Jerusalem's Khan Theater and "My Name is Rachel Corrie"

...As noted by one of ISM's founders, "if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice." In 2002, ISM members served as human shields for Palestinian gunmen around Yasir Arafat's Ramallah compound and in the Bethlehem Church of the Nativity after it was overrun by terrorists.

NGO Monitor..
03 July '13..

The Khan Theater in Jerusalem is scheduled to present My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play comprised of anti-Israel writings by Corrie, an American student who joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Corrie died in 2003, attempting to block an IDF bulldozer at the Gaza frontier during anti-terror operations.

ISM is a Palestinian-led non-governmental organization (NGO) responsible for often violent demonstrations against Israel. Its leaders encourage foreign volunteers to engage in life-threatening clashes with Israeli soldiers. As noted by one of ISM's founders, "if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice." In 2002, ISM members served as human shields for Palestinian gunmen around Yasir Arafat's Ramallah compound and in the Bethlehem Church of the Nativity after it was overrun by terrorists. ISM members also met with two British terrorists prior to the attack on "Mike's Place" in Tel Aviv in 2003; another admitted that she knowingly worked with Hamas and Islamic Jihad; and member Richard David Hupper was convicted by a U.S. federal jury for materially aiding Hamas, “giving about $20,000 to Hamas while working in Israel with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-governmental organization.” (Click here for NGO Monitor’s detailed report on International Solidarity Movement.)

Presenting "They Call Me Rachel Corrie", theater of the really really absurd

Yisrael Medad..
Green-Lined/JPost..
28 June '13..

The Khan Theater in Jerusalem is no stranger to controversial provocativeness and notoriety. Motti Lerner, too often an outrageous playwright, set the tone 30 years ago.

Many radical plays have been presented and now, in early July, the theater crew will be, in a sense, resurrecting Rachel Corrie.

Just caught this (thanks to AK):

The Khan Theatre, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Sport (Minister Limor Livnat) and the Jerusalem Municipality (Mayor Nir Barkat), will be presenting They Call Me Rachel Corrie. The far-out left informs us that it will be shown in Jaffa, too. Sivan Kretchner will speak the monologue text.

Is this really officially backed ?

Let's recall that her death was used to batter Israel, unfairly.

Lenny Ben-David is not sure Israel was the sole bearer of the responsibility for her death, even if indirectly and maybe even completely guiltless. He wrote:

There may be other culprits lurking...We’re all shocked by the horrifying pictures of Corrie lying on the ground, broken and bleeding. But has anyone ever asked what kind of ghoul would snap pictures rather than rush to her aid or run to get help?

Numerous pictures of Corrie standing defiantly in front of an Israeli bulldozer appeared in the media, but upon investigation it transpired that not a single one was from the incident that killed her. Some were taken hours before the fatal incident with a different bulldozer; others were sloppy photoshopped forgeries. Why were there photos after she was injured and not before?

Martyr

My Name Is Rachel Corrie: Taken from the Writings of Rachel Corrie



Cynthia Ozick
The New Reublic
07 December '06

On Justice Brandeis's celebrated principle that "the remedy [for free speech] is more speech," it is good and salubrious that My Name Is Rachel Corrie can finally be seen on a New York stage. Last year, when the play was turned away by the New York Theater Workshop apparently because of objections from donors offended by its agitprop banalities, there sprang up, amid the foolish cries of "censorship" (as if the Constitution were being subverted), a newborn legend. The longer the play was absent from local scrutiny, the more romantically its faraway halo might glow: a visionary young woman on the barricades, part heroic Joan of Arc, part victimized Anne Frank, mercilessly cut down in the very act of defying brute injustice.

To have the play actually in hand -- the naked script itself -- is a down-to-earth corrective. It goes without saying that any play, and this one especially, is both more and less than its script: more, because of the theater's sensuous surround -- the emotive ingenuities of set, lighting, and sound; an attractive actor's winning impersonation; the magnetic rapidity of gesture, movement, and voice; and an audience whose sympathies are already in place, pacified by the play's radiant repute. But it is precisely on account of all these appeals to communal sensation that My Name Is Rachel Corrie is considerably less than its script. Stripped only to print, the play discloses what the theater's dazzlements are likely to obfuscate or diminish. Fortunately, we are assured by the director and co-editor that every word is Rachel Corrie's own, culled directly from her journals and e-mail messages. Are there incendiary omissions? If so, it hardly matters; what is on the page is revealing enough. This means that we can reasonably trust the script -- perhaps understandably manipulated as to selection and sequence -- to represent Rachel Corrie as she was, unadulterated by theatrical seductions.

Rachel Corrie, then, as she was. She can be seen in two brief films on Wikipedia. She is in Gaza, a member of the International Solidarity Movement. In one film, she is burning a replica of the American flag. Her mouth is wide, yelling. In the other, she stands fixedly, repeating phrases that appear identically in the playscript; it is as if she has scripted herself, and is speaking by rote. Wound around her neck is the familiar Palestinian scarf, declaring solidarity.

(Read full review)
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