More than 260 artists and supporters of the arts have signed a public letter to Israeli authorities decrying the Israeli military’s attacks on The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, a northern city in the West Bank, Palestine.  The signatories include dozens of prominent playwrights, actors, directors, filmmakers, producers and theatre professors from the U.S., New Zealand, Israel, England and other countries.

The statement was hand-delivered today to the Israeli Mission in New York and the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. artists include Pulitzer prize-winning playwrights Edward Albee and Tony Kushner; actors Susan Sarandon, Olympia Dukakis, Alec Baldwin, Mandy Patinkin, Kathleen Chalfant and Mercedes Ruehl; prominent theatre educators such as James Bundy of the Yale Drama School, and Catherine Coray and Mark Wing-Davey of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Their statement called the Theatre “a beacon for artistic expression, offering youth in Jenin a safe space in which to express themselves, and to explore their creativity and emotions.”

The signatories urged the Israeli military authorities to release those arrested or make their charges public and to pay compensation for the buildings they damaged.

The protest follows an Israeli army attack on the Jenin-based theatre at 3:30 a.m. on July 27.  Soldiers hurled rocks at the building, knocking out many of the windows.  The theatre’s facilities manager was arrested, along with the president of the theatre’s Board, whose home was also damaged.

On August 5, Israeli forces blindfolded and arrested a 20-year old acting student, part of The Freedom Theatre’s young acting troupe, at a checkpoint near Jenin.

“We have been very concerned about the health and safety of our colleagues since their arrests,” said Constancia Dinky Romilly, president of Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre, a New York-based support group.

“Our supporters,” Romilly continued, “have been calling the authorities in Jenin and in Washington, but no one has given us any information about their condition or the charges facing them, if there are any.  This is a truly shocking attack on a cultural institution in Palestine and one more horrific example of what goes on in a country under occupation.”

The full statement follows.  Continue reading →

From the Freedom Theatre, Jenin refugee camp:

On Saturday afternoon August 6, Rami Awni Hwayel, aged 20, a third-year graduating student at the Freedom Theatre acting school was detained by the Israeli army at Shave Shomeron checkpoint between Nablus and Jenin.  He was travelling with fellow students from Ramallah to Jenin.

[MR: The Shave Shomeron checkpoint is one of many dozens by which the Israeli military controls the movement of Palestinians within Palestinian territory.  The location of these checkpoints makes it abundantly clear that they are not at all about Israeli security, but entirely about the enforcement of military occupation within Palestine.]

Batool Taleb was one of the acting students in the car with Rami.  She describes what happened: “When the soldiers got to our car, they took all our IDs and then they told Rami to get out of the car.  They immediately handcuffed and blindfolded him and put him in the army jeep.”

The students had been rehearsing in Ramallah for their final graduation project, the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, directed by the Israeli-American film-maker Udi Aloni.

“This is devastating,” says Aloni. “Rami is playing Pozzo, the main role in the play, and he’s doing an amazing job.  He is so dedicated to the work.  He just left rehearsals today for the weekend to see his family for Ramadan.  This is terrible, we want our Pozzo back!”

Rami is the third member of the Freedom Theatre to be detained by the Israeli army since their 27 July assault on the theatre.  Head technician Adnan Naghnaghiye and chairperson of the board Bilal Saadi are still being held in “administrative detention,” without charge, trial or access to lawyers.

[MR: For more detail on the attack, see previous posts 41 & 42.  For a visit to the Freedom Theatre acting school, see chapter 2, Our Way to Fight.]

[According to Addameer, the Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, since Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967, approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been detained by the Israeli military.  This amounts to approximately 20 percent of the total Palestinian population, and 40 percent of the male Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territories.]

The military has initiated a gag order to forbid any reporting in Israel about Rami Awni Hwayel’s arrest.

Once again the Freedom Theatre calls on friends and supporters around the world to put pressure on the Israeli authorities to stop this outrageous harassment of a unique cultural resource.

Don’t know about you, but most of the time I feel pretty helpless in the face of the government and corporate elites that sustain Israel’s occupation of Palestine.  I’m also frustrated by the ease with which they manage to control the news, at least in the mainstream media that many people rely on to interpret the world.

This is why I write.  My current book and this blog attempt to share other experience and insights from the ground, views that are systematically excluded from the official version.

I know it’s not enough.  So I’m grateful when a compelling initiative arises that I can support.  Roadmap to Apartheid is such an initiative.

It’s a full-length video documentary, created by a white South African woman and a Jewish Israeli man, and narrated by African-American writer Alice Walker.  In meticulous, often shocking detail, Roadmap to Apartheid compares the apartheid systems of South Africa and Israel.  While the former eventually collapsed under international pressure, the Israeli version continues to expand by the day.

The Israeli regime and its backers go to great lengths to deny and even suppress any comparison with South African apartheid.  In Canada, for example, if the current federal regime has its way, it could become a crime to write or speak in public the phrase “Israeli apartheid.”  They are that afraid of debate.

Few people are better equipped to appreciate the stark parallels than South Africans who resisted apartheid in their own country, and who have also witnessed it in Palestine.  For example, Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

“I have witnessed firsthand the racially segregated roads and housing in the Occupied Palestinian territories.  I have seen the humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children at the checkpoints and roadblocks.  I have met Palestinians who were evicted and replaced by Jewish Israeli settlers; Palestinians whose homes were destroyed even as new, Jewish-only homes were illegally built on confiscated Palestinian land.

“This oppression, these indignities and the resulting anger are only too familiar.  It is no wonder that so many South African leaders in the anti-apartheid struggle, including Nelson Mandela and numerous Jewish leaders, have found ourselves compelled to speak out on this issue.”

Such are the parallels that Roadmap to Apartheid explores. I have no doubt it will make a unique, powerful contribution to the struggle for justice and peace in Israel-Palestine.

A 10-minute excerpt from the video won first place in a video contest online.  Watch it here.

After four years’ work by the film-makers and “dozens of co-workers,” the full-length video is complete.  But they lack funds for the final stages of its production and release.

To cover these costs they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign, to send Roadmap to Apartheid out into the world.

In terms of media production costs, they ask remarkably little to accomplish a lot: $40,000.  As they put it, “The money raised will:

• Pay for all the intense archival footage in the documentary that really helps to showcase the story.  We cannot release the film until this bill gets covered.

• Compensate the talented sound, color, design and motion graphics crew for the many days they will invest in this film for the next couple of months.

• Print DVDs.

• Organize screening and speaking tours in the U.S. and elsewhere.  (If you are interested in hosting a screening in your hometown, please get in touch with us at our website.)”

In case you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it works like this:  The project will only be funded if at least $25,000 is pledged by Wednesday September 7, 7:00pm Eastern Daylight Time.

So far (to the time I wrote this), 155 people have pledged $11,796.

Here is something we can do.  And by the way, a pledge of $30 or more gets you a free copy of the DVD.

I find this appeal irresistible. Hope you do too.

Following my previous post, this August 1 update comes from the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp, Occupied Palestinian Territory:

After the Israeli army attack on the Freedom Theatre, Wednesday July 27, the two detained persons, Adnan Naghnaghiye (head technician at the theatre), and Bilal Saadi (chairperson of the theatre board), were taken to the Jalame and Meggiddo high security prisons inside Israel.

The Israeli army claims that the detained persons have “acted against the security of the region.”  [MR: this stock phrase is often used to justify the unjustifiable imprisonment of Palestinians.]

Jonatan Stanczak, co-founder of the Freedom Theatre, comments: “The reason behind the arrest is absurd and Kafka-like.  Although theatre and culture by their nature can be perceived by some as subversive, this kind of general accusation is nonsense.”

The authorities have refused to allow Israeli lawyer Smadar Ben-Natah to talk to or visit either of his clients, who are being held in “administrative detention.”  [MR: A leftover from the British occupation of Palestine, “administrative detention” means arrest and detention without charge, trial or access to a lawyer, all of which measures are illegal by international law.]

The authorities have arbitrarily extended administrative detention of the two men to August 4th.  Their lawyer will petition the Supreme Court for access to the prisoners, and for their release.

Not surprisingly, the Israeli army denies that it raided the theatre.  However, photo and video documentation confirms that the army not only raided the theatre, they also shattered windows in the multimedia centre and office building.  Eye-witnesses also report harassment and threats to several theatre employees.

“Raiding densely populated Palestinian civilian areas in the middle of the night to carry out wanton arrests is common practice for the Israeli army,” says Jacob Gough, acting general manager of the theatre. “The only difference this time is that it befell people related to the Freedom Theatre.”

[MR:  Though Jenin is in the so-called Area A, nominally under Palestinian jurisdiction, residents of the city are accustomed to regular Israeli army incursions.  This is the harsh reality of military occupation.]

The Freedom Theatre demands that the Israeli authority immediately provide access to lawyers for our kidnapped friends and colleagues, and that they be released immediately and given due compensation.

Until this happens, we urge all the friends and supporters of the theatre to contact their local Israeli representative office and their own government’s foreign office to convey these demands.

At about 3:30 this morning, July 27, Special Forces of the Israeli Army attacked the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp.

Ahmad Nasser Matahen, a night guard and technician student at the theatre awoke to the thud of stone blocks being hurled at the theatre door.  When he opened the door he found masked and heavily armed Israeli Special Forces surrounding the theatre.

Ahmed says, “They told me to raise my hands and forced me to take my pants down.  I thought my time had come, that they would kill me.  My brother that was with me was handcuffed.”

The location manager of the Freedom Theatre, Adnan Naghnaghiye, was arrested and taken away to an unknown location together with Bilal Saadi, a member of the theatre board.  When general manager Jacob Gough and co-founder Jonatan Stanczak arrived, they were forced to squat next to a family with four small children surrounded by about 50 heavily armed Israeli soldiers.

Jonatan says: “Whenever we tried to tell them that they are attacking a cultural venue and arresting members of the theater we were told to shut up and they threatened to kick us.  I tried to contact the civil administration of the army to clarify the matter but the person in charge hung up on me.”

Attacks like this occur every day throughout occupied Palestine.  In fact, as the international movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions grows, and the Palestinian statehood initiative gathers support, Israeli attacks appear to be escalating.

Still, this one comes as a particular shock, perhaps because the Freedom Theatre is so familiar to me (see Our Way to Fight, chapter 2).

This is the second major blow to the theatre in four months.  On April 4, co-founder Juliano Mer-Khamis was murdered here, by one or more killers who remain at large. (See blog post #15, Live theatre.)

As a popular symbol of non-violent resistance to military occupation, and a haven for free thought and expression, inevitably the Freedom Theatre is a target.

In June, the theatre premiered a new play, Sho Kman (What Else), featuring students of the Freedom Theatre acting school.  Two weeks ago the student actors took their play to six cities in France.

Sho Kman explores how the unrelenting violence of the external military occupation can lead to internal chaos, corroding friendship, family, society and state, a cruel cycle of entrapment and suppression with no end in sight.

For young people in the Jenin refugee camp, the play is another step in the struggle to break free from the many layers of chains that imprison them.

This is why the Freedom Theatre continues to be a target.