had this from Palestine Solidarity...
UK Tour: Riding Lights' play "Salaam Bethlehem" until 21st December
08 December 2007
UK Tour: Riding Lights play "Salaam Bethlehem"
"Pray for us, visit us, tell our story,"-
Riding Lights Theatre Company does just that!
Visit the website: http://www.ridinglights.org
In May 2006 Riding Lights Theatre Company, a professional touring company noted for their eclectic range of productions, visited the dwindling Palestinian Christian community in Israel. Their visit was supported by Lightline Pilgrimages with the aim of the visit being not to find new routes to the Middle East peace process but simply to hear the remarkable stories of some very remarkable people whose message was simple 'Pray for us, visit us, tell our story.'
From this visit Riding Lights' latest play Salaam Bethlehem was born.
'It's 2006 in Bethlehem and life is getting harder for the Mansour family. While dwindling numbers of tourists still make it through the checkpoints, the grip of the separation wall gets tighter, wages are frozen and travel permits refused. Even Ibrahim's special vitamin deliveries from the States are hardly good news of great joy. Despite increasing restrictions, the warmth and vitality of daily life in the West Bank continues, until long-buried secrets and the consequences of forty years of frustration threaten to tear the family apart. Salaam Bethlehem invites you to experience the hopes and fears of Bethlehem's Christian community and to look with them beyond the wall to a time when..."
"I went to Salaam Bethlehem with many sympathies for the Jewish people and half-expecting to be beaten over the head for that. What I saw and heard was an incredibly powerful and multi-faceted treatment of the huge problems in Israel and Palestine. Sensitive and sympathetic but also provocative, it opened up all sorts of issues and questions for me. I thoroughly recommend that people see it."
The Revd Roger Simpson, Vicar, St Michael le Belfrey Church, York
Salaam Bethlehem is a fascinating, lively and moving encounter with people whose witness in the land of Jesus's birth is something for which the worldwide church should be profoundly grateful. They have a crucial voice within the cacophony of tragedy and recrimination in the Middle East. This compelling, inspirational performance aims to establish a profound and enduring relationship between the audiences in the UK and the Christians in Bethlehem and other parts of the Holy Land and to highlight how the challenges they face have significant implications for the worldwide Christian community.
For more details, venues and to book your tickets now visit www.salaambethlehem.com or telephone 01904 613000
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6 comments:
Sigh. Another day another piece full of factual errors. Derek, do you ever check this stuff before you put it on your blog.
The Palestinian Christian community in Israel isn't dwindling. It's thriving. The community has grown umpteen times since 1948, it has a higher standard of living and greater civil freedoms than any other Christian community in the Middle East.
The Christian community in the West Bank and Gaza however, is in serious trouble. Yes, some of that is attributable to the measures taken by the Israelis against the entire Palestinian population (not just Christians), but a great chunk of their trouble derives from the increasing Islamification of Palestinian life and the threats that this brings to Christians, who are not accepted as equals by some of the Islamists. In Bethlehem at the start of the second intifada, Christian houses in Beit Jala were taken over by Islamist terror groups to fire on the neighbouring Israeli settlements. The CHristians didn't want their houses to be used for this purpose, but were placed in an impossible situation: if they said no, they would be treated all the more as traitors to the Islamic Palestinian cause. I bet this play doesn't mention any of that, does it?
By the way, can you please tell us your reasons for supporting a boycott of Israel. You seem great at bunging stuff on your blog, but rather less capable of defending what you post against comments.
"By the way, can you please tell us your reasons for supporting a boycott of Israel. You seem great at bunging stuff on your blog, but rather less capable of defending what you post against comments."
Mr.Anonymous I wouldn't expect that anytime soon! 'Ex' marxists like our friend Mr.Wall do not do debate they do dogma.
Why shouldn't Derek support a boycott of a sectarian state which has violently stolen the land of the indigenous people, and discriminates at every level against Muslims and Christians on behalf of members of the master religion? Israel only exists because it is sponsored by western imperialism for its own ends (i.e. oil and strategic domination). Zionists, of course, opposed the boycott of Nazi Germany, and Israel always had close links with apartheid South Africa, so I suppose there is a consistency hee among its supporters.
Ah, the old game of throwing Zionist and Nazi into the same sentence and hoping that the mud sticks. Nice try.
As for indigenous people, the Arab conquest took place in the 7th century, about 700 hundred years after the Jews were expelled. So which indigenous people are you talking about?
Either way, this is irrelevant, as you know. If Derek Wall supports a boycott of Israel, let him say so and explain his reasons. As the principal male speaker of the Green Party, I don't think he can just shout "Zionists, Nazis, Apartheid" and expect to get away with it.
It’s a fact that the Zionist movement opposed a boycott of Nazi Germany. But then anti-Semitism and Zionism have always been twinned. The anti-Semite wants to be rid of Jews, and the Zionist collaborates with that wish. The Balfour declaration was the work of anti-Semites – another historical fact. Zionism has always been much closer to fascism than to liberalism. Israel was planned by ethnic cleansers and its history has always been one of unrelenting repression and land theft.
I’m talking about the indigenous people who were living in Palestine in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century, who vastly outnumbered the small number of Jews who lived there, and who have now been violently persecuted for a century by an unholy alliance of western imperialism and violent Zionist ethnic cleansers.
It’s funny how trolls never have the courage to identify themselves, isn’t it?
Oh pur-lease. Get over yourself with your "Zionism has always been much closer to fascism than liberalism" claptrap. Tell that to the Holocaust survivors who were lucky enough to flee to Palestine after the war.
You Left anti-Zionists are just unbelievable with your Zionist Nazi collaboration conspiracies. Aren't you just a little bit embarrassed to have to drag the Nazis in to win your argument? Pitiable isn't it.
Glad you've revised your definition of "indigenous".
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