[lbo-talk] My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Sat Mar 18 05:27:38 PST 2006


Thanks to Colin Brace for posting the article from The Nation about the pathetic capitulation of the NY Theatre Workshop. There is also a long expose of The Israel Lobby in the latest London Review of Books by the two influential American political scientists, John Mearsheimer (Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Harvard) which you can access without a sub at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html.

Do these pieces represent the beginning of an organized backlash from within the Jewish-American liberal community against the lobby, or are they simply another register of its periodic discontent and anxiety about the lobby's existence? The ongoing tacit support of Jewish American liberals for the strategic US/Israeli alliance has been pivotal, which it why they are subject to such fierce pressure from the community's leadership whenever they show any signs of wavering and even-handedness. Spielberg's Munich and the Rachel Corrie play are seen as the latest such signs, and are being attacked for that reason. But the Israel lobby, which mostly functions in the shadows of Washington backrooms, may be overreaching in its more visible efforts to censor the NY cultural scene, where Jewish-American liberals are prominent. I hope so. It wasn't clear from the Nation article whether the protests against the cancellation were beginning to spread from the small circle of playwrights and others in and around the theatre. Have there been demonstrations and has a wider campaign been building?



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