going to be playing in the West End in London again, starting at the end of this month. I think Katharine, when she talked about the breakdown of trust, I think that’s a real concern. We know that the original intentions of the New York Theatre Workshop were good intentions. They wanted to bring the play here, and we respect that, and we certainly, you know, we don’t wish any ill towards them or towards any of their staff around this, but I think — I have some real concerns about the amount of contextualizing, and so forth, that they wanted to do. Mr. Nicola spoke about wanting to sort of set the stage to get Rachel’s voice out there. And I would just say, in London that happened just by presenting the play, by allowing people to come to see it. And I would say, let Rachel do that. Let her get her words out.

Beit Sira bites back

1. Beit Sira bites back Friday March 24th 2006
2. Bil’in villagers smash settlement Friday 24th March 2006
3. Destruction and Defiance in the Shadow of Bethlehem 23rd March, 2006 by Tom
4. IDF officers targeted again for arrest 22nd March 2006
5. How Can I Stop You? 21st March 2006 by Mary
6. The story of Saeed Abu Salah March 25th, 2006 by Laila El-Haddad
7. The pen may prove mightier than the word March 24, 2006 by MAKEBA SCOTT HUNTER, HERALD NEWS
8. Update from CPT Hostages; Response to Torture Rumours 24 March 2006 Excerpt from an article published on the CPT-webbsite by Rev. Carol Rose and Dr. Doug Pritchard, CPT Co-Directors
____________________

1. Beit Sira bites back 24th March 2006
For pictures see:

https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/25/beit-sira-demonstration-24th-march-2006/

Just like many other Palestinian towns and villages, Beit Sira has it’s share of grotesque Israeli annexation barriers and surrounding of isolating settlements. In this case Makabim settlement. An ongoing expansion of land theft has resulted in thousands of olive trees being uprooted and huge areas of agricultural land being cut off from the village.

Today Palestinians of Beit Sira village, accompanied by Israeli and international peace activist, held yet another weekly demonstration to protest against all of this. The nonviolent demonstration took off from the village around midday and headed of for the fields where the annexation expansion is taking place. Demonstrators were met by military jeeps and about 50 to 60 soldiers, border police and shield equipped special forces. A prayer was then held in the fields. As prayers finished a group of about 10 Israelis and internationals took off to chain themselves to the olive trees and barbwired fences close to Makabim settlement. This was done as a symbolic protest against trees being uprooted and the absolutely vital land being stolen from Beit Sira village. In spite of the rather large media presence soldiers almost immediately started to shoot teargas directly at the chained, seated and obviously harmless protesters. As the situation turned completely chaotic the chained protesters had to be aided and unchained. The soldier’s violence escalated and they bombarded the demonstration with soundbombs and teargas, including a special type that spreads.

Five demonstrators got badly injured and taken away by ambulance, two by teargas, two by rubber coated steel bullets and the last one, eighteen year old Mahmood Monseer Khattab, was hit by a sound bomb grenade in his neck. A UPMRC-ambulance was also hit through the window by a teargas cannister, injuring the medical team inside.

A Young Palestinian bit a soldier that was beating him to the ground. In retaliation Israeli soldiers broke two of this protesters teeth with a club.
____________________

2. Bil’in villagers smashes settlement 24th March 2006

For pictures see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/24/bilin-demonstration-friday-24th-march-2006/

The focus of the weekly Bil’in demonstration today was the 21st March High Court of Justice order that the state explain why a criminal investigation should not be opened against those responsible for issuing illegal building permits for houses on Bil’in’s land and why those houses should not be destroyed. The order refers to the Modi’in Elite expansion of Metityahu Mizrah settlement. Villagers carried models of red roofed settlement houses, accompanied by Israelis, internationals and media reproters to the to the annexation barrier where Israeli soldiers were lined up. The soldiers prevented the people of Bil’in to pass further across their land. At the annexation barrier the people of the village made a judgement that the settlement houses should be destroyed. Then a member of the Popular Committee Against the Wall, dressed as a judge, smashed the first house with a large replica judge’s hammer. Men of the village soon joined in, using replica judges hammers to smash the other houses. Abdullah from the Popular Committee said he hoped the court would follow their example, see justice is done and order the settlement houses be destroyed.

Despite the non violent nature of the demonstration the soldiers used violence, sound bombs and teargas. Stones were not thrown on the site of the demonstration. However, a soldier took careful aim and fired a teargas cannister directly at a young man about 30 metres from him. The young man collapsed to the ground. I was told God helped him to put his hand over his heart and the cannister struck his hand. His hand was badly hurt but he was lucky not to have have a life threatening injury. A member of the Popular Committee fell unconsciuos when being dragged away by the soldiers. He lay on the ground flickering in and out of consciousness, soldiers shoving away those who came to help. Eventually there was enough people to hold off the soldiers and carry him away to get medical assistance. When a group of people sat down on their land and refused to move, the soldiers used physical brutality to tear individuals from the hands and arms of demonstrators and arrest them. Seven people were arrested, 3 Palestinians and 4 Israelis. Arrested were Mohammed Abid Karim Khatib, of the Popular Committee,Tamer Omah Khatib, Ayeed Abdul Rakhman Sayeed, Yohav, Jonathon, Geil and Roy. They were still being held at 5.45pm even though they have committed no crime.
____________________

3. Destruction and Defiance in the Shadow of Bethlehem March 22th 2006
by Tom

For pictures see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/23/destruction-and-defiance-in-the-shadow-of-bethlehem/

Unable to enter the al-Walaja village, I waited for close to an hour at the Har Gill’o turnoff until I could hear the sounds of 2 giant earth-movers, courtesy of Volvo and the Israeli government. The police refused to respond to questions, but a young soldier told me that a “military activity” was just finishing, but he had no idea what that activity was. He threatened to arrest me if I try to make my way past the blockade, so I waited, along with villagers and international press, until he allowed us to walk through. He and the others in green and blue, on horseback and jeeps, laughed as they ate their lunch on the hoods of their vehicles, oblivious to the villagers watching them. Ironically, the road sign to the illegal settlement of Har Gill’o boasts of accomodation and a lookout because of the stunning view: a view that the family of Hadr Mahmoud Mohammed Rabah no longer enjoy.
I walked the narrow road into the village, following the Volvo tracks and the ground up pavement, not in need of any directions. I spoke with two teenagers just released from handcuffs by the police. They were obviously devastated, but at least not injured like their friend, who took a blow to the head from a soldiers club.

The Rabah family, including 8 children, are now homeless, after the Volvo earth-movers tore through the back of their dwelling while family members scrambled desperately to remove furniture and other items. Another home nearby was also levelled, two more examples of an ugly Israeli tradition that occurs on average 2-3 times each month. A teacher in Bethlehem, Hadr Rabah tells me that the village is very united against the Occupation, so there is no shortage of people offering to take in family members temporarily at least. When I asked why the earth-movers left the front of the home intact, his reply was “they were afraid of the electric”.

It’s not hard to see why Israel desires this land that overlooks Jerusalem and a couple of illegal settlements that used to be parts of Beit Jala and Walaja. As one neighbour -himself in receipt of a destruction order- said…”This land is beautiful, so Israel needs it”. Another neighbour explained that the Israeli government …”needs to have the ground without the people”. In the distance towards Jerusalem, I could see the zoo, complete with giraffes wandering in their pen. After a couple weeks in Hebron, listening to Tel Rumeida settlers refer to Palestinians as pigs, dogs, and animals, I couldn’t help but see the parallel: The Israeli government sees the West Bank as their zoo for Palestinians, complete with walls, fences and gates…except they would rather you did not visit. I realize the comparison is primitive and unflattering, but I think it reflects the unwillingness of Israel to see the Palestinian people as teachers, doctors, shop-owners, students, mothers and sons.

I stood with the Rabah family as they explained how Israeli officials had been out repeatedly to photograph and survey the area around their home and many others in al-Walaja. I felt awful, but was encouraged to take pictures to record and report the flattened home and the young people sifting through the rubble for household goods. Another local teacher added her thoughts about the effects on young children when they witness such events at a young age. She told me that it is very difficult for the children of Walaja to sit in their classes and focus on education while there is such upheaval in the community at the hands of the occupying authorities.

“Imagine what a two-year old will grow up like”. Why is not the entire village crowded around the ruins, embracing the family? “It happens so often. If they stand here now, will that change things? People still have to go to school and to work. If I stand here until 12:00 tomorrow, will it be any different?” When homes in al-Walaja are destroyed, it often means olive and orange trees fall as well, but what is left standing is defiance.
_____________________

4. IDF officers targeted again for arrest March 22nd 2006
Published in The Jerusalem Post by JPOST.COM STAFF

In what was the third time in the past eight months that a senior IDF officer was subjected to accusations of war crimes and the possibility of arrest in a foreign country, a recent petition by Arab and Jewish left-wing organizations to the Canadian government demanded them to arrest former IDF chief of general staff Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Ya’alon. Ya’alon who was expected to arrive in Canada on Wednesday, decided not to cancel his visit after consulting Israel’s Ambassador in Ottawa.

The organizations claimed the Ya’alon was responsible for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Army Radio reported that, unlike in Europe, Canada requires the justice minister’s approval in order to arrest someone on those charges.

In February, Brig.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, commander of the Gaza Division, decided to cancel plans to study at the prestigious Royal College of Defense Studies in England over the summer out of fear he would be arrested and tried for war crimes.

IDF Judge Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Avi Mandelblit warned Kochavi that while a warrant had yet to be issued against him, he could be arrested for his actions during the Intifada and Israel’s hands would be tied in helping him.

Mandelblit based his recommendation on the near-arrest, half-a-year prior to the Kochavi case, of former OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, who landed in London but refrained from disembarking after he was warned that detectives were waiting to take him into custody on suspicion of war crimes.

The warrant, which had been issued per the request of a pro-Palestinian Muslim group, accused Almog of illegally ordering the demolition of 59 Palestinian homes in Rafah in 2002.
“We shouldn’t take any chances,” a senior officer was quoted as saying. “If an IDF officer is arrested in one of these countries he could be charged and put on trial and our hands will be tied.
____________________

5. How Can I Stop You? Tuesday March 21st 2006
by Mary

Fore pictures see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/25/how-can-i-stop-you/

At about 8pm, there was a lot of yelling in the street outside the internationals apartment in Tel Rumeida, Hebron. Israeli soldiers were demanding that men from the building opposite came down to the street. Two men came down. They were told that everyone, including the baby, must come down to the street. An international asked what was the reason for this. A soldier replied that he could not tell her but that there had been a complaint about someone in one of the apartments. He could not say which apartment. This all sounded odd. Soldiers sometimes go into apartments to search but they do not usually expect babies and small children to be brought into the street at night. The soldiers persisted in demanding that the two men bring the families out. The men refused. One man was sent back into the building but the families did not come out. The international rang the DCO (District Command Office). The woman at the DCO said that she would check the matter.

Some more soldiers came by. One of the original soldiers asked the international why she would not let them do their work. She replied “Let? How can I not let you? I can’t stop you.” The soldiers went into the apartment building with guns ready as though after terrorists! They banged on a door. They then came down, let the two men go and left themselves. It looked like bluff. They probably were taking orders from settlers and were not supported by the DCO. This can happen with new soldiers, if the settlers make a complaint, whether based on fact or fiction.

Wednsday March 22nd 2006

Al Jazeera newsmen were visiting Tel Rumeida. They telephoned and asked an international if she had film or video of settler attacks on Palestinians or Palestinian buildings. She went, with a Palestinian, to the Al Azzez house to collect material. This meant scrambling over rocky ground because only the family are allowed to use the track alongside the settlement, which replaces the street taken over by settler caravans. When they were leaving the house, Israeli settler children came on to Palestinian land and threw rocks ( 3inches or 8cm in diameter) at the owner of the house and the people leaving. At first, the one Israeli soldier nearby did nothing to help. However, another four soldiers arrived. Even then, some children continued to throw rocks for some minutes before the soldiers forced them to leave the area. No one was injured but the visitors had to dodge and duck away from rocks which could have caused serious injury.
There is no safe way to leave the area!
____________________

6. The story of Saeed Abu Salah March 25th, 2006
by Laila El-Haddad

For pictures see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/25/the-story-of-saeed-abu-salah/

Saeed Abu Salah is a patient man. Judging from all he has endured during the past four years at least. Abu Salah-40 years old with graying hair and eyes the color of chestnuts, and 20 children from separate two marriages-lives in Gaza’s northernmost region in the farming town of Beit Hanun-nearly as far north as you can go without being killed as so many have.

He is less than a kilometer away in fact from the border with Israel-and the fence and wall that bulldozers, active even as we spoke and visible in plain distance, were building.

Directly across from his house, at the end of an unpaved dirt path that used to lead to his 40 donom cattle ranch and citrus groves-now inaccessible and razed to the ground- is an Israeli lookout tower, resting atop a large mound of sand just across the border. It is equipped with a camera that monitors the family’s every move even as we speak, and a sniper, who every now and again fires “warning” shots at us.

“He doesn’t like you being here, as a journalist. Its normal-he shoots day and night, but particularly when visitors come” explained Abu Salah matter-of-factly, of the unseen sniper, whom he talks about with unenviable confidence and the seemingly intimate knowledge of a close acquintance.
Still, Abu Salah is unflinching in his determination to stay put, asserting that he will only allow Israeli troops to drive him out, which he says they have tried to do so many times before, “over his dead body”.

The UNDP estimated the damage done to his farm, which one employed over 30 Palestinians, at nearly half a million dollars. All he got in return was a zinc-sheeted shed, shielding little more than a wounded horse. “We just can’t afford to buy any more cattle. Or plant any more trees. Why should we? The Israelis will just destroy them again,” he says, staring at the forboding and ever-present tower in the distance. His family used to be self-sufficient, but since his farm was razed, he now has to rely on working for a local contractor once a week for money.

He greets me with tea and sweet, strong coffee as he displays his “museum of Israeli war artifacts”-a room full of 55kg tank shells that we can barely lift together, which he has decorated with artificial flowers; an arch, neatly trimmed with a line of Israeli bullet casings; and a photo album he keeps of all the damage done to his ranch-including his sniped cows, lying dead alongside each other, their intestines spilling out of their bloated stomachs.

“It’s as if they wanted to say, ‘this could be you’” he said, his young children peering through the iron-barred window in front of us, and the smallest, piercingly blue-eyed child giggling under his arms. “They used to be so afraid-the young ones still are. Now, they have gotten so used to it that if we don’t hear shelling, we think something is wrong. They are always firing at us, and when not firing, then shelling, and when not shelling, hovering over us with F-16s and drones, mocking us, provoking us, trying to show us that we are surrounded from all sides and that we have to eventually leave.”

There are no clinics where he lives. No grocery stores. Nothing is allowed. His wife is expecting anyday now, but Abu Salah is worried an ambulance may not be allowed in.

“Since Israeli forces declared the area-including my home, a buffer zone a few months ago, dozens of heavy shells fired by either Israeli tanks or warplanes have fallen in the area, wounding my 21-years old son Eid in his right arm, inflicting severe damage to my modest house and casting panic in my children’s’ hearts” explained Abu Salah, lifting his son’s wasted arm, left with little more than base muscle and stubs of fingers.

“I am not a Hamas supporter, but let me say that we’ve given enough concessions-and whole decade of concessions for free. The PLO decided to recognize Israel and what did recognition bring us? Have them recognize our rights first, our freedom to live, our right of return, then surely, we will recognize their rights.” At night, Abu Salah and his family become prisoners in their own home, unable to move for free of being shot by the faceless sniper.

“This is our existence. This is our reality. This is our fate. And we will bear it out, but never another hijra (exile)-I will stay here till they bury me in my grave.”
____________________
7. The pen may prove mightier than the word March 24, 2006
by MAKEBA SCOTT HUNTER, HERALD NEWS

For pictures see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/24/the-pen-may-prove-mightier-than-the-word/

Despite the cancellation of a theater production based on the writings of the late human-rights activist, some 1,200 people packed into Harlem’s Riverside Church Wednesday night for an alternate production – pulled together in two weeks by friends and supporters — that celebrated Corrie’s life and protested perceived censorship.
“This is a powerful outcry, not just by people who love and know Rachel and know the work in Palestine, but anybody who champions free speech and who champions a plethora and diversity of ideas and opinions,” said Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, to which Corrie belonged.

Corrie was 23 when she was crushed to death under an Israeli bulldozer as she stood between it and the home of a Palestinian family. She had been living in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip for nearly two months as a member of the ISM, which sent Westerners to the Palestinian territories to serve as “human shields” against what they termed Israeli aggression in the settlements.

Corrie’s story could have ended when she died on March 16, 2003,embraced by a Jewish ISM colleague among rubble. But thanks to the efforts of her family, London’s Royal Court Theatre and Corrie herself, it was just beginning. The budding writer recorded her experiences in journal entries and e-mails she sent home to her parents in Olympia, Wash., expressing horror at the events she witnessed on a daily basis: bulldozed homes, children killed, destroyed food supplies, border crossings shut down.

“Disbelief and horror is what I feel,” she wrote to her mother 17 days before her death. “I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world.”

Her words — passionate, prophetic and wise beyond her years – were incorporated into a play celebrating her life called “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” The play was set to make its American debut at the New York Theatre Workshop after a successful run in London. However, a month before its scheduled opening on Wednesday, NYTW theater director James Nicola announced its postponement, sparking accusations of censorship from members of the theater community, human-rights activists and Corrie supporters, among others. “My initial reaction was a combination of disgust and apathy,” said Tom Wallace, one of the organizers of Wednesday’s event.”Because, in general, we know there is a very strong voice in the U.S. that drowns out all other voices on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even somebody as dedicated as Rachel.”

Nicola defended his decision in a statement posted on the NYTW Web site, saying, “We carried out our routine pre-production research” and found “many distorted accounts of the actual circumstances of Rachel’s death that had resulted in a highly charged, vituperative, and passionate controversy.”

Nicola said that while local Jewish leaders were among those consulted, their response was not the determining factor in postponing the play. “No outside group has ever, or will ever, participate in the artistic decision-making process at NYTW,” he wrote.As a result of the show’s indefinite postponement, its supporters banded together and created a presentation called “Rachel’s Words.” “Rachel is allowed to speak for herself,” Wallace said. “People can take from it what they want.”

Those words finally made their American premiere Wednesday night. The four-hour production combined video footage of Corrie, musical performances and contributions from Maya Angelou and musician Patti Smith. Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie; U.S. Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini; and Palestinian-American comic Maysoon Zayid were among those on hand.
Corrie’s story resonated with its audience.
Kara Young, 19, of Harlem, admitted that before the performance, “I wasn’t really aware of what was going on with Rachel Corrie.”

Afterward, she said, “I literally put myself in her position and felt like I was crushed by a bulldozer.” Said ISM’s Shapiro, “This is a powerful message to all theater owners not to be afraid, not to shy away, not to be cowards when people might say, ‘Oh, that shouldn’t be said’ or ‘those words shouldn’t be heard.’ I think this is more powerful than anything that could have been done.”
____________________

8. Update from CPT Hostages; Response to Torture Rumours Excerpt from an article published on the CPT-webbsite
by Rev. Carol Rose and Dr. Doug Pritchard, CPT Co-Directors

For pictures see: www.cpt.org

On Mar. 23 and 24, 2006, the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Baghdad met with colleagues Norman Kember, Jim Loney, and Harmeet Sooden who had just been freed after four months in captivity. The team found the men to be well, alert and in good spirits. The men asked many questions about their families, friends and colleagues at home and in Iraq. They have also begun to tell some parts of the story of their captivity – of efforts to stay physically fit, of periodic separations and reunions, of receiving a Christmas cake.

Learning about the death of Tom Fox after their release has been a particular burden. They said that Tom had taken leadership in encouraging the group right from the beginning of their captivity. They have not yet shared with CPT any details about their captors or the events which led to their freedom.

In a statement released to the Baghdad media on Mar. 24, they wrote, “We are deeply grateful to all those who worked and prayed for our release. We have no words to describe our feelings of great joy at being free again. Our heads are swirling and when we are ready we will talk to the media.”

The rest of us in CPT are also grateful to all those who worked nonviolently and who prayed fervently for their release – religious leaders and soldiers, team-mates and government officials, partner organizations, friends, family, children, women and men all over the world. We are particularly grateful that no one was injured in this rescue operation.

In order not to cause Tom Fox’s family further pain, and for the sake of accuracy, CPT urges that the media and everyone concerned refrain from repeating the rumour that Tom Fox was tortured.. Two CPTers, Rev. Carol Rose and Rich Meyer, viewed Tom’s body and did not see signs of torture. We also have reports from two additional independent sources who examined the body more thoroughly. They also did not find evidence of torture. Until the final autopsy report is released, we ask everyone to withhold their judgement.

Christian Peacemaker Teams will continue in the coming weeks, insofar as it is humanly possible, to report the truth of what we have witnessed and learned.
____________________

Making Palestine Visible Again

1. Israeli Supreme Court: State Must Defend why Settlement Expansion Near Bil’in Should not be Demolished

2. AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy

3. The Earth According to Google: Where is Palestine?

4. A Sad Day: for Rachel Corrie

5. The Heroes of Tel Rumeida

6. “You Won’t Impose Your Wall on us!”

________________________________

Israeli Supreme Court: State Must Defend why Settlement Expansion Near Bil’in Should not be Demolished

On the 21st of March the Israeli State and other parties were ordered to respond to a petition filed by Peace Now and head of the Council of Bil’in.

Defendants must convince the Court that construction plans for the illegal Matityahu East settlement should not be annulled. They must also explain why demolition orders should not be issued and a criminal investigation opened against those involved.

Judges wrote, “the State should refer, in its response among others, to the question whether a criminal investigation in the issue concerned was started, and how the State intends to act in this context.” The respondents were given 30 days to file their responses.

Bil’in villagers have waged an extensive media campaign to publicize Israel’s activity. The court order was made following a March 15 hearing of the petition (HCJ 143/06) against the expansion of the Matityahu outpost on village land west of the annexation wall. The Court also maintained the injunction forbidding further building in the compound and preventing new residents from moving in.

In a separate order issued by the Supreme Court on the 20th of March the military was denied the authority to implement a confiscation order of Bil’in land in order to build a military installation on the proposed wall route. To read the decisions in Hebrew go to: www.court.gov.il and enter file numbers: 143/06 and 8414/05

The Israeli Civil Administration has admitted that, according to Israeli law, illegal construction has been taking place on a massive scale. The administration also said it helps launder Palestinian land by declaring it state property then transferring it to private hands.

In Bili’n for example, attorney Moshe Glick signed in place of the village Muhktar (head), testifying that a resident’s land was paid for by settlers. Mr. Glick argued that the decision was justified because he claimed “any Jew entering Bil’in will be killed.” He also said a military order forbidding Israelis from entering Area “B” made it impossible to obtain the Muhktar’s signature. Both statements are false, yet the Civil Administration maintains the supposed land sale was legitimate.

Bil’in villagers have been protesting the theft of their land by the annexation barrier for over one year. The protests have become a prominent symbol of Palestinian non-violent resistance and joint struggle with Israeli and international activists. The Wall is planned along a route only meters away from the closest home in Bil’in. However it runs 700 meters away from the expanding illegal settlement, annexing over sixty percent of villagers’ agricultural land.

For more information:
Attorney Michael Sfard- 0544713930
Mohammed Khatib 054-5851893,
Dror Etkes (Settlement Watch, Peace Now) -0544899351,025660648,
ISM Media Office 02-2971824

________________________________

AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy
By Alison Weir

“The trend toward secrecy is the greatest threat to democracy.”
– Associated Press CEO, in a speech about the importance of openness

“The official response is we decline to respond.”
– Associated Press Director of Media Relations, replying to questions about AP

In the midst of journalism’s “Sunshine Week” – during which the Associated Press and other news organizations are valiantly proclaiming the public’s “right to know” – AP insists on conducting its own activities in the dark, and refuses to answer even the simplest questions about its system of international news reporting.

Most of all, it refuses to explain why it erased footage of an Israeli soldier intentionally shooting a Palestinian boy.

AP, according to its website, is the world’s oldest and largest news organization. It is the behemoth of news reporting, providing what its editors determine is the news to a billion people each day. Through its feeds to thousands of newspapers, radio and television stations, AP is a major determinant in what Americans read, hear and see – and what they don’t.

What they don’t is profoundly important. I investigated one such omission when I was in the Palestinian Territories last year working on a documentary with my colleague (and daughter), who was filming our interviews.

On Oct. 17, 2004 Israeli military forces invaded Balata, a dense, poverty-stricken community deep in Palestine’s West Bank (Israel
frequently invades this area and others). According to witnesses, the vehicles stayed for about twenty minutes, the military asserting its power over the Palestinian population. The witnesses state that there was no Palestinian resistance–no “clash,” no “crossfire,” not even any stone-throwing. At one point, after most of the vehicles had finally driven away, an Israeli soldier stuck his gun out of his armored vehicle, aimed at a pre-pubescent boy nearby, and pulled the trigger.

We went to the hospital and interviewed the boy, Ahmad, his doctors, family, and others. Ahmad had bandages around his lower abdomen, where surgeons had operated on his bladder. He said he was afraid of Israeli soldiers, and pulled up his pants leg to show where he had been shot previously.

In the hospital there was a second boy, this one with a shattered femur; and a third boy, this one in critical condition with a bullet
hole in his lung. A fourth boy, not a patient, was visiting a friend. He showed us a scarred lip and missing teeth from when Israeli
soldiers had shot him in the mouth.

This was not an unusual situation. When I had visited Palestinian hospitals on a previous trip, I had seen many such victims; some with worse injuries. Yet, very few Americans know this is going on. AP’s actions in regard to Ahmad’s shooting may explain why.

We discovered that an AP cameraman had filmed the entire incident. This cameraman had then followed what apparently is the usual routine. He sent his video–an extremely valuable commodity, since it contained documentary evidence of a war crime – to the AP control bureau for the region. This bureau is in Israel.

What happened next is unfathomable. Did AP broadcast it? No. Did AP place the video in safe-keeping, available for an investigation of this crime? No.

According to its cameraman, AP erased it.

We were astounded. We traveled to AP’s control bureau in Israel. With our own video camera out and running, we asked bureau chief Steve Gutkin about this incident. Was the information we had been told correct, or did he have a different version? Did the bureau have the video, or had they indeed erased it. If so, why?

Gutkin, repeatedly looking at the camera and visibly flustered, told us that AP did not allow its journalists to give interviews. He told us that all questions must go to Corporate Communications, located in New York. He explained that they were on deadline and couldn’t talk. I said I understood deadline pressure, and sat down to wait until they were done. When he called Israeli police to arrest us, we left.

Back in the US later, I phoned Corporate Communications and reached Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes, AP’s public relations spokesman. I had conversed with Stokes before.

Over the past several years I have noticed disturbing flaws in AP coverage of Israel-Palestine: newsworthy stories not being covered, reports sent to international newspapers but not to American ones, stories omitting or misreporting significant facts, critical sentences being removed from updated reports.

I would phone AP with the appropriate correction or news alert. One time this resulted in a flawed news story being slightly corrected in updates. In a few cases stories were then covered that had been neglected. In many cases, however, I was told that I needed to speak to Corporate Communications. I would phone Corporate Communications, leave a message, and wait for a response. Most often, none came.

Several times, however, I was able to have long conversations with AP spokesman Stokes. None of these conversations, however, ever ended with AP taking any action. Some typical responses:

* The omitted story was “not newsworthy.”

* The story deemed by AP editors to be newsworthy to the rest of the world – e.g. Israel’s brutal imprisonment of over 300 Palestinian youths – was not newsworthy in the US (Israel’s major ally).

* Burying a report of Israeli forces shooting a four-year-old Palestinian girl in the mouth was justified.

* Misreporting an incident in which an Israeli officer riddled a 13-year-old girl at close range with bullets was unimportant.

Despite this unresponsive pattern, when I learned firsthand of an AP bureau erasing footage of an atrocity, I again phoned Corporate Communications. I no longer had much expectation that AP would take any corrective action, but I did expect to receive some information. I gave spokesperson Stokes the numerous details about this incident that we had gathered on the scene and asked him the same questions I had asked Gutkin. He said he would look into this and get back to me.

After several days he had not gotten back to me, so I again phoned him. He said that he had looked into this incident, and that AP had determined that this was “an internal matter” and that they would give no response.

While I should have known better, I was again astounded. AP was blatantly violating fundamental journalistic norms of ethical
behavior, and clearly felt it had the power to get away with it.

Journalism, according to the Statement of Principles of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is a “sacred trust.” It is the bulwark of a free society and is so essential to the functioning of a democracy that our forefathers affirmed its primacy in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights.

According to the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the four major pillars of journalistic ethics is to “Be Accountable.” According to SPJ’s Code of Ethics:

“Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

“Journalists should:

* Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.

* Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.

* Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.

* Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.

* Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

Finally, this week, on deadline with a chapter about media coverage of Israel-Palestine, I again tried to confirm some of my facts with AP. Certainly, I felt, during “Sunshine Week” AP would respond. As part of the Sunshine campaign, AP’s CEO and President Tom Curley is traveling the country giving speeches on the necessity of transparency and accountability (for government) and emphasizing “the openness that effective democracy requires.”

“The trend toward secrecy,” AP’s president has correctly been pointing out, “is the greatest threat to democracy.”

I emailed my questions to AP, talked to Stokes by phone, and again was told he would get back to me. Again, I got back to him. Then, in a surreal exchange, he conveyed AP’s reply: “The official response is we decline to respond.” As I asked question after question, many as simple as a confirmation of the number of bureaus AP has in Israel-Palestine, the response was silence or a repetition of: “The official response is we decline to respond.”

The next day I tried phoning AP’s President Curley directly. I was unable to reach Curley, since he was on the road giving his Sunshine Week speeches (“Secrecy,” Curley says, “is for losers”), but I left a message for him with an assistant. She said someone would respond.

I am still waiting.

It is clearly time to go to AP’s superiors. The fact is, AP is a cooperative. It is not owned by Corporate Communications spokespeople or by its CEO or even by its board of directors. It is owned by the thousands of newspapers and broadcast stations around the United States that use AP reports. These newspapers, radio and television stations are the true directors of AP, and bear the responsibility for its coverage.

In the end, it appears, the only way that Americans will receive full, unbiased reporting from AP on Israel-Palestine will be when
these member-owners demand such coverage from their employees in the Middle East and in New York. As long as AP’s owners remain too busy or too negligent to ensure the quality and accuracy of their Israel-Palestine coverage, the handful of people within AP who are distorting its news reporting on this tragic, life-and-death, globally destabilizing issue will quite likely continue to do so.

In the final analysis, therefore, it is up to us – members of the public – to step in. Everyone who believes that Americans have the right and the need to receive full, undistorted information on all issues, including Israel-Palestine, must take action. We must require our news media to fulfill their profoundly important obligation, and we must ourselves distribute the critical information our media are leaving out.

If we don’t take action, no one else will.

To obtain cards exposing AP actions to disseminate in your community go to: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/clues.html

AP can be reached at 212-621-1500.

Alison Weir, a former journalist is Executive Director of If Americans Knew, which is currently conducting a statistical analysis of AP’s coverage of Israel-Palestine, to be released within a few months.

________________________________

The Earth According to Google: Where is Palestine?
By David Nir

There’s A new wonderful service by Google: “Google-Earth”: Takes few minutes to load the free software. One can within several tens of seconds apply close-ups to view any point on the globe, even with 3 dimensional modeling, roads, restaurants, webcams for real time ….. Some places have resolution so articulate that individual persons can be seen. As an example one can see tennis players in action at the UC Berkeley sports center or view the nearby stadium full of spectators in the midst of a football game.

But wonder of wonders:

Unlike other zones on the globe, it seems that the ultra-right-wing AIIPAC had the last word on what Google will let us see in Palestine & Israel.
While all the illegal settlements, even the tiniest ones’ are listed by their names, it seems that most of the Palestinian villages or towns had miracolously disappeared. Full size cities like Nablus are marked by tiny letters, while Elon More, according to the letter size, is probably a 10,000,000 size metropolis, thus Nablus may be suspected as a slum neighborhood at it’s outskirts.

Some examples – what is written for what it is.
Nablus Yeshiva = Hawara
Matkhan Tapuah = Tsomet Tapuach
Rehelim = Sawieh
nothing written = Akrabe
Karmei Tsur with HUGE letters, Beit Ummar hardly noticeable.

Also the resolution quality at the Palestinian zones is extremely poor, compared to all other places on the globe. Undoubtly this is intentional. Therefore we are denied of the lovliest of sights such as the overcrowded checkpoint zones, the splendid appartheid wall (the 9th wonder), the demolished homes……. . As a compensation we can see the tip of Eiffel tower and observe nearby strollers, or glide near the Everest’s crest.

Of course the press a mentioned week ago (“The Marker”?) that Google accepted to blur Israel’s sensitive security zones (such as military airfields or Beit Zacharia’s launch sites), but could it be that someone tricked Google to apply this magic also to “innocent” views whereby the Palestinian communities are represented as a blurry spot on the global scene, just as they are treated by the majority of the enlightened countries?

________________________________

A Sad Day: for Rachel Corrie
By Starhawk

Yesterday was a sad day. The third anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, crushed by a bulldozer in Rafah, in the Gaza strip. All day the sky glowered, dark and oppressive, while from time to time drenching showers rained down, as if nature herself were weeping.

Three years since Rachel was killed; three years since we opened fire on Iraq. Three years ago, I was in the West Bank, running down to Gaza to support the team that was with Rachel, back to Nablus to support my friend Neta Golan as she gave birth to her first child, back to Rafah to support the team that was with Tom Hurndall another young ISM volunteer, when he was shot by an Israeli sniper. Yesterday, I was cleaning mouse shit out of my own pantry, hearing Neta on the radio as I drove down to the city in the pouring rain, talking about the Israeli raid on the police station in Jericho, where she had gone to try once again to intervene in the violence.

Three years. The war in Iraq devolves into one of those tragedies where most of the players end up dead. The Bush administration, although discredited in every meaningful way and low in the public opinion polls, still has enough power to avoid impeachment or censure, threaten Iraq, to press Congress to legalize its illegal spying, pack the Supreme Court with justices likely to overturn Roe vs. Wade. There’s a lot to weep for, or perhaps, scream about.

But today, what I’m thinking about in the rain is that a play about Rachel Corrie, based on her writings and emails, entitled Rachel’s Words, has been ‘indefinitely postponed’ by the New York Theater Workshop, under pressure from some elements in the Jewish community.

I’m sad as a Jew. Even though we go to great lengths to separate Israel and its actions from Judaism and Jewishness, for all the best political reasons, even though I’m far more a Pagan than a Jew in my practice, I was born and raised as a Jew. Jewish ritual and thought and education formed my character and way of being in the world. Jewish ideals are of social justice and intellectual freedom and pride in being a nation of stubborn survivors of oppression.

I was raised to believe that Jews were special, that our heritage of suffering had made us more sensitive to the suffering of others, that our religion focused on life on earth, not life after death, and that the God of justice we believed in called us to make justice, here and now, for everyone. That the legacy of the Prophets was the legacy of courage, to speak truth to power, to challenge authority.

What is so threatening, what we can’t stand as Jews, is that Rachel’s story makes us the oppressors. Her life, her own acts of simple courage, challenge all the “What can we do’s” and “We have to’s” that justify the daily humiliation of Palestinians.

When I’ve been there, confronting soldiers at checkpoints or in villages, I hear it over and over again: “What can we do? We have no choice.”

A prophet, today, might wander the desert and the superhighways, the Temple Mount and the shopping streets of both Tel Aviv and New York, crying out, “There is always a choice!” Every moment of our lives, we make choices, and our choices define who we will be.

The fact that I’m home, cleaning mouse shit out of the pantry, is a choice. I’m not on the front lines, today. The depth of the mouse droppings reflects the amount of time I’ve not been home over the last years, and that elements of my personal life have finally clamored for their share of attention.

The other day, I found a wounded mouse in a trap, caught only by one paw. Even though I’d set the trap to kill it, my immediate instinct was to think about how I could save it. It was a cute, helpless little thing, it’s eyes bewildered and pleading. Could I somehow release it without getting bitten, set its broken leg? I quickly realized that was an insane idea. I could have just thrown it outside, to let some predator deal with it, but it seemed kinder to kill it myself, cleanly and quickly.

I covered it with a newspaper, so the poor, shivering thing wouldn’t see the blow coming, and got a baseball bat. I tried whacking it with the bat, but at the last moment my muscles rebelled, shrinking away from the deed, and the mouse must have sensed something coming and ducked, for when I pulled the paper off, it was untouched by the blow, and even more terrified. I tried again, and again, and kept missing. I began to feel like I was caught in an awful nightmare. Instead of quickly ending the mouse’s suffering, I was in fact torturing it. At some point, I found myself thinking, “I am a kind, compassionate person. Why am I beating this mouse to death?”

I am a kind, compassionate person, and from the mouse’s perspective, I am a monster. I’m not sure why I’m telling this story, except maybe to speculate on compassion. Compassion is generally considered to be a good thing, but I’ve seen people invoke it in a way that seems to turn their brains to mush. “I know Bush is doing bad things, but I do bad things too, and we need to send him love and compassion.” That’s not compassion—that’s Stockholm syndrome, the psychological phenomenon whereby kidnap victims or hostages or abused children come to identify with those who hold power over them, and want to please them. I, or you, might from time to time kill a mouse, but we haven’t lied to the American people, caused the death of over 2500 soldiers and hundreds of thousands of deliberately uncounted Iraqis, to name just one of Bush’s sins. Scale counts. There is a long continuum between killing mice and feeding your neighbors through a wood chipper. The distance between those acts matters: and it is a continuum.

Compassion is being able to see the perspective from which our acts are monstrous, even if they are the best choices we can make. The mouse has a point of view, too. It’s not trying to infect me with Hanta virus or foul my food. The mouse is just being a mouse, trying to survive, attracted by the warmth and wealth of my kitchen.

It was a horrible thing to have to do. It left me shaken up, for hours. But it was a much worse day for the mouse.

Compassion is remembering that. We are human beings. By our very existence, we experience suffering, and we cause suffering. We can do our best, however imperfectly, to make choices that minimize that suffering. And we will still sometimes do monstrous things.

Let’s not carry this metaphor too far. Palestinians are not mice. Nor are Iraqis. Even terrorists are human beings, with a human capacity for reason and communication. We have many more choices in dealing with human beings than we do with mice.

At the very least, let’s be willing to look in the mirror and see our own monster faces. To own our choices, and take responsibility for the suffering we cause. If any religion, any political system, is to retain real moral authority, it must call us to do just that.

We need to hear Rachel’s words. I wish, this spring, that they could be read aloud at every Seder table, chanted from every Rabbi’s pulpit along with the weekly Torah portion, discussed in Hebrew school classes and debated in Temple youth groups.

Then, maybe, as kind, compassionate monsters, we could start to make real choices. We could ask ourselves, what is it costing to defend this house? To build walls of concrete around it? Whose blood, whose death is it built upon? Why are we walling ourselves into a new, reverse ghetto of our own making?

What are we choosing to become?

________________________________

The Heroes of Tel Rumeida
By Mary Baxter

The heroes of Tel Rumeida are twelve children, who need to pass by or through the Tel Rumeida Israeli settlement to get to school. They are from about 5 to 14 years old. They are frightened of the settlers who threaten and at times attack them. But still they come six days a week. Israeli settler children travel by bus past Palestinian houses but Palestinian children must walk, often by themselves.

The settlers want their houses in order to expand their settlement but the Palestinians will not sell. Hence the threats! One family was driven out of their home but won a court case and are now back in the house. The court order said there should be police in front of their house when they return from school. This seldom occurs. Other families were shut in their houses for three years. Settler caravans have been placed on their street and they were not allowed use the street to come and go. In July 2005, they won a court order to have a rough track parallel to the street, on their own land. There was an incident in December 2005 when one of the families tried to have goods delivered to the track and settlers objected. Following that Israeli soldiers placed razor wire across the entrance and along one side of the track. The family again have access to the track but the wire is still there. Everyday children must open razor wire and walk along a track, where they are between settlers on one side and razor wire on the other.

These children are often yelled at or detained by young Israeli soldiers. The soldiers, who are mostly reasonable young men are “carrying out orders” and do not understand the situation. They see the settlers at their best. Although the Palestinian children are often very frightened, they keep the passage to their houses open. They are the bravest people I know.

________________________________

“You Won’t Impose Your Wall on us!”

In the continuation of the non-violent resistance to the annexation wall in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, demonstrators carried a model of the wall with the sentence “You will not impose your wall on us” written in Arabic. The 150 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists were, as usual, prevented from reaching the wall by Israeli soldiers and Border Police. As demonstrators attempted to pass the line of soldiers, sound grenades were thrown and activists were beaten with wooden clubs by the Israeli forces. One Palestinian man was clubbed in the head and taken away in a Palestinian ambulance, and several others had minor injuries.

During a calmer period of the demonstration, a small ceremony was held to honor and thank one international activist who has spent almost 2 months living in Bil’in. He helped protect the outpost which was built on the Bil’in lands which the wall effectively annexes to the Israeli settlement. The outpost was built as a Peace Center for the joint Palestinian, Israeli and international struggle against the wall.

Several activists succeeded in getting around the army line and banged on a metal gate with stones. One by one soldiers brutally dragged them back to “their” side of the imaginary line which the soldiers had drawn. Imaginary line because in actuality all of the area, including the wall construction site and the settlement, belongs to Bil’in village. As the demonstration continued more and more activists were able to get around the soldiers to bang stones on the metal fence, and the soldiers gave up on trying to drag them all back behind the army line. Even though about half the demonstrators had already passed this line, soldiers continued to be very forceful in their attempts to block more people from crossing.

Towards the end of the non-violent demonstration, a few hundred meters away, a couple of village youth and Israeli soldiers were engaged in their weekly battle of stones versus tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. After most of the demonstrators had returned to the village, at least a dozen live ammunition shots were heard coming from this direction.

_______________________________
end

We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox

1-We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox
2- The Association of Muslim Scholars in Palestine calls for the release of the remaining hostages.
3- Palestinians saddened at Fox’s killing

“Why are we here?”
Reflection written by Tom Fox in Iraq the day before the abduction
2 December 2005
As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to hunt down and kill “terrorists” are, as a result of this dehumanizing word, not only killing “terrorists,” but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women and children in the various towns and villages.
It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically, structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

“Why are we here?” We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.


The Association of Muslim Scholars in Palestine calls for the release of the remaining hostages

https://palsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/tom2.jpg
English translation of the statement:
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Palestine deeply regrets the killing of the peace activist Tom Fox on Iraqi land.
We were shocked and grieved to receive news of Tom’s death on the morning of the 11th of March 2006. We renew our call to our brothers in the Swords of Justice group to release our brothers that are still in captivity: Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Sooden.
Signed,
Association of Muslim Scholars Palestine

Palestinians saddened at Fox’s killing

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
https://palsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/Satellite.jpg
Palestinians throughout the West Bank expressed sorrow Saturday over the killing of American Tom Fox, 54, who had traveled to the West Bank to protest for their cause before he was taken hostage in Iraq.
Fox’s body was found shot in the head and chest Thursday near a Baghdad railway station. He had worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams in the Palestinian areas before he began work with the group in Iraq.

Fox, from Clear Brook, Virginia, had demonstrated in the West Bank town of Jayyus against the construction of the security fence and he helped Palestinians pick olives, local Palestinians said.
“Tom used to sit in front of the (Israeli) bulldozers to block them,” said Jayyus’ mayor, Shawka Shamha. “Hearing news that he was killed makes me very sad.”
Sharif Omar also from Jayyus said that Fox lived at his brother’s house for three months while local Palestinians and foreign activists protested against the construction of the barrier.
“I’m very sorry to hear that he has been killed,” Omar said.

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron also remembered Fox. Neither Fox nor the Briton and two Canadians taken hostage with him deserved to die, said Hisham Sharabati, a human rights activist who met Fox.

“I’m calling for the kidnappers to release the other hostages,” Sharabati said. “This killing harmed the Palestinian and Iraqi causes because the hostages were working for peace.”
The two Canadians – James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden – also worked in the Palestinian areas.

When the four were taken hostage in November last year, the Palestinians’ top Muslim clergyman, Mufti Ikrema Sabri, called for their immediate release.