Excerpts: Anti-Israel theme imposed on Egyptian Merchant of Venice. Value of
alternative media. 11 July 2007
+++AL-AHRAM WEEKLY 5-11 July '07:"A cloak-and-dagger Shylock"
HEADING:"... The Merchant of Venice, Nehad Selaiha finds the interpretation
too simplistic"
QUOTE:"pointedly linked to ...Israeli forces in the occupied terrirories"
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EXCERPTS:... director Galal El-Sharqawi,... production of Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice ... was cleverly calculated to win the sympathy and
admiration of everyone, both patriotically and artistically. . . . a
production ... in which the Jewishness of Shylock is consistently negatively
stressed and pointedly linked in the two posters facing each other on either
side of the stage at the beginning and end of the play, one showing a
heavily armed Israeli soldier, the other a child waving a Palestinian flag)
to the brutal practices of the Israeli forces in the occupied territories,
... Any show that makes a show of intransigent opposition to any peace with
Israel -- an ugly fact of life, but still a fact -- has vast publicity
potential and fat commercial value.. . .
. . .To force the Arab-Israeli struggle on this play, using the ugly
history of anti-Semitism in Christian Europe to bolster the Arab argument,
and hauling in Al-Aqsa mosque as a rallying cry for an Islamic holy war
against Jews, rather than the state of Israel, does more damage than good to
the just cause of the Palestinians and their lawful rights. Traditionally,
the Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, were keen to dissociate themselves
from European anti-Semitism, regarding it as an insult to all the three holy
religions . . .
+++ARAB NEWS (Saudi) 11 July '07:"The Alternative Media: Free Speech Is
Still
Possible"Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera. -
QUOTE:"deficiency of the prevailing
media"
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EXCERPTS:
To speak of an alternative media is to acknowledge the deficiency of the
prevailing media, the mainstream, in ... responding to the woes of the
general public, the overwhelming majority of people who are almost
completely disregarded by the corporate media everywhere.. . .This is, of
course, problematic if one is to consider the role of the citizenry in
sustaining a healthy democracy, which itself requires an educated and
well-informed public. . . .But it should be recognized that democratic
societies,...are more than capable of tipping the balance in favor of free
speech - as opposed to nations that are violently coerced not to exercise
the same right. . . . important to note that the success or failure of the
alternative media is wholly reliant on the engagement and the support of the
public .. . The choice is ultimately ours.
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Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA
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