RUTHFULLY YOURS

Way down at the very bottom of the Victorian Education Department’s list of plays deemed suitable for study in HSC classrooms there is Othello, which the teachers’ guide helpfully attributes to William Shakespeare. These are modern teachers we are talking about, remember, and some maybe unaware of the Bard, there being too few hours in the day to grapple with the classics when sexism, racism, gender fluidity and environmental destruction occupy so much of an educator’s time and mind. Those topics certainly rate higher places on the reading list than the tale of a Moor prone to inflicting domestic violence, his wife’s hanky and a typically treacherous white man. That may or may not be how Othello is taught these days, with or without reference to the rampant Islamophobia in the Venice of old, but in the absence of a plot summary on the study list of “texts” such a tack must be deemed a distinct possibility. We can be certain, however, that James Thurber’s depiction (above) of Act V, Scene II’s nasty business in the bedroom will not be an approved illustration.

Other plays are more fulsomely described. For example, consider the modern re-working of Dangerous Liaisons by Christopher Hampton:

This presentation of Dangerous Liaisons utilises cross-gendered performance, bouffon clowning, grotesquery and a high-camp aesthetic. Genders are flipped to emphasise the satirical nature of the text … Hampton’s dissections of sexism, sexuality and the role of gender in warfare are potent as he takes a classic text and brings a super-feminist and contemporary approach … This production acknowledges … the possibility of a post-gendered society, one where the divide between male and female is not so black and white.

Then there is Berthold Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui , whose central Chicago gangster is — or rather was — a burlesque of Hitler. That is no longer the case, apparently, as teachers need to alert children to the fact that the jackboots are today being worn by an entirely new threat to civilised life, conservatives:

Each scene will be its own set piece, demonstrating a particular aspect of Arturo’s rise and highlighting how that moment corresponds with the historical rise of Hitler. This production draws connections between the events of the play, Hitler’s ascension to power, and the current waves of conservative politics spreading across the western world.

Mind you, again according to the notes, this time for The Honey Bees by Caleb Lewis, capitalist depredations have left little of the world not yet ruined:

The ‘colony collapse disorder’ that provides a background for the narrative is a real environmental disaster that has been spreading across the globe since 2007, laying waste to bee populations wherever it strikes and it’s still not known why. In the play, the only country untouched is Australia. This is a vitally important story of human relationships set against a backdrop of an almost invisible worldwide catastrophe happening right now.

Once the HSC kiddies have been exposed to the general rottenness of the West, the same West which hires so many theatre teachers, there is Tales of a City by the Sea by Samah Sabawi. Set in Gaza, it is said to depict the lives and loves of Palestinians who must exist with the thought that a Zionist bomb might come down the chimney at a moment’s notice.

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and an expert on Middle East conflicts, discusses what the Palestinian leadership really wants.http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

The Middle East has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.

Many Christians in Arab countries and in Palestinian Authority (PA), without a state or anyone else to support them, are still behaving as dhimmis, paying lip service to Muslim Arab “lords” in exchange for protection in their original homelands.

The Palestinians plan activities, pay salaries and fund anti-Israeli Christian dhimmi organizations, in order to make Western Christians believe in the “Palestinian cause” — by which they mean the establishment of another Arab-Islamic dictatorship state with no human rights in it.

Coexistence is not the issue for Christians here, but rather fear for their own existence — based on the ruthless lack of freedom under the PA, as in all Arab states.

Christians in Holy Land, Judea and Samaria — what today is called the West Bank or the Palestinian Authority (PA) — are, with the Jews and assorted Arabs, the indigenous people of the land. The region has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.

After the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula in 637 AD, the Jews and early followers of Christianity were forced either to convert to Islam or accept the rule of sharia (Islamic religious law) under the Islamic Caliphate, with its dhimmi laws designed to remind you that you are inferior. In Islam, dhimmis are non-Muslims — and therefore second-class, barely tolerated residents — who live under separate, harsher, laws and have to pay protection money (a “tax” called the jizya) to safeguard their lives and property.

Since the end of WW2, about 100 million refugees from Europe, Asia and Africa have been integrated into their host countries, unlike the Palestinian Arab refugees, who have been sacrificed by their leadership on the altar of delegitimizing Israel. According to General Alexander Galloway, the UNRWA Director in Jordan, as recounted at a May 25, 1953 hearing of the Near East Senate Subcommittee: “The Arabs states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”

Jordan was the only Arab country accepting the January 26, 1952 UN Resolution #413 (a 3-year-$200MN plan proposed by the UN Secretary General, Dag Hammerskjold) to integrate Palestinian refugees into their host Arab countries. UN Secretary General, Trygve Lie said on January 3, 1950: The refugees will lead an independent life in the countries which shelter them…. The refugees will no longer be maintained by an international organization….”

Dr. Elfan Rees, an advisor on refugees to the World Council of Churches, contended that due to Arab deception and pressure “The UN Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) is feeding the dead and non-refugees (NY Post, June 11, 1959).”

UNRWA was established on December 8, 1949 as a temporary, 2-3-year relief agency, but became permanent, the largest UN agency, overstaffed, featuring a $1 BN pension fund, and used as a dagger aimed at Israel.