31 thoughts on “New York Theatre Workshop Drops ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ as Too Political – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. “Rachel Corrie just before, and after”
    The photos are suspect. It isn’t at all certain that it’s the same bulldozer in the different pictures. It is certain that the backgrounds are different. At least the dozer changed direction or location between pictures. You can’t identify anybody in the pictures. You can’t prove from the pictures that they weren’t taken some other day in some other continent. The tragedy is real but the photos are suspect.

    The play, as described to me, is a highy fictionalized account of what happened. Not attempting to be accurate or a documentary. Indeed, the facts are sparse. Putting on misleading propaganda plays while a violent conflict ensues is not a way to repair the world, but to incite violence.

  2. Yours is a maddening post. What does it matter? Are you implying that an IDF bulldozer didn’t kill her? That would not only be preposterous, it would be monstrous. Besides, this image, while photographed by an ISM member, is distributed by Associated Press and displayed at CNN. Do you think they make a habit of distributing photographic work that is unverified, unsubstantiated and fraudulent?? You display a callow & uninformed perspective regarding this matter.

    The play, as described to me…

    Nope, you don’t get to pontificate about the play not having seen it. Quote to me from someone who’s actually seen it and then you might be credible.

    The play is entirely based on Corrie’s diary and letters. It is NOT fictionalized. This is from the Guardian & written by Katherine Viner, the play’s co-author. Italicized portions verify the play’s source directly in Corrie’s writings:

    Last year, I was asked by the Royal Court theatre to edit the writings of Rachel Corrie into a drama with Alan Rickman, who was also directing. I had read the powerful emails she sent home from Gaza, serialised in G2 in the days after her death, and I’d read eye-witness accounts on the internet. But I didn’t know that Rachel’s early writing – before she even thought of travelling to the Middle East, from her days as a schoolgirl, through college, to life working at a mental-health centre in her home town of Olympia, Washington – would be similarly fascinating, and contain such elements of chilling prescience. Nor did I have a sense of the kind of person Rachel Corrie was: a messy, skinny, Dali-loving, listmaking chainsmoker, with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar. I discovered all that later.

    Rachel was killed, aged 23, on March 16 2003, by a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer…

    In developing this piece of theatre, we wanted to uncover the young woman behind the political symbol, beyond her death. As Alan Rickman, whose idea it was to turn Rachel’s work into drama, says: “We were never going to paint Rachel as a golden saint or sentimentalise her, but we also needed to face the fact that she’d been demonised. We wanted to present a balanced portrait.” We hoped to find out what made Rachel Corrie different from the stereotype of today’s consumerist, depoliticised youth. Having received permission from Rachel’s parents to shape her words into drama, we were sent an enormous package – 184 pages of her writing, most of which had not been seen before.

    The challenge, then, was trying to construct a piece of theatre from fragments of journals, letters and emails, none of which was written with performance in mind.

    We’ve tried to do justice to the whole of Rachel: neither saint nor traitor, both serious and funny, messy and talented, devastatingly prescient and human and whole. Or, in her own words, “scattered and deviant and too loud”. We chose Rachel’s words rather than those of the thousands of Palestinian or Israeli victims because of the quality and accessibility of the writing: as Rickman says, “The activist part of her life is absolutely matched by the imaginative part of her life. I’ve no doubt at all that had she lived there would have been novels and plays pouring out of her.” The tragedy is that we’ll hear no more from Rachel Corrie.

    Not once does Viner mention the words fantasy or say that anything was fictionalized. If you want to slander the play or Rachel Corrie’s memory you’ll have to dredge up other things to do so.

  3. You say that the best of theatre should provoke and shock. Agreed. But who said this piece is real theatre? The text is an old fashioned bit of agit prop (Soviet style). Serious theatres should shun such work. Real theatre aims to create profound transformative experiences, not to preach to the converted and to provoke disbelievers .

    When great playwrights such as Ibsen, Shaw, Miller, Brecht or Genet wanted to make political statements through theatre they actually bothered to write good plays first. These days you catalogue a bunch of supposedly controversial messages, packaged in a quai theatrical form and call it a play. Why don’t Rickman and Viner make a PBS style documentary report? If they have something to say about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, maybe they should read a few ancient Greek playwrights. Those playwrights knew how to make a relevant statement and to create a complex, many sided work of art at the same time.

  4. Who said this piece is real theater?

    Well, the tens of thousands of London theatergoers who’re waiting in lines around the block to see it, for one. They think it’s “real theater.” And what do you know about the play’s “text” that makes you an expert on designating it “agit prop (Soviet style)?”

    Again those tens of thousands of Londoners feel the play is providing them a “transformative experience.” I guess you only like plays the comfort you and confirm your ideas about the world.

    I don’t think anyone expects Rachel Corrie to be a Brecht, Shaw or Ibsen. They just expect her to be Rachel Corrie and as our Passover haggadah says: “That will suffice.” Besides, the play has been co-written by Alan Rickman, one of Britain’s leading actors. So I think he has a pretty good sense of what makes for good theater & Rachel’s writing is in good dramatic hands with Rickman.

    How would you know anything about the artistic value of this play since live in Virginia which, last I checked is quite far removed from London?? Meaning you haven’t seen it. But I do have some advice for you. When it’s performed in New York some time later this year, I urge you to make a trip up there to see it. Then maybe you’ll earn some credibility as a theater critic.

  5. First of all I live in New York. I don’t know where you got VA. Second, it doesn’t matter what thousands may think. Since when is mass taste an indication of quality or value? Third, Rickman is a good actor; alas, not many actors have been known for credible intellectual work. Plays that comfort me? Hmm I guess a play like Genet’s “The Blacks” is a very comforting piece of theate. That shows how much you know about dramaturgy. So before you urge me to learn about theatre criticism, why don’t YOU read a few plays. By the way, what’s more comforting that overtly political theatre? It preaches to the converted. the only people who’ll see this show will get to feel good about their pieties. Then all the like minded sympathizers get to congratulate themselves. This would be true about any agit prop, whether presenting issues from the right or the left. I suspect that’s a major reason for those thousands lining up to see the play in London. This makes them feel as if they’re actually contributing to the resolution of the Israeli Palestininian conflict. What a safe coforting way of feeling politically active!
    I don’t want to be a theatre critic since I am a theatre artist. And as such I have a very high standard for what makes GOOD theatre. You see, I read the text. It’s avaliable. Didn’t you know? Notice I never said that the play should not be performed. The real problem is that it should never have been written in its current form. I hope one day we get a real play about the complicated conflict in the Middle East, not some feel good piece of propaganda.
    Nobody expects Rachel Corrie to be anything. That’s why her writing can be published in a magazine that deals with political and social issues.

  6. The NYTW is pathetic. they read the script, took the play on, then ran away when various aspects of the Jewish community TOLD them to. It’s censorship plain and simple; otherwise, what else besides the complaints from these select Jewish community members made the difference?

    Pathetic. Let us see the story, and make up our own damn mind. THE PRODUCERS can crack jokes about a man who launched a war that killed 50 million people, but it’s not the right time to see someone stand, in peace, for peace?

    Pathetic.

  7. Marcel: So you live in New York. And unless you’re planning to hop on a transatlantic flight to catch the show you haven’t seen it & so your judgement about its content is not to be trusted.

    So you’ve read the play. So you think it stinks. Big deal. We’ll just have to let New York make that judgment on their own unless you’d like your own impeccable theatrical judgment to substitute for theirs.

    Since when is mass taste an indication of quality or value?

    Yeah, all those tens of thousands and millions who’ve seen Death of a Salesman or The Crucible or The Wizard of Oz or Citzen Kane–whadda they know? They’re just slobs out for a good time.

    alas, not many actors have been known for credible intellectual work.

    You’re so right. THere was once this fair to middling actor named Will Shakespeare. He was doing OK in his chosen profession till he decided to try his hand at writing plays. What a disaster! Ruined both his careers & we’ve never heard fr. him since.

    What a ludicruous statement you made. How much exactly do you know about theater or ‘dramaturgy’???

    why don’t YOU read a few plays

    You’re an idiot to presume I haven’t.

    You seem to despise “overtly political theater.” Yet some of our finest plays fall into that category. Such theater does not only preach to the converted as you claim. Many who attend performances and who are not well informed about the subject matter are educated and moved by the drama they see. Perhaps they are even moved to take action. Clifford Odetts is but one example of such a playwright. And those Greek playwrights you so adore. Aristophanes is but a single example of one who wrote “overtly political theater.” You say you’re a “theater artist,” yet how much do you really know about theater?

    Jean Genet was a playwright exquisitely sensitive to the plight of the oppressed and dispossessed. Unlike you, he would feel right at home with the subject matter of Rachel Corrie. Were he alive today he would undoubtedly have written a play about the Palestinians that you would likely detest.

    That’s why her writing can be published in a magazine that deals with political and social issues.

    And undoubtedly it will be if it hasn’t already. But now it’s a play whether you like it or not.

  8. My mistake for thinking that I can talk about artistic or aesthetic issues on your blog. Clearly you’re so motivated by political views you can’t distinguish between what may be an important issue and what makes a piece of art. There is a very obvious difference between a well structured imaginative play dealing with politics and a hack job of a montage put together by Rickman. I am still able to separate my politics from my aesthetics. David Mamet (not my favorite playwright, by the way, but one I respect) recently talked about the crop of politicized “theatre” flooding New York stages — those well meaning documentary style evenings that you probably like so much. Think “The Exonerated.” Well I guess it’s time for one more dramaturgical disaster — “Rachel Corrie.”

  9. By the way, why don’t you live by your self proclaimed standards? You called me an idiot in your response. I guess your are the only one on this site who is protected from ‘profanity, abuse or insult.” I have been very polite in my messages. If you are at all a mensch you will apologize to me.

  10. a hack job of a montage put together by Rickman…

    Now we’re venturing into the realm of criticism. God, don’t tell me you’re a critic too–spare us!

    David Mamet’s politics are far too mainstream (at least when it comes to Jewish issues & Israel) than mine. Though I do think he’s a fine playwright and sometimes a good scriptwriter. So I don’t think I’d find much to respect in his views about “politicized theater.”

    Telling someone with whom you’re having an argument about theater that he should “go out & read a few plays” is quite insulting. I shouldn’t have used the word “idiot” & apoligize for my intemperance. But your comment was pretty ridiculous (though it didn’t deserve the word I used).

  11. Dude, my whole point is THEATRE criticism. Not political critique. Are you just getting the point now? I don’t give two cents for political views when it comes to theatre writing. All I care about is whether the play is good amd professionally written. “Rachel Corrie” is not well written. Mainstream critics were just too afraid to sound reactionary if they criticized the text on its artistic merits. So it got a green light in London. This is a very typical situation. Same thing happens to bad plays and movies that deal with such issues as the Holocaust and homosexuality. Very few critics dared to say that Spielberg basically directed a weepy kitsch when he made “Schindler’s List.” I believe Pauline Kael, writing one of her last reviews, managed to say the truth about it. When it comes to bad art I refuse to be a kind liberal.

  12. Oh, you ARE indeed a theater critic–or at least pretending to be one. How unfortunate.

    I would be interested to have a look at the script. If you know of a place online where it might be available (or even excerpts) I’d like to see it & judge for myself.

    I just looked up a British review of the play at the Times of London (a Murdoch paper btw) which said this about the production:

    Rickman and the Guardian journalist Katharine Viner have skilfully woven together extracts from Corrie’s journals and e-mails. Megan Dodds delivers a compelling performance as a Washington State romantic who despises consumerism and keeps a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl lying by her bed. The evening is suffused with a sense of a tragic waste of life.

    Clive Davis thinks the play was “skillfully woven together.” Too bad he doesn’t agree with you. And he gave it 3 stars out of 5 (not bad for a right-wing paper) . Sure, he thought there was a bit too much agitprop in the show. I’d expect that from someone writing in a paper owned by Murdoch. And who knows, perhaps it’s even true. Everyone’s just going to have to judge for themselves. You convince no one of your pt. of view with your abject dismissal of any merit in the play. You say “bad art” and I say “bad critic.”

    In case you didn’t notice, there have been scores of brilliant films and plays on the subjects of the Holocaust & homosexuality. There are also many fine films, Israeli and foreign, dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many, aside from you, add “Rachel Corrie” to that list. Guess you’ll have to go write your own list. Make sure you leave off any play or film that proposes too much sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.

    Just for the hell of it, I was underwhelmed by Schindler’s List as well. He was trying too hard to be kind & respectful & left all the nitty gritty drama out which enervated the script.

  13. you can buy the play on amazon.

    p.s. i just spoke to a friend in london. he said the play’s presentation was not a major event. the critics were not too impressed, nor too mean. nobody cared enough either way. as always, americans make too much of a big deal, providing free publicity for an otherwise mediocre work.

    p.p.s. for lack of better argument, you’re trying to put me in a box — i’m sure it’s easier for you to see me as some sort of anti palestinian ogre. it’s a safe comforting posiion for someone like you. it helps you to sleep better, thinking your world makes sense. but the world doesn’t make sense. and there’s a lot of complexity and contradiction. i allow for complexity within myself at least. i am a jew, a homosexual, and a socialist. that doesn’t mean i have to like inferior artistic works about any of these “issues.”

    now what is the value of a shrill and self righteous teenager’s email messages? just because she was crushed to death? it’s a great, private tragedy for her family. but had she been alive it wouldn’t occur to anyone to spend an evening in the theatre listening to her writing. rickman didn’t write a play. he just put together her diaries in a sort of montage. i bet there are more compelling voices we can be listening to about this this conflict.

  14. What a load of crap you peddle. Neither you nor your friend have a clue what’s going on in London regarding this play. Here’s The Guardian review (4 stars out of 5):

    Political theatre takes many forms. It can be an engrossing judicial inquiry like Bloody Sunday. It can be a family saga like Wesker’s Chicken Soup With Barley. Or it can be a deeply moving personal testimony like this selection from the writings of Rachel Corrie, edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, editor of Guardian Weekend Magazine, and performed by Megan Dodds.

    In the course of 90 minutes you feel you have not just had a night at the theatre: you have encountered an extraordinary woman.

    …what comes as a shock is realising that she combined an activist’s passion with an artist’s sensibility…

    …what you get here is a stunning account of one woman’s passionate response to a particular situation…

    Theatre can’t change the world. But what it can do, when it’s as good as this, is to send us out enriched by other people’s passionate concern.

    Or this review at Curtainup:

    ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ is not simply art. Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner have subtly devised the play from Rachel’s own writings and what we have here, as far as one can tell, is her truth. And what a writer she was! What a career she could have had. There are passages about love and work funnier than most sit-coms; accounts of parents and daughter’s fumbling attempts at understanding more touching than many plays or movies; descriptions of common human kindness and brutality; pen portraits; and lists, always lists for Rachel was an organised and organising young woman.

    What you won’t find much of here is polemic, apart from one passage when, exasperated by what she takes to be her parents’ failure to understand the nightmare world she has found, she lectures them… and promptly apologises. The piece is not about politics, but about someone experiencing a reality they never dreamt of.

    Rachel isn’t idealised. You sense she could perhaps be a pain, self-centred, stubborn, loquacious. But we are allowed see her self-assurance crumple, her certainties challenged, her faith in the future shaken. Shorn of its contemporary references, this could be a portrait of an idealist seen by Dostoievsky or Conrad. The audience is allowed to make up its own mind about Rachel. You can strongly disagree with her views but still be moved by the painful integrity with which she struggles to construct them.

    Those with no interest in world politics will still find this a masterly production. Alan Rickman’s direction is a masterpiece of fluent and subtle pacing. Hildegard Bechtler’s stark set is a work of art in its own right, taking us from the West Coast to Gaza in ten paces. But Megan Dodds gives us a stunning performance as Rachel, nuanced and profound over the ninety minutes she occupies the stage alone. This is what the theatre is for.

    Guess your friend missed these glowing reviews. As I wrote above, even the Times of London, a right-wing rag, gave it 3 stars out of 5.

    it helps you to sleep better, thinking your world makes sense. but the world doesn’t make sense. and there’s a lot of complexity and contradiction.

    Your smugness & condescension know no bounds. I need no lectures from you about the world & its complexity. You are the one who’s making snap judgments of things you know precious little about and haven’t seen.

    You know shit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You know shit about this play. I’m sick & tired of your dismissive know-it-all attitude.

  15. Walls and censorship will never prevail. The more fuss you make the more attention you will create. Thank you. Keep it up. The play will be a phenomenal success at this rate. I’d like the whole world to know Rachel’s story because it is a metaphor for what is happening in the Middle East and particularly Israel, only the bulldozer is now a williing coalition. Let Rachel speak for herself. If she offends you then ask yourselves why. To the West the image of a lone figure before a tank in Tianamen Square represents the struggle for free speech and I bet you applauded it. There’ll be more tanks and more bulldozers but you will not silence My Name Is Rachel Corrie!

  16. If you’re so sick of what I have to say why do you keep replying? I have an image of you with a megaphone in one hand, ripping your shirt with another, beating your chest convulsively, orating, saliva and foam flying all over the place…and all this to denounce the biggest enemy of all humankind — MOI!!!
    Well my game’s up. You have found me out. You must be related to Comrade Vyshinsky, that nice man from the 1930s USSR who established the presumption of guilt. He also had that unironic look in his eyes and the self righteous posture of the world’s savior. I confess, I have on occasion enjoyed sabotaging power grids in the Palestinian territories. The friends of International Zionism have paid me handsomely on occasion for poisoning little Palestinian babies. And it was I behind the wheel of that infamous bulldozer, crushing the aspiring young playwright. Now that I have an opportunity to get if off my chest in front of the one man prosecutor and jury, I feel remorse of the deepest kind. I must thank you for giving me an opportunity if not to reform myself (how can I after all these crimes?) then, at least, to come out of the subhuman shadows and warn all of the progressive world of the dangers of…bad theatre.

  17. So let me get this straight. You want to have your say here at my blog and also want the last word?? That’s chutzpa of the highest order. This is my blog, bud. I get to determine what I say & I will not let your metretricious nonsense pass for reasonable judgment here. I’ll keep replying as long as you keep spouting nonsense or until I decide that we end this dialogue of the deaf.

    I have an image of you with a megaphone in one hand, ripping your shirt with another, beating your chest convulsively, orating, saliva and foam flying all over the place

    Whoo-boy! You do have an active imagination. A bit over the top, mind you. But if you’re involved in theater then perhaps you like to chew the scenery. Why don’t you put yr imagination to work constructively and write a ‘better’ play than ‘Rachel Corrie.’ Oh & leave the criticism to others who have more of a knack for it, if you please.

    I never said you are humankind’s enemy. Again, your imagination has run rampant. I just don’t agree with or like yr opinions about this play.

  18. I don’t want the last say on your blog. Now you’re letting your imagination run wild. You have the option not to publish my comments.

  19. Marcel: Now you have your chance to hear Rachel’s words from a NYC stage on March 16th. It’s not My Name is Rachel Corrie, but it is Rachel Corrie. I doubt you’d be interested though since you’d rather pontificate about her legacy from the armchair of yr own home without experiencing it live in a theater.

  20. It’s certainly not something I’m willing to pay for. So the fact that it’s free makes it a little bit more palatable. Will I bother to see it? Who knows…

  21. Although I have told you that I would leave your site alone since you only want to hear posters who mirror your own ultra-liberal rantings, I saw this old one and could not resist. Did you not notice that the two photos you posted [yeah the ones ISM themselves admitted were misrepresented] are from two totally different days? Do you not see a disappearing treeline? Please, I thought everybody in the world heard about thqat. Well, I will go back to my world and leave you in yours, missed you on the front lines up north but we all know hopw much safer armchairs are, as you kindly told Marcel.

  22. missed you on the front lines up north but we all know hopw much safer armchairs are

    Considering your IP address is registered in San Jose, I wonder where you were during the war. And if you happened to inveigle yourself into serving “on the front lines” that might explain some of the problems the IDF got themselves into up there. Or did you serve in the propaganda battalion? There are enough braggards and blowhards among the military brass, w/o their needing any help fr. the likes of you.

    No, I’d venture to say you were sitting back in yr armchair too, eager to see those poor IDF soldiers bleed to the last drop of their blood on behalf of yr wretched vision of exterminating Hezbollah and all “enemies” of Israel.

  23. Ozick wrote a very powerful piece about the play and and its artistic value. Look it up. it’s in the recent issue of the new republic.

  24. Cynthia Ozick is a cultural neocon. W/o even reading what she wrote (but after having read many of her essays) I’m certain that her review denounces the play, which allows you to call it “very powerful.” And as for ‘artistic value,’ I’m sure she feels it has none. I’d be delighted if you told me I was wrong. But knowing yr views & hers, I’ve a pretty good idea of what she wrote. BTW, you & she were politically & culturally made for ea. other.

    Somewhere about 25-30 yrs ago Cynthia Ozick was a cultural arbiter for me on matters Jewish. She hasn’t been that for a very long time. Time has not been kind to her political/historical/cultural views. They’ve basically ossified.

    And next time you really want someone to read something, you’ll provide a link.

  25. her political persuasion aside, she has the guts to evaluate the actual literary and dramatic value of the piece — something a lot of critics stayed away from. the reason they did is because they know that people like you are going to brand them as neocons at best and nazis at worst. this is the same reason that nobody articulated the fact that schindler’s list was basically a manipulative weepy with few serious innovations, artistic or intellectual. i congratulate her on identifying what i discovered a while ago — rachel corrie’s writing is trite and undeserving of being presented in the artistic arena. in our culture of course a lot of things get into the artistic arena that shouldn’t, for reasons ranging from commercial to political. but the job of a serious and honest critic is to at least point it out. ozick has done it. your own politicized blindness makes you unable to evaluate art seprately from creed.

  26. her political persuasion aside,

    NO, you cannot separate her conservative political & cultural views fr. her literary analysis. One colors the other undeniably. It would simply not be possible for her to favorably review any literary work which had a negative view of Israel. That’s a severe limitation in her critical faculties.

    No one stays away from attacking Rachel Corrie because of anything I say. You’re attributing a power to me I do not have.

    You may find it surprising that I agree w. you about Schindler’s List. It was creaky & wooden. Many more powerful Holocaust films. Plus the actual oral histories of the survivors & books they have written are infinitely more real, human & powerful.

    rachel corrie’s writing is trite and undeserving of being presented in the artistic arena

    As I’ve said before, a chorus of two (you & Ozick) doesn’t persuade me of the correctness of yr views. Besides, the fact that it was a huge hit in London including with the critics argues against you. You come across as a finger wagging pedant. Not the makings of a probing critic by any means.

    your own politicized blindness makes you unable to evaluate art seprately from creed

    And I’ll just let me readers be the judge of that. They seem to think otherwise. And the above statement applies much more accurately to you & Ozick (but esp. her). Her politics render her unable to give a positive judgment on any work that criticizes Israel. And if I am “blind” why do we agree about Schindler?? Your world view is so prone to ironclad generalizations that it cannot adapt to contradictions like this one.

    I’d like to see you start a blog in which you pontificate as a cultural/artistic czar. Let’s see how many readers you have.

  27. i don’t want a blog. i don’t have any ambitions like yours.

    and once again the rave reviews of critics in london mean nothing to me. though i’m not sure where you got that. i only read one or two that were great. the rest were much cooler in their appraisal; most chose to praise the acting and directing — much safer than delving into the text. did you actually expect mainstream british or american newspapers to really criticize the play? like i said, it takes a brave critic like ozick to get to the real issue of artisitc merit. nobody wants to be seen bashing anne frank or the easter bunny.

    in the 20th century we’ve been through all this. once upon a time, soviet commisars of criticicizm denounced pasternak and praised sholokhov. fads and as well as political causes come and go. but artistic quality stays.

  28. Oh my, there’s a big bad conspiracy of silence fr. the mainstream media in favor of Rachel Corrie & in favor of critizing Israel. Puh-leeze! Chewing the scenery a bit, aren’t we? As for Ozick’s “bravery” spare me.

    Pls do continue on in yr self-righteous obliviousness. But your close-mindedness would be more appreciated at ultra-Israel sites I assure you.

  29. the old man silverstein engages in censorship, i see. while i made no “abusive” or “profane” remarks, i was blacklisted.
    well well up to now i disagreed with you but took your point of you serioulsy. but i don’t have to respect censorship and those who engage in it. now i can earn my blacklisting. FUCK YOU :)))))

  30. Marcel: You are an utter moron. I didn’t “censor” you. Did you ever stop to think that this blog might have an anti-spam filter that automatically throws all comments coming fr. IP addresses which have never published a comment here before into moderation??? You published this comment fr. an IP address you never used previously. So it threw you into moderation. It has nothing to do with you & everything to do w. yr IP address. Really, you’re such a twit.

    No, you didn’t make any “abusive” or “profane” remarks (until the delightful epithet in your last one) & so I didn’t blacklist you. It took me all of 3 1/2 hrs. to remove yr comment fr. moderation & publish it. If you’d only had a tad more patience before going ballistic, you might’ve not come across as the blithering idiot you did in yr last comment.

    But I do think “fuck you” earns you the banning you suspected you’d earn previously.

    And btw, the reason I moderate all comments fr. first time IP addresses is because there is a huge pool of hateful ultra-Israel folk (& some Arab ultra-nationalists as well) out there who like to beat up on this blog. By invoking moderation, I can prevent some of the worst & most foul fr. getting published.

    UPDATE: It actually appears that the IP address you used is NOT different than one you used previously. All I can say is that an anti-spam filter is a complex piece of coding & it sometimes has false positives. It makes a mistake & appears to have made on here. I don’t know why it threw that comment into moderation, but it did.

  31. Her death is tragic.
    But the two photos were not taken moments apart.
    They were presented as before and after, suggesting she was standing in plain sight of the driver immediately before being run over.
    They are not the same bulldozer or the same location.
    Yes both photos were taken the same day in Rafah, but hours apart.

    Was she deliberately killed? Perhaps. But the ISM presenting these photos in the misleading way they did questions the credibility of their claim of events and hurts their cause.

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