art

Seeing Double: A Middle Eastern Comedy of Errors

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In the 1980’s, few Americans knew much about life in the territories Israel had occupied in 1967. Fewer still understood the PLO’s historic offer to settle for a state in less than half what had been Palestine. Yet in 1989, the San Francisco Mime Troupe produced Seeing Double, a mistaken-identity farce that argued for a two-state solution. The seeming unfitness of the genre for the topic proved the secret of the show’s success: laughter allows room for hope.
Twenty-eight years later, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is better understood, but no closer to resolution. Indeed, decades of US military and diplomatic support for Israel’s actions and its “facts on the ground”, have made a solution increasingly unlikely. Last summer, the writers of Seeing Double decided we would update the play, to fit today’s harsher realities and to address the U.S. role.

General News

Martin Luther King + 50: Toward a Year of Truth and Transformation

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“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered … We are confronted by the fierce urgency of Now.” –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

War & Peace

Armenian Genocide—time for acknowledgement and healing

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Nothing can justify the methodical actions, such as the mass deportations, that were taken against the Armenians as a group; not even a threat of civil war, because, if a war needs to break out to avoid a genocide, it needs to break out. If the establishment is stable enough to proactively deport children and women, it is also stable enough to fight a “more just war” among organized groups, between adults.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Justice for Girls Trial to Commence

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As part of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead that began in late December 2008, tank shells killed three daughters and a niece of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish and severely wounded other family members.
Since this tragedy, Dr. Abuelaish has worked hard to promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Following his relocation to Canada, he told his story in his book I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity.

Politics & Society

The American Struggle for Peace

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The antiwar movement is a great subject for today, of course, partly because liberal hawkishness is on the rise again and partly because a president with a monumental ego (or poorly hidden feeling of insecurity) is at the helm.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Amona is the Brazen Face of the Occupation

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This is the context of the moral dystopia of occupation: generations of settlers have been raised to believe they are the messianic spearhead for the Greater Israel. Young people who have grown up to believe that they have the right, indeed the duty to confiscate private Palestinian land and then righteously express outrage when the Israeli Supreme Court rules that they must return it to its legal owners.

General News

From Trump to Umm Al-Hiran

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As President-elect Trump consummates the victory of his racist and demagogic campaign, Israel’s discriminatory demolition of homes in Umm Al-Hiran yesterday signified another step away from democracy and towards Jewish ethnic domination. Human identity — the sense people have that they are Homo sapiens and morally responsible for other Homo sapiens — recedes before our eyes in both Israel and America. Trump and Netanyahu make clear in speech and policy that they do not see human beings as human beings but only as particular identities, such as Jews or Arabs, Americans or Mexicans, Christians or Muslims.