The Poetry of the Other Darwish

On the Temple Mount, the Waqf rules.

The Waqf moves from Jordan to the Pal. Authority to Hamas and back.

Israel has no 'hands-on' supervision role except in extreme cases and even then, like the near-collapse of the southern wall, Jordanian and Egyptian engineers are brought in.  Hamas and ISIS flags and banners are flown, demonstrations and assemblies of a political nature are held and there are riots regularly of various degrees all intended to prevent Jews and other non-Muslims nay right to freedom of worship or respect to be displayed for a religious holy site.  No coexistence, no sharing.

[the police allowed 15 Jewish settlers and 20 intelligence officers to desecrate the Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards in the morning under their protection. The Aqsa foundation, in this regard, warned the Israeli occupation authority of its persistence in its hostile activities against the Islamic holy place and said it would continue its efforts to protect it against all Judaization plans.]

But I found an account of this year's PalFest, with this

on the esplanade of the Burj Al-Luqluq Social Center, the local poet Najwan Darwish reads from his collection Nothing More to Lose, recently published by NYRB Classics. His poem “Jerusalem (I)” [2 is here]opens:

“We stood on the Mount
to raise a sacrifice for you
and when we saw our hand rise
empty
we knew
that we were your sacrifice”

Sorry, Najwan, but if anything or one is being sacrificed on the Temple Mount, it is the rights of Jews.  It is the young Haredi children assaulted last Passover. The shouts and venomous screams directed at Jews simply strolling along, as the Muslims attempt to interfere and block the route, acting provocatively.

And as for Darwish's literary worth, this charge from another of his poems:

I see a thread of beauty ripplinglike a river of nobilityBut soon enough I tell myself:Shut up and look awayyou Narcissus surrounded by Zionist lieswalls and checkpoints rising all around youShut up

and from another

In the thirties of the past century it occurred to the Nazis to put their victims in gas chambers. Today’s executioners are more professional:They put the gas chambers in their victims.

He can compose poetry, I'll grant but he can't navigate:

...he made it to the following night’s event in Ramallah and, after several false starts, he finally explained: He’d waited at a checkpoint for forty-odd minutes before being turned away. A soldier didn’t want to let him through, and Darwish felt he didn’t have time to wait for some higher-up to arrive and sort it out. So he drove off in search of an alternate checkpoint. But he got lost. He couldn’t find Nablus on his GPS, he couldn’t find signs pointing to the city and — perhaps even more telling — walls blocked his view of possible landmarks.  He ended up near Tel Aviv, where he got stuck in traffic, and continued driving around for a while longer before, in frustration, he gave up and went home.

By the way, there are no walls near Shchem so, unless he got lost leaving Jerusalem, he doesn't even know that lay of his own "land".

And as I am a bit digressing, this disturbed me:

Four days after Darwish and his guests read to an audience of more than 1,000 in Ramallah's Kassaba theatre, the Israeli army began its operation to root out suicide bombers. Palestinians see the invasion as collective punishment and a move to destroy the infrastructure of their embryonic state. Darwish, who had already left Ramallah to give a poetry recital in the Lebanese capital Beirut, was unable to return. He learned that the Sakakini Cultural Centre, where he edits his quarterly literary review Al-Karmel, had been ransacked and his manuscripts trampled into the floor. "They wanted to give us a message that nobody's immune - including in cultural life," says Darwish. "I took the message personally. I know they're strong and can invade and kill anyone. But they can't break or occupy my words."

To think that Israeli soldiers purposefully sought out Darwish's poetry (or even could read it) is laughable.  As the Palestinian society mostly is mobilized, even their cultural output is suspect to incite and encourage terror and the examples above illustrate well my point.


P.S.   The other Darwish.

^

Israel Contributes to a Better 'Palestinian' Culture

From this report on the

Economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza and positive Israeli measures towards the PA:-

 

3. Facilitation of the movement of people and goods
• The number of roadblocks was reduced from 44 in 2008 to 10 in 2012, most of which are normally open. The most recent roadblock to be removed, in the last two weeks, was roadblock 328 north of Jericho, connecting Jericho to Highway 90.
• The infrastructures at the goods crossings and at the Allenby Bridge between Israel and Jordan were upgraded and hours of operation extended. The bridge was kept open for 48 hours straight at the beginning of Ramadan to enable the passage of more than 25,000 visitors.
• About 20% more entry permits to Israel were granted during 2012 compared to the similar period last year.

4. Increase of workers allowed into Israel - On 14 July, 5,000 additional work permits were approved for Palestinian construction workers to work in Israel.
5. Increase of Palestinian imports/exports - Palestinian exports to Israel in 2011 increased by 18.3% compared to 2010. There was an increase of 33% in the passage of goods through the Allenby Bridge. Palestinian exports (excluding Israel) grew by 13% in 2011. Also Palestinian imports (excluding Israel) grew by 9.3% in 2011 compared to 2010. In 2011 the number of permits for agricultural imports in Judea and Samaria was increased by 12% and 814 licenses for agricultural imports were granted, compared to 725 in 2010. In addition, a meeting took place a few months ago between the head of the Israeli customs authority and his Palestinian counterpart together with a group of leading Palestinian importers and exporters. They discussed ways to remove obstacles to increasing Palestinian foreign trade.

And how's that for Israeli culture?

^

On 'Palestinian Culture' and Murdered Women

As we read at the LATimes:

Four recent cases of Palestinian women slain allegedly at the hand of relatives have prompted women and human rights groups to demand tougher laws against domestic violence and more stringent enforcement...Women carried placards reading "No to murder, yes to life" and "Shame on us Palestinians who kill our women."

The march, which followed other protests this week, was prompted by a slaying Monday on a busy street in Bethlehem. A 28-year-old woman was stabbed several times in the chest and her throat was slashed while people stood by and watched. She later died at a hospital. Her 33-year-old husband is in custody...activists said that the Palestinian territories' laws against domestic violence are too lax...According to Palestinian human rights groups, 29 women in the West Bank were the victims of such killings by a relative from 2007 to 2010.

But wait, what happened last year?

A 20-year-old Palestinian woman who was thrown into a well and left to die in the name of "family honor" has not become just another statistic in one of the Middle East's most shameful practices. The killing of Aya Baradiya – by an uncle who didn't like a potential suitor – sparked such outrage that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas scrapped laws this week that guaranteed sentences of six months or less for such killings.

And a few months before, there was this report:

President Mahmoud Abbas signed into law two articles by presidential decree eliminating laws allowing leniency for civilians found guilty of assault or murder "in defense of family honor."  The move, welcomed by women's rights activists, came in the wake of the grisly discovery of a Hebron woman drowned by her uncle because he disagreed with her choice of fiancee.

What type of culture is tolerant of "honor killing" and what culture of regime doesn't get moving on this matter?

And they still seek to blame Romney?  Well, he defended himself:

In the essay, “Culture Does Matter," Romney reiterated some salient points of his speech to supporters at a fundraiser in Jerusalem. “During my recent trip to Israel,” wrote the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, “I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it. In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy. But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture?”

How language laundering works in this. And this is interesting as it deals with "Palestinian society";

by understanding the socio-cultural and political context within which disclosure or non-disclosure of sexual abuse takes place, we are better able to develop an analytical framework that might shape culturally sensitive social policy towards sexual abuse and thereby reduce it.

^

Again, Yesha Communities Skipped Over - No US Music

I've just read that a Greenfield resident Julie Rader Schonbrun travels to Israel, West Bank with band Antigone Rising

It seems "the music of Antigone Rising, the popular New York City-based all-female country/rock band is universal, representing love and peace" and that "The band has opened for such acts as The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, Rob Thomas and The Bangles".

Some of the travel details:

According to the band’s manager, Greenfield resident Julie Rader Schonbrun, that message was “loud and clear from the crowd reactions at each show” during a tour of Israel and the West Bank last month. “It was a mob scene after each show with men, women, boys, girls, clamoring for autographs or photos with the girls,” she said.

Rader Schonbrun traveled with the band, invited through the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the Consulate General in Jerusalem as Arts Envoys, a cultural initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. They performed in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Bethlehem and other regional cities, lead community outreach programs and workshops and made music with Israeli and Palestinian musicians.

“We were in awe of being in such a historical place, one of the most sacred places in the world,” Rader Schonbrun said...Antigone Rising performed for Jewish and Arab high school students in Beer Sheva...The band members also did cultural outreach programs/shows every morning with performances at night. They did television and radio appearances at Kol Ha Campus and visited an all-women’s radio station in Ramallah called Niss'A FM.

Kristen Henderson did a station visit to "Good Morning Palestine" in Ramallah. “This station had been bombed a few years back as a direct target as a media center,” Rader Schonbrun said. “They were apologetic that it was never able to be fully rebuilt.”...There was a rap band from one of the Palestinian Refugee camps (they had to be back by curfew at 11 p.m.) that rapped to the Antigone Rising song "Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring."

...Rader Schonbrun said. “...We were overwhelmed by the warm and welcoming response we received from Israel and the West Bank. We can't wait to be invited back.”

Video:

And, again, (and again) this cultural/music tour, as have other activities and events, missed the Jewish residential locations in Judea and Samaria. And we have two concert halls - in Ariel and Kiryat Arba - as well as halls in most of the big communities.

I guess the American bodies that dealt with the tour simply discriminate. We aren't worthy enough for such things.

________

From Nina Camp's blog

...the van takes us through east jerusalem and we wind our way along the infamous wall that separates the palestinian cities from the israelite territory. the story of the wall (and of this country) is so vastly complicated that our embassy liaison, try as she might, simply can’t put into words or a timeline just how complicated the situation here really is. at least not in a way that we can truly understand. however, we do start to realize just how real this situation is and how difficult it is for those who are actually living through it. i try to imagine just what it would feel like to have a wall built down 5th avenue in nyc. all of a sudden, it will take 1 hour to get from 5 east 5th to 5 west 5th because there is now a wall separating the two and depending on what side you fall on, you might need a permit to get to the other side. im not trying to get political here and i certainly am not passing judgement, but i feel like regardless of where you fall in this debate (and from the looks of it politicians aren’t even close to getting a solution) for people who are living in it day to day, it’s brutal.


slowly the landscape changes from city to mountainside and before long we are approaching the city of ni’lin. the streets wind so tight i wonder if the van will make it through but eventually we near the top of a hill and come upon a small community center. we know there is a program scheduled where the women of ni’lin have prepared some song and dance for us but nothing could have prepared us for the sight of these women lined up along the steps of the community center waiting for us to arrive.


side note: Nil’in village gained international attention several years ago as they demonstrated (and continue to demonstrate) against the building of the wall and continuous land confiscations by the Israeli state and the ongoing struggle for israel and palestine to find peace.


the sight of these women, many dressed in traditional clothing (sewn and embroidered robes representing their heritage, ancestry, and affiliations), lined up waiting for us was overwhleming. i mean, who the hell are we? we play rock and roll music and they’ve never even heard of us! but here they are ready to share themselves and their culture with us. its really a bit much to wrap your head around.

as we made our way into the room (lined w plastic chairs) we were ushered into the front row. as everyone settled a gorgeous little girl in full traditional dress made her way to me. i dont know why but i smiled at her and made some faces as she stared at me. she was about 4 years old and the daughter of one of the ni’lin women. when i managed to get a smile out of her, i reached out and she jumped right into my arms. why? i do’nt know. but before long she was on my lap and curled into me. i think she was tired and the way i see it, american or not, i must have looked like as good a spot as any for her to curl up and nap.


it is a strange sensation to be stared at. we go to the zoo but seldom are we the “exhibit”. for much of this cultural exchange, that’s what it felt like. at one point i found my way to the bathroom and nearly scared the lights out of a young girl. she wasn’t expecting me to turn the corner and when she looked up, there i was. i mean, she JUMPED. there were plenty of other people around so it wasn’t like i snuck up on her.. it was my american-ness that snuck up on her.


...this blog is hardly enough to really convey what the morning held. the energy and the environment, the women and this conflict that is their lives and the openness with which they shared themselves with us is beyond what words can describe. i feel that as americans we are so jaded and accustomed to life as we know it. we seldom wonder about our borders unless we need to protect them and many of us (myself included) have our faces in our cell phones instead of looking out into the world. today i felt what it might be like for a young girl to be empowered just enough to know that her life probably wont change no matter how hard she tries. today i felt what it might be like to be so proud of your culture that when a music group from america says they will come and play for you, you open your doors so wide that they can’t help but see who you are.


this was just the morning.


after this we went to the church of the nativity. where the sweet baby jesus himself began his sanctified life. all in day’s work right?

what a crazy life this is. to think that sometime during my high school years i decided i wanted to learn how to play guitar and forced my pudgy fingers into a G chord until i could play it up to speed with “closer to fine” on a worn out cassette. this morning i was in the village of ni’lin and followed that up with a walk through the church of the nativity laying my hands on the supposed birth place of jesus christ. THE jesus christ everyone calls to when they are scared to death. THE jesus christ everyone calls when they are pissed off. THE jesus christ everyone calls to when shocked… THAT very same jesus christ!


then cappuccino.


then the concert… in a converted PALACE...

^

Theater of the Absurd Playwright

I think I mentioned this play previously (yes, here), but here's from Catherine Rampell's NYTimes review of "Pangs of Messiah":

For a Family of Israeli Settlers, Eviction Before Salvation

To whom does the West Bank belong?

...While the new production at the 14th Street Y is unlikely to change any minds — many of which, let’s be honest, were made up 2,000 years ago — it may at least affect some hearts.

The play follows the Bergers, a family of Zionist settlers facing eviction from the West Bank in 2014 as part of a fictional Israeli peace treaty with the Palestinians....

...A gorgeous earthen set by Jane Stein, with tiny houses that appear to grow out of the furniture like barnacles, highlights the play’s fascination with the ties among land, home and living. And Edward Einhorn’s brisk direction initially crackles with life and energy, overcoming some of the stilted language in Anthony Berris’s translation. Our empathy and identification with the Bergers — a typical family, with typical hungers and thirsts, squabbles and chores — intensifies our discomfort with their increasing radicalization.

As the stakes rise, however, the play, presented by the Untitled Theater Company No. 61, becomes frustratingly polemical. Characters devolve into ideas that have somehow found human hosts. One of the most sympathetic figures — Shmuel’s daughter-in-law, Tirtzah (the feisty Yvonne Roen) — might as well be nicknamed the Voice of Reason.

But the play does make one striking creative choice. While art promoting nonviolence often encourages compassion for the enemy, “Pangs of the Messiah” never shows us any Palestinian grief. Palestinian characters are completely absent from this story, even though we hear newscasts coldly announcing their deaths. Instead Mr. Lerner emphasizes the more selfish reason Jewish people should have for promoting peace: that violence against Arabs will instigate more violence against — and worse, among — Jews.

So simple that even a theater reviewer catches the biased paradigm of presentation, of its one-dimensional effort to malign rather than inform.

Oh, “Pangs of the Messiah” continues through Nov. 20 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101,

Our Authors

Another reason that we in Israel suffer an unsupportive cultural elite and why writers like David Grossman are honored with op-ed space in the New York Times:-

...the heroine's furious sense that her family has been 'nationalised' by the country's leaders...

From a review on his newest English translated novel.

- - -

Vulgarity as The New Value

I caught this thought while wandering about:-

Vulgarity has always played a critical role in Western culture, of course (think Aristophanes, Socrates, and dung). The only difference nowadays is that smart intellectuals, especially in universities, treat it as profound stuff, philosophizing about such pop-cult phenomena as Lady Gaga as if these things are no different from philosophizing about the nature of the soul.

Now, while that represent Laurie Fendrich's opinion on an issue that has nothing to do with the Middle East, I am going to borrow her paradigm.

As Fendrich ends off her piece, what is really at the bottom (pardon the pun) of vulgarity in culture and, as I will claim, politics as well, is this

Her message is simple: All they need for happiness is some outrageous faux-slutty behavior.

Our university education progressive radicals seem to feel that terror, support of terror and denial of quite clear rights concerning the Arab-Israel Conflict (it has really little to do with something called "Palestine") is fashionable. And to be fashionable, a la Gaga, is to be slutty, to be morally and ethicall vulgar in your politics and public actions.

You can lie, deny, engage in upsidedowning of the facts, portray reality as it isn't. And that will make you an honorary member of the new Vulgar Generation.

You will bandy about terms like "human rights", "resistance", "right of return" and on with no true understanding of their meaning or frame of historical and legal reference.

Only Jews are to be blamed, for the Pals. are "victims", and it is quite alright to make snide antisemitic references and then protect yourself by claiming you are just anti-Zionist (which also includes the right to deny Jews their national existence).

I just have to use the F-word: -

fimicolous

And you know what, let's use another F-word: -

feculent

P.S. I could have made this a 3,000 word essay but heck, you don't have the patience to read it and I don't have the patience to write it.

Keep it short and to the point, right?


- - -

Theater Festival

Yes, we are cultured people.

A five-day Theater Festival of Jewish Culture, June 30 - July 5 in Jerusalem:

Hebrew Book Week at Liberty Bell Park

Well, Well, Some Culture From 'Beyond-the-Green Line'

Here's one story that isn't, or shouldn't be, political:

Settler Rock Comes to The States

“We don’t get into politricks, man.” So says Shmuel Caro, the heavily bearded lead guitarist of the Israeli jam-collective Aharit Hayamim, or End of Days. It’s an unexpected statement from the front man of what’s been called the house band of the Hilltop Youth, the young radical settlers known for setting up makeshift outposts deep in the occupied territory of the West Bank.

Caro and his band are backstage at 92YTribeca, a Jewish music venue in Manhattan, preparing for a headlining set on the East Coast leg of a North American tour that had included a performance annual Jewlicious festival for Jewish college students, among other venues. While the band is associated with some of the most extreme elements of the settler movement, fellow performers and promoters say that their politics shouldn’t prevent them from appearing in mainstream Jewish venues.

“We’re here to represent the real vibe of Israel,” says keyboardist Yehuda Leuchter, before bursting into spontaneous harmony with the rest of Aharit Hayamim. Dressed in flowing shirts and large, knitted kippot, the four band members sang a reggae-inflected round of “Holy Mt. Zion.” After a minute, Yehuda announces: “That’s all we got to say, man.”

A clip:

...Chaya Hershkopf, a young Lubavitch woman from Crown Heights, says that she first saw Aharit Hayamim perform at T’Koa D, a small, unauthorized outpost 2 km from the settlement of T’Koa, itself 8 km past the Green Line. “They talk a lot about the earth and the land and how it’s ours and the importance of holding on to it,” says Chaya. “They talk about Jerusalem and keeping it ours. They’re very settlery, and that’s mostly what I like about them.”

When asked whether they considered themselves Hilltop Youth, the members of Aharit Hayamim are evasive. “If you have a beard and a big kippah, you’re on the spot,” says Leuchter. “Doesn’t matter if you’re, like, Arab…Kids all over the world have tattoos and long hair. So, in Israel, they don’t have tattoos and they don’t have earrings. They have big payis and they believe in the land and they believe in peace and they believe in music and they believe in redemption.”

...Dan Sieradski...doesn’t object to their appearances at major Jewish venues alongside American Jewish artists. “I think their views are abhorrent,” he says, “but if I don’t engage them and I don’t share a stage with them, how can I ever hope to change their minds or confront them to question their own beliefs? I don’t support cultural boycotts. I would support financial boycotts against companies doing business in the West Bank, but I wouldn’t support an artistic boycott of a band that lives in the West Bank.”...

The Literary Scene: The New Yiddishists

Found in Vanity Fair:

The New Yiddishists emerged during a turning point for American Jewish identity. Never in history have Jews been so integrated and accepted into the mainstream of a Diaspora country. Today, nearly half of American Jews marry outside the faith, while synagogue attendance continues its decline. Yiddish, a language that the majority of Jews once spoke, has been reduced (for most Jews) to a smattering of funny-sounding catchphrases and penis jokes. The generation of American Jews to which the New Yiddishists belong came of age questioning their sense of self. If you didn’t belong to a synagogue, keep kosher, or marry another Jew, then what exactly did it mean to be Jewish? Did it go beyond your DNA and a fondness for pastrami?

...American Jews began to feel a nagging sense of otherness again. At the same time, various cultural foundations were pouring millions of dollars into programs to stem the tide of assimilation. As a consequence, Jewish culture looked inward for the first time in decades.

...says Dara Horn...many of her generational peers have become more outwardly Jewish as they have gotten older. “When Jews came to this country, the way to piss off your parents was to eat pork and marry a shiksa,” Horn says. “Now the best way to piss off your parents is to go to Chabad [a Hasidic missionary organization], marry at 18, have 10 kids, and refuse to eat in their house because they’re not kosher enough.… But there’s also an opportunity to engage in Jewish life that didn’t exist for previous generations.”

That cultural renaissance has taken the form of magazines and Web sites such as Heeb, Jewcy, Guilt & Pleasure, and Nextbook; record labels (JDub) and micro-brews (He’Brew, “the Chosen Beer”); and countless grassroots initiatives in the arts and academia. For the first time in many decades (perhaps ever?), being Jewish—outwardly, proudly, Neil Diamond–ly Jewish—is cool, and the New Yiddishists are the literary vanguard of that. They are vastly more comfortable in their Jewish skin than previous generations of American Jewish writers ever were, and their stories reflect that...

Read on.

Contemporary Culturalism's Roots

I did get a subscription to Metal magazine, but I wasn’t a true metalhead. I maybe went to a Bon Jovi concert. I had a Cinderella album, “Long Cold Winter.” It was a weird time to come of age because you have a burgeoning sense of your own sexuality, and your objects of desire are long-haired, permed, lipstick-wearing, Spandexed boys. I had a huge crush on all of those dudes with those pulsing pants and high kicks and beautiful glowing pink mouths.

Sheila Callaghan, Playwright,
whose latest effort, “That Pretty Pretty; or, the Rape Play” is reviewed here.

Similarities, He Said

Who?

Where?

At the entrance, he hugged Sandi Pei, son of the architect, and the two did a little dance. Jerusalem and the Arab world have more "aesthetic and cultural similarities" than differences, he said.

Wha????

Cultural similarities?

Like honor killings? Suicide bombings?

Answer.

Shocking

"What is shocking is that today marriage is becoming more fashionable amongst some young women".

Would you like to know the background to that remark?

It's from the author of "The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade".

Here.

Doesn't This Sound Familiar To You?

Did you ever wonder what people saw in Obama?

I think this gives an insight into mass mesmerising hysteria that would help understanding the phenomenom:

There are times when the limitations of the printed word come into focus, like when there is a need to convey how it sounded when Robert Pattinson, who stars as the vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen in the forthcoming movie “Twilight,” stepped onto a riser at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia on Thursday evening in front of more than 1,000 mostly teenage girls.

In collective pitch, frequency and volume the sound would make a shuttle launching seem demure, a Jack White guitar solo retiring, a jackhammer somehow soothing. To reach into history, it may have approached Beatles-at-Shea-Stadium loud, replete with the weeping, swooning and self-hugging, and only the ambient flutter of cellphone cameras and furious texting by way of modern update. All of it was arrayed over a mostly unknown British actor who plays a character in a movie that will not be released until Friday.

“What is with all the screaming?” Mr. Pattinson asked when he came out. He absently ran his hand through his hair. Pandemonium ensued. He tugged at his white T-shirt in response, ever so nervously. Oh, boy. Then he laughed good-naturedly at the absurdity of it all. The smile was just a bit too much. A girl in a “Team Edward” shirt fell into the arms of her friend. “I can’t stand it!” she said.

Along with other members of the “Twilight” cast, Mr. Pattinson is touring stores of Hot Topic, a retail chain that mines the sweet spot between teenagers and pop culture, in malls across the country this month. It’s not so much to gin up interest in the film but to feed the monster it has already become. For his Thursday appearance fans arrived outside the mall the night before to get a ticket. The first 500 would receive a quick autograph on a poster and the rest a chance to see Mr. Pattinson make a brief appearance.

And when he did, the crowd didn’t see an actor. They saw Edward Cullen, the perfect boyfriend who just happens to live on blood.

...When Mr. Pattinson appeared at the Apple store in SoHo the week before, one young fan asked him to bite her.

“The connection that I am an actor playing this character is sort of skipped,” he said, laughing during an interview before the throng was admitted to the Hot Topic store here. “They are in denial. They think I am Edward Cullen.” Mr. Pattinson, 22, said he had no idea what to make of his situation, about to meet thousands of teenage girls — and many of their mothers — who were flat-out in love with him.

“It is bizarre,” he said. “People come from three states away and walk up to you trembling. I feel that I am at a disadvantage here because I can’t provide this mystical thing that they came for in the two seconds we have.”

Bad News: Leftist Culture to UK

Israeli play to be performed in British National Theater

Israel's national theater Habima makes an unprecedented achievement: In May 2010, an Israeli Hebrew-language play will be performed at the British National Theater for the first time in history.

In meetings with Habima Theater’s artistic director, Ilan Ronen, it was agreed to stage two plays in London and in Tel Aviv in 2010, which would deal with the British Mandate era and its implications on the complex political reality between Israel and the Palestinians.

According to Haaretz's Tzipi Shochat, the meeting at which the decision was taken was also attended by David (the "Yellow Wind") Grossman, an early Peace Now activist who exploited his position as editor and presenter on Kol Yisrael to promote leftwing ideas and positions, and Zev (anticolonialist) Sternhel.

Three left-wingers do not a fair presentation make of the Mandate period and the issue of the "Palestinians", which Haaretz termed "the political conflict between Jews and Palestinians", not Arabs please note!

And so the radical trendy lefty subversion of Israel continues, at a theater in London.


=========================

UPDATE


On the playwright:

Of course, Anda is a figment of Hillel's imagination, but that's his job as a playwright, he must tell the human story without which it is impossible to put on the play. These things took place; there was intervention. Mapai was the state, and the state was Mapai."

Do you think a playwright is obligated to the historical truth?

"As I see it, the basis of the historical truth must be there, but a performance or a play is not a documentary film."

Kimmelman on Culture (Ahem) in Gaza

Michael Kimmelman is an author and the chief art critic and a columnist for the New York Times.



Born and raised in Greenwich Village, the son of a physician and civil rights activist and I presume that is a description of his two parents, not just one - and if so one, I don't know which one. As of fall 2007 he is based in Berlin writing the Abroad column for the Times on culture and society across Europe. He also contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books.

And, he is the author of this article, which claims that "culture is a central battleground for control of Gaza".

For example, he writes:

Gaza isn’t what you might imagine, culturally speaking. Like the West Bank, it occupies a special place in the Middle East: Gazans may loathe Israel but have worked there or spent years in Israeli prisons, and while they haven’t taken up Jewish culture, they’ve experienced Western life as many other Arabs haven’t. This has encouraged a sensibility that, until lately anyway, had a moderating effect on religion and society.

Fanatic religious outlook tempered with a moderating effect by Western culture? His headline is a giveaway:

Watching ‘Friends’ in Gaza: A Culture Clash

Maybe the NYTimes should try sending a female journalist next time to see how acculturated the Gazans have become (no, not Isabel Kershner. She's Jewish. Wouldn't be fair.) That would be a clash.

But read on and the truth will emerge, even from a puff piece:-

But Hamas now makes many Gazans feel insecure. Majeda Alsaqqa is the woman running the Culture and Free Thought Association, the one held at gunpoint. For the moment, she’s back in business. But Hamas not long ago took over the local library, and it stages plays about the lives of Palestinian soldiers killed by Israel, which are sometimes performed in the street just outside Ms. Alsaqqa’s garden.

“They use real explosives!” she said, laughing. “It used to be different here. I used to ride around on a bicycle wearing a dress. The raid on us was about imposing a different culture — about not liking our kind of theater, where men and woman mix. These were brainwashed kids who came with the Kalashnikovs, who are taught not to like foreigners or summer camps, where we teach children not to take anything for granted. For the first time, I’m scared.”

Raid?

The Culture and Free Thought Association, a nonprofit organization in Khan Yunis, a town in southern Gaza, with a theater, a summer camp and a variety of arts programs, was looted not long ago by Hamas security forces who held the woman in charge at gunpoint and later went to her home.

As for culture, what about the cinema? Even Hitler found that useful.

Gaza has not had any movie house since the last one burned two decades ago during the first intifada.

Oh, well.

One can always watch the girls go by, no?



No.