October 7, 2007

Broadcast Date: 
Oct 7 2007

Desmond Tutu is disinvited from a Minneapolis university over remarks comparing the Israeli occupation to apartheid South Africa; a new children's theater company inspires hope in the Jenin refugee camp; plus Israeli world music phenom Idan Raichel.

Episode segments
  • Desmond Tutu Disinvited from a Minneapolis university
    American Politics
    Peter Rachleff, Jewish community activist and professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    The Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis had booked Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu to speak on campus. But then a spokesperson for the state's Jewish Community Relations Council told the university president that a speech Tutu made in 2002, comparing the Israeli occupation to apartheid, was anti-Semitic. And that was enough for the president to cancel Tutu's appearance--and remove the program's chair.

  • The Freedom Theatre of Jenin
    Occupation
    Juliano Mer Khamis, founder and artistic director of Jenin's Freedom Theatre
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    The Freedom Theatre of Jenin, founded in 2006, provides the youth of Jenin Refugee Camp with a safe space where they can develop the skills, self-knowledge, and confidence necessary to peacefully resist the occupation and to reach out beyond the limits of their own community. The theater replaces an earlier children's theater project that was destroyed by the Israeli army during the reoccupation of Jenin in 2002.

  • The Idan Raichel Project
    Music

    Idan Raichel, musician and producer

    Cabra Casey, vocalist
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    The New York Times writes, "The Idan Raichel Project was a huge hit in Israel for good reason: it envisions a modern, multicultural nation where voices of young and old, Ethiopian and Yemenite, are all heard in songs devoted to love and tolerance."