"iWitness" a provocative look at war, human choice

[Tom Joad]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=stageNews&storyID=2006-04-12T000741Z_01_N11247392_RTRIDST_0_STAGE-STAGE-IWITNESS-DC.XML&pageNumber=0&imageid=∩=&sz=13

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Written by Israel's leading playwright, Joshua Sobol, and adapted by Barry Edelstein (from an English version by Sobol), "iWitness," a one-act without intermission, is compelling, rich in ideas and wonderfully realized under the sensitive direction of Edelstein.
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"iWitness" tells the true story of Franz Jagerstatter (the gripping Gareth Saxe), an Austrian Catholic farmer, a good husband and father, who steadfastly refused to wear the uniform of the Third Reich. He was executed in 1943.

What makes "iWitness" so remarkable is the character of Franz, certainly the least remarkable of resister-heroes. He is no Joan of Arc, Sir Thomas More or Gandhi. Somehow, his resistance resists definition -- but it's there, somewhere in the human psyche that rebels against the Germanic world that encompasses him.
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Better Review here:
From the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=15591
Sobol’s ‘iWitness’: Principled or Treasonous?

Joshua Sobol’s play recounts a German refusenik who chose death over army service during World War II.

At the height of the intifada, in 2002, more than 600 Israeli pilots and soldiers, many in elite units, refused to serve in what they considered the occupied Palestinian territories.

hese were not pacifists or conscientious objectors to war in any form. Many had fought in Israel’s past wars for survival, but they refused to bear arms in what they saw as an oppressive campaign.
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In the play “iWitness,” opening April 19 at the Mark Taper Forum, in which all the characters are referred to by their first names, Franz is visited in his prison cell by family and friends the day before his execution.

His wife, boyhood pals, a former mistress, the jailer, a doctor, the prison chaplain, even one of the judges who sentenced him try to change Franz’s decision. He is promised assignment to a hospital unit where he won’t have to shoot at anybody, but he remains adamant. He will not wear a German uniform.

When the play was first performed in Tel Aviv in 2002, it was met by near riots, according to press reports. A few critics tried to “manipulate” the theme, said Sobol, by charging him with writing a defense brief, by analogy, for the Israeli refuseniks.
More....
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See the rest, especially to get a clearer insight to Sobol's motivation (more at asking questions than providing answers)....

This is posted to honor those that refuse illegal orders issued from politicians in Washington DC, Jerusalem, Berlin, or anywhere where authority has deemed it necessary to promote wars and violent aggression.

For a list of those in the U.S. military who have publicly refused in the Iraq war, please see http://tomjoad.org/WarHeroes.htm

Israeli refuseniks:
Courage to Refuse
http://www.seruv.org.il

Yesh Gvul
There are things decent people do not do.
http://www.yeshgvul.org.il/english/

(there are other groups of Israeli resisters)

Palestinian non-violent resistance to military occupation:
http://www.pcr.ps/
Its founder, Ghassan Andoni, (along with Israeli Jeff Halper) was nominated this year for the Nobel Peace Prize by the American Friends Service Committee.
Andoni is also a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/