Robert Fisk: The erosion of free speech

[Briar]

Robert Fisk: The erosion of free speech
It was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people

You've got to fight. It's the only conclusion I can draw as I see the renewed erosion of our freedom to discuss the Middle East. The most recent example - and the most shameful - is the cowardly decision of the New York Theatre Workshop to cancel the Royal Court's splendid production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

It's the story - in her own words and emails - of the brave young American woman who travelled to Gaza to protect innocent Palestinians and who stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in an attempt to prevent the driver from destroying a Palestinian home. The bulldozer drove over her and then reversed and crushed her a second time. "My back is broken," she said before she died.

An American heroine, Rachel earned no brownie points from the Bush administration which bangs on about courage and freedom from oppression every few minutes. Rachel's was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people. But when I read that James Nicola, the New York Theatre Workshop's "artistic director" - his title really should be in quotation marks - had decided to "postpone" the play "indefinitely" because (reader, hold your breath) "in our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities (sic) in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas. ... we had a very edgy situation", I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

...

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article350569.ece

[Jim Sagle]

1. Fisk ain't nuthin' but filth.

[MasonJar]

2. Excure me? You support the erosion of free speech and you dis-

miss the irony of defending the wrong people as an excuse not to honor this brave young American. The wrong people are the ones who are being heard in DC and now obviously in NYC.