UN turns Gaza shelling into theater

I didn't see this posted anywhere, mods feel free to move (or remove) if necessary.

There is nothing ordinary about this advocacy campaign for a large UN institution. The lights dim before a packed audience and a slideshow begins: images of Gaza in conflict, people fleeing their homes, buildings on fire. Then stands Chris Gunness, the chief spokesman of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the organisation responsible for the support and welfare of Palestinian refugees. "I am a warehouse," he says. "I am a dying warehouse, the victim of an excruciatingly painful fire that burned me down." It is the start of a remarkable 20-minute, one-man play intended for Israeli audiences but so far unwelcome in Israeli theatres. It tells the story of the main UN warehouse in Gaza, a storage point for food and aid for a million Palestinians, and how it was hit repeatedly by Israeli artillery shells, some loaded with white phosphorous, during the Gaza war – how it was set ablaze and burnt to the ground. This is a story that "until now has remained buried, untold," Gunness said at the debut performance of his show at the French Cultural Centre, east Jerusalem, on Wednesday night.

Gunness doesn't accuse Israel of war crimes in the show.But, during the first performance in May, a man in the audience got up to disrupt the show and accuse Gunness of distorting the facts.Berger said the show generates a strong reaction from Israelis, most of whom serve some time in the military. Many are jarred by the images."People can't face reality and, once they do face it, it's realizing that a lot of what you have been taught to believe is true (isn't) necessarily true," she said. "All your truths collapse — and this is something very difficult to face."

www.guardian.co.uk...www.un.org... 09.html

I have not been able to locate any clips of the show, but it sounds interesting. The creator, Chris Gunness, has put it together to illustrate the mistakes of war. He plays a UN warehouse that was burnt down during the January fighting. I think the quotes and links to the original say more than I could, and I just wanted to throw it out there. Unfortunately, it is having great difficulty getting played in Israel despite his claims (as I said I have not seen it to make that determination) that it is completely apolitical.

Yeah, that warehouse millions of Gazans were depending on that burned in the Israeli counterattack is a shame.

Maybe folks should be some kind of pissed at the ones who started launching rockets across the Israeli border, continued to do so for weeks after Israel warned them not to, and were in turn forced to counterattack.

No attack, no counterattack.

No counterattack, no burned warehouse.

reply to post by dooper


Did you see the part where the UN workers were contacting the IDF for 2 hours? 2 hrs of shelling and the the use of the white phosphorous before the oops, we were unaware. Or let me guess this was another case of confirmed Hamas fighters firing from in, or within the area of the UN station.

reply to post by searching4truth


When you are engaging targets, you really don't give much thought to the neighboring areas. You knock out the targets.

Israel had one benefit the UN and Hamas didn't.

Eyes in the sky.

Their UAV's are so good the Russians are buying them.

So if the UN wants to get all pissed off - they should jump on Hamas which snugged up close against them and did their firing.