Wiping Israel off the map?

I just read on the Jewish Chronicle website that Harper Collins left Israel off of the map in an atlas it sells in the Middle East.

The American-based publishing giant said it regretted leaving the country out of atlases it sells to English-speaking schools in the Middle East.

In a statement reported in the Israeli media, it said: “HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas. This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused”.

They're making it seem like an accident or oversight or something.  Let's have a look at this map:

Well well, the West Bank and Gaza but no Israel.  And no Palestine either.

But see more of the JC report:

Earlier in the week Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins, told the Catholic newspaper, The Tablet, that including Israel in its “Collins Primary Geography Atlas For The Middle East” would have been “unacceptable” to customers in the Gulf states.

Leaving Israel off the maps incorporated “local preferences,” it said.

But if the omission of Israel was to incorporate "local preferences" why no Palestine? And if they do include Israel where will the boundaries go?

I tend to the view that Israel's existence is only temporary anyway.  Maybe Harper Collins should simply wait until Israel disappears and then publish its atlas in the Middle East.

Posters from the Palestinian Revolution

I'm going to blog some of the posters and maybe some other things I saw at the RichMix venue in London's Bethnal Green Road tonight at the exhibition, The World is With Us, Global Film and Poster Art from the Palestinian Revolution, 1968 - 1980.

But first up I must say what a tremendous success the evening was.  The RichMix has various levels and the reception, you know, drinks and nibbles was on the ground floor and the exhibition was downstairs in the basement.  Karma Nabulsi opened the proceedings by explaining what the exhibition was all about and she made the now customary reference to Palestine Film Foundation director, Nick Denes, who has worked very hard to bring the whole thing together.

The exhibition consisted of several old televisions positioned around the room on tables and posters adorning the walls.  The age of each TV was matched to the age of the film it was showing and there were headphones wired to each TV so each one could be focused on individually.  I didn't actually pick up a program for the event so I can't say what any of the films were. Some were colour and some were black and white.  There was also an old radio and an old reel to reel tape player to show the kind of technology that was available to our revolutionary heroes during the period under view.

Anyway, here are some of the pics I took and tweeted in the order that I took them:

That's simply the view from the ground floor down to the basement and here's what you see as you land:

But the downstairs wasn't open yet so that was a sneak preview.  Here's the poster announcing the event and the series:

And here's Karma Nabulsi introducing the event:

And here are some of those TVs I mentioned:

 

See that last one?  Can't see a thing on the screen hardly. But look at those phones.  Quaint huh?

And now some posters:

Now I'm hoping the posters will mostly speak for themselves because I spent the whole evening snapping and tweeting the narratives so if you want the narrative I tweeted with the pic please check out @jewssf on twitter:

 

 

Now that last one doesn't hang well with the others.  It was narrated on the wall as 1980 and nothing else, or artist unknown.  It's the only one that drew criticism on twitter and I must admit I found it kind of perplexing.  But see what Nick Denes had to say about the whole exhibition over at MEMO :

It was a lengthy and quite difficult process choosing these posters, as there are so many striking works one might choose," says Nick Denes, Co-Director of the series. "But our aim has been - insofar as we can restrain ourselves - not to pick the 'best' or our 'favourite' works, but rather ones that were widely used or seen in their time, and, or which represent key aesthetic or thematic concerns.

And it's that "thematic concern" that this last poster conveys: international solidarity, the magnet that draws so many of us to the Palestinian cause.

Here are some afterthought shots taken just while the event was closing and I was leaving:

 

And here's my parting shot:

There's a whole site, The World is With Us, devoted to the exhibition and its whereabouts at any given time. It does the exhibition far more justice than I have done here but you really have to be there to appreciate what the exhibition has achieved.

The Death of Klinghoffer - the opera - ENO

I went to see The Death of Klinghoffer at The Coliseum last night.  I'm just watching the trailer on youtube and I hear the director, Tom Morris, describing the opera as "powerfully evenhanded".


 

Others might say "annoyingly evenhanded" and still others would describe it as too in favour of one side or the other. There was one chap demonstrating outside with a placard saying that a disabled man had been murdered by terrorists for being a Jew and that we patrons should "enjoy your evening at the ENO". A woman told him that she had seen the opera before and that he should see it for himself and she offered to buy him a ticket. He refused. John Adams has a huge reputation as a very accomplished composer. The librettist, Alice Goodman, was never commissioned again.

UPDATE: here's the first review I've seen.  It's from The Guardian's Andrew Clements:

In the event it all passed off quite peacefully. The demonstration against the staging of The Death of Klinghoffer that had been predicted in some sections of the press appeared to be limited to one person standing outside the Coliseum and brandishing a rather small poster, and at the final curtain the composer, his work and English National Opera's production were all warmly received.

So 21 years after it was first seen in Brussels,John Adams's second opera has finally reached the London stage. This a fine, intelligent treatment of it, though some aspects inevitably underline the work's fundamental problems, which have nothing to do with its political agenda, whether real or imagined, and everything to do with the way in which the work is conceived dramatically, and the language in which Alice Goodman's libretto is couched.

For in many ways The Death of Klinghoffer is more a reflection on the infamous Palestinian hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean in 1985, and the subsequent death of one of its passengers, the Jewish, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, than a depiction of the event itself. It's the absence of that narrative element in the text, and the effect that has on the music which Adams composed, that robs the work of a real dramatic spine. For the first act at least the score seems much closer to oratorio than opera, with much more meditation and recollection than real-time action, and the overwrought imagery and sheer opacity of Goodman's text only exacerbate it. The pace quickens in the second half – a narrative thread more or less runs through it – and the dramatic focus is sharper, but the final impression is blurred.

Tom Morris's production (designed by Tom Pye) works hard to compensate for the opera's failure to tell its own story. Significant dates are flashed up on the set, explanatory captions supply historical context, and if the effect is to make the piece seem more of a documentary than Adams and Goodman ever intended, then it's an unfortunate necessity. The stage pictures are economical, carefully managed and effective – the chorus unfurl green flags as Palestinians, carry olive trees as Israelis. Little is stylised, though some episodes are choreographed (byArthur Pita) and enough grainy realism remains to make the true nature of the tragedy vivid.

What emerges clearly too from the performance under Baldur Brönnimann is the sheer beauty of so much of Adams's score, with its dark-hued sonorities, chromatically inflected harmonies and keening instrumental lines. The great choruses that provide the opera's structural pillars are superbly sung by the ENO Chorus, though it's a real shame that the ravishing one that opens the second act has been cut here. All of the solo roles are taken memorably too, whether it's the cameos from Kathryn Harries as the Austrian woman, Lucy Schaufer as the Swiss grandmother, and Kate Miller-Heidke as the British dancing girl, or the major contributions from Christopher Magiera as the Captain, Richard Burkhard as the hijacker Mamoud, Michaela Martens as Marilyn Klinghoffer and especially Alan Opie as Leon Klinghoffer himself, who sings his final number, the Aria of the Falling Body, which Adams calls a gymnopédie, with devastating simplicity.

While the place in the repertory for The Death of Klinghoffer remains unclear – does it belong in the opera house or, perhaps slightly modified, in the concert hall? – ENO's production does underline its musical worth, and its timeless seriousness. It's a major achievement.

And it's one in the eye for the lobby. Zionists have worked hard to have this either not performed at all or panned by the critics. Andrew Clements's review judges it purely on artistic merit.