America’s Addiction to Violence

America’s Addiction to Violence

 by MARK GRAHAM

December 17, 2012

The United States is the number one supplier of weapons on the planet, its military the world’s largest employer.  Violence has become America’s major export to the world and we have reaped the financial rewards.  The only problem is we’re addicted to the drug we’re peddling beyond our borders.  The addiction passes on to the next generation through the discursive bloodstream and into the collective womb of culture.  Throughout their early years we saturate our children with violent images and language:  First person shooter games.  Action heroes.  Military heroes.  Heroes with guns.  Men with guns.  Men using guns on other men and women and children and animals.  We teach them the path of aggression, competition, and the joys of humiliating your opponents.  Our entertainments provide orgies of righteous vengeance and self-piteous victimhood.  And when one of our children unleashes his monstrous hate on other children we should be horrified—but we should not be surprised.  We have taught our children well

As a teacher and a parent, I could readily imagine the full horror of the massacre in Connecticut.  I struggle to keep my children safe from any kind of danger.  At my job, I have had to practice lockdowns and deal with bomb threats.  I also know how fragile our sense of security is.  Inevitably in the wake of tragedies like this, people call for stricter security.  Make us safe, they implore.  Add more cops, more metal detectors, more guns to protect us from guns.  All in vain.  No matter how much we surrender our freedom for safety, how much we try to turn our homes and schools into fortresses, we will never be able to keep death from making that appointment in Samarra with us if he’s hell-bent on being there.

In the wake of the tragedy, my wife and I went out for some mindless entertainment—the latest James Bond film.  Despite the critical accolades, it left a bad taste in our mouths.  Fifty years of James Bond, the film proclaimed in the final credits—and I wondered why I still bother to entertain myself with such tedious and joyless orgies of violence.  It has
become a habit—one acquired over decades of constant exposure—an addiction that no longer provides pleasure or even numbness.  It’s more on the order of a repetition compulsion.  The Dream Machine plays back the same spectacles of hypermasculine bodies and pyrotechnic destruction from one year to the next.  The events in Connecticut make it easier than ever to see these films are lies: Shots fired and no pain, no disfigurement, no real danger.  War with no fear, no trauma, no lingering nightmares.

The most warlike nation with the least number of people ever having felt the terrible impact of war, America entertains itself with killing.  Our sports feel like combat, while the fantasies of combat we consume look like sport.  The mascot of the school district where I teach in rural Pennsylvania is a bullet.  Not a bulldog or huskie or owl or canary.  A bullet—the same thing that killed twenty-six people in another school on Friday.  Where I work many of us try our best to promote peace and tolerance, to expose students to different points of view, different cultures, different visions for the future.  Nearby my school, there’s a shooting range.  When I go for walks during my lunch break I can almost always hear someone firing automatic pistols, shotguns, and rifles, the gunshots echoing off my school’s feeble walls.

Inevitably and appropriately, voices rise up in the wake of these mass murders and cry out for gun control laws, for an end to violence, for America to wake up.  Their counterparts froth at the mouth over the sacredness of the Constitution (which in all other cases they’re all too willing to discount).  The feedback loop stumbles along with the old gun control versus liberty debate.  The intractable points of view make for predictable and quickly-forgettable copy in the opinion columns.  Soon we let the matter die.

The Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist in discussing the origins of genocide wrote, “It is not knowledge we lack.  What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” So watch Obama weep as he proclaims: “Our hearts are broken today. The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them…” Then ask yourself why he doesn’t weep for the children who die at his orders from drone attacks in Pakistan—eight times the number of children horribly murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Why are we surprised when the violence we wreak on the rest of the world should plant its poison seeds in the hearts of our children, turning them into murderers of children?  If this tragedy means anything, it’s that America must confront its addiction to violence, to entertainments that equate manhood with killing, and to an entire political and economic system that privileges war-making over the future—and the precious lives—of our own children.

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Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

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A Route to Sanity? The Beginning of the End for Mindless America Support for Israel?

A Route to Sanity?

The Beginning of the End for Mindless America Support for Israel?

by JOHN GRANT

December 13, 2012
   
The legacy of the Zionist revolutionaries who once enraptured the parlors of Europe and America with talk of a Jewish homeland as a moral beacon in a benighted region has instead bequeathed to the Jewish world and the West a highly militarized dependency — a state that has achieved great feats of cultural and economic development but has failed to build strong enough institutions to balance its military zeitgeist with imaginative or engaging diplomacy.
 
- Patrick Tyler, from Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country — and Why They Can’t Make Peace

Recently there have been cracks showing in the Israeli militarist right’s lock on free thinking in the minds of citizens of the United States.

This mind lock in America became evident to me some years ago when an Israeli gunship pilot from an Israeli anti-war group spoke in Philadelphia. He told about a conversation he had in Tel Aviv with a member of The American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. With some threat in his tone, the man said,” Say anything you want here in Israel, but don’t go to America.” America, of course, is the bankroller for what Tyler calls the “highly militarized dependency” that Israel has become.

Serious cracks began to show up after the Palestinian Authority won statehood recognition in the UN and the Netanyahu government responded by publicly approving steps leading to a huge development east of Jerusalem that would make a two-state reality impossible.

First, there was the prominent upper west side New York synagogue that proudly broadcast its opposition to both Israeli and US leadership by declaring the UN General Assembly recognition of Palestine as a nation state in the world of nations as “a great moment for us as citizens of the world.”

Some Jewish American members of the B’nai Jewshurun synagogue were “delighted;” one said: “I think it was great.” Some members were, of course, “in a state of shock.” Responding to those in shock, the leaders of the synagogue accordingly back-peddled a half step. But they did not retract their enthusiastic approval of the UN General Assembly action.

Likewise, it’s clear cracks are developing in the support for the Israeli right’s militarist policy when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says from Tel Aviv, “I am stunned at what I see here politically.” He sees only two options being considered in Israeli politics: the “iron fist” and the “iron dome.” The former implies dictatorship and the latter a reliance on the so-called Iron Dome anti-rocket technology that will presumably create a shield to protect Israel in the future. Friedman might have used the term Iron Wall as well, the term coined in 1923 by the father of Israeli militarism, Se’ev Jabotinsky, to indicate how Jews should separate themselves from the Palestinians they militarily dominate and whose land they occupy.

Andrew Bacevich, a US Army veteran and conservative historian, recently published an essay titled “How We Became Israel” that explains what it means to associate peace with dominance — versus associating peace with harmony. His point is that the US is tragically following the Israeli militarist lead in this respect.

Though these voices are not from the traditional left, their ideas represent a political opening for the left. The recent US election arguably set the far right back on its heels here and seems to have opened some wiggle room for the left. At the same time, as the Middle East and North Africa go through waves of profound change and the Israeli militarist right doggedly moves farther to the right, it may be creating a line in the sand that some American Jews find hard to cross. The next step, then, is speaking out like the B’nai Jewshurun synagogue did.

The fact is, while there are many differences between a Jewish state and an Islamic state, both are nation states organized around religious and cultural identities. From the point of view of Palestinians, a boot on your neck is a boot on your neck, whether it’s an Arab dictator like Mubarak or a militarist occupying state like Israel. At some point, the fear is it’s all going to catch up to the Israeli militarist right, and when it does, it will be explosive.

Ponder for a moment the powerful symbolism of the recent triumphant return of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal to Gaza. In 1997, an Israeli Mossad targeted assassination team tried and failed to murder Meshal in Amman, Jordan, with poison. The killers were caught and an embarrassed Netanyahu, in a prior stint as prime minister, had to order the antidote sent to Amman. It doesn’t get much more dramatic than that. So, now, Meshal, a man who Mubarak would not permit access to Gaza through Egypt, is allowed to enter through Egypt by President Morsi. Meshal tells thousands of gathered Gazans that it is his “third birth.” First, there was his natural birth, second his survival of the botched Mossad targeted assassination, and third, this moment, his triumphal return to Gaza. Netanyahu reportedly was ballistic.

Those on the right will poo-pah calls for diplomacy with people like Meshal, since the entire history of Israel has been founded and managed on the principle of militaristic dominance of Palestinians and, thus, a disdain for respectful diplomacy. And Meshal and Hamas are, like the Israeli right and unlike the Palestinian Authority, intensely militaristic from an underdog position.

In his new book Fortress Israel, Patrick Tyler lays out the history of how Israeli leaders’ militarism consistently trumped diplomacy. Echoing Bacevich’s notion of the US as a strange lackey for the Israeli militaristic right, Tyler quotes former Israeli intelligence chief Avi Dichter. “The state of Israel has turned targeted assassinations into an art form. Foreign delegations come here on a weekly basis to learn from us, not just Americans.” It’s an “art” all right — except when it fails, as with Meshal, then it’s dark Keystone Cops comedy.

This is what it has come to: This is why in the US we have an imperial President who, like our founding imperialist “bully” President, Theodore Roosevelt, has a Nobel Peace Prize. In President Obama’s case, he doesn’t send out river gunboats and waterboard Filipino guerrillas to bring light to the benighted corners of the world. Rather, he has his own personal hit list for Seal Team targeted assassinations of globalized guerrilla networks.

Those targeted for assassination now in 2012 are essentially the updated counterparts of the guerrilla armies that fought the British, French and American colonial occupying armies of the early and middle 20th century in places like Kenya, Vietnam and the Philippines. As the old, classic empires crumbled and faded, colonialism became imperialism. Once capital and power became fully globalized, naturally the opposing elements of bottom-up opposition formed globalized networks themselves. Thus, we have the much feared al Qaeda and a host of others that ebb and flow. In need of demons, the forces in support of a US Global War On Terror do their best to make the al Qaedas of the world into enemies worthy of the Myth of American Exceptionalism.

The dance between entrenched power and the bottom-up impulse for liberation goes on. Each side pursues its game plan by demonizing and attempting to murder the other. It’s a very messy confrontation, now reaching into Africa, with lots of moral damnation to go around.

A Strange and Beautiful Interlude

Because I’ve written about Israel before, I’m on lists that send out pro-Israeli propaganda. The other day, I got a mailing that began with a cheerful, “Hello!” The tone was that of an old friend. The writer, apparently a US military veteran, advocated “national service” for all Americans based on an Israeli model.

“I am emailing you,” he went on, “to bring to your attention the fact that Israel is the only country in the world that maintains obligatory military service for its women. So here is a great collection of Israel female soldiers in action. … Israel’s economy is fine, and its future looks bright. They are a happy and prosperous people, even though they are totally surrounded by those who demand their total destruction.”

The writer went on to describe his own survivalist philosophy. He, then, attached 47 photographs of beautiful Israeli women wearing assault rifles as fashion accessories. After the final image — the one on the right, above — he wrote this in large, bold type:

“Come on, take your best shot, Iran!!!”

OK, the right-wing man who sent this email may be overly horny, and it’s pretty certain he’s freelancing and not part of AIPAC. But when you consider this item in relation to reality, it’s actually not that far off from much of the pro-Israel propaganda I receive. Like much of the right-wing thinking during our recent election campaign, it’s totally aspirational and un-moored from a larger reality.

The propaganda always points out how wonderful and special Israel is and how everyone surrounding Israel is out to destroy it. The special genius and the great abilities of Israel and Israelis are always listed to justify Israel’s policies. Making the desert bloom becomes like making the trains run on time, a justification for everything. Not to worry, Israel has the situation under control and can militarily obliterate all its foes if necessary. Its “highly militarized dependency” on the United States and Europe isn’t usually mentioned, since the propaganda itself is intended to shore up this dependency.

I‘m not a psychiatrist, but if I was and had the Israeli right on my couch I’d conclude it has lost its mind in some narcissistic mirror loop to the point it seems to be goading its neighbors to bring on the apocalypse. It’s an updated and possibly even more frightening version of the old Cold War posture known as MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction.

Is Sanity Possible in Israel/Palestine?

For the record, I support the State of Israel and recognize it does have a security problem. Also, talk by Hamas or anyone about destroying Israel is as crazy and indefensible as the continuation of Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall by the Netanyahu government. Far right Israeli militarists would rather lead us to Armageddon than sit down to talk with a Palestinian as a fellow flawed human being with natural political interests in the land they assume is a gift from their God.

While both sides make diplomacy difficult, due to its military dominance the onus for diplomacy is on the side of Israel. Thus, a real route to sanity in Israel seems to reside here in the United States. The militarists in Israel only exist because, from the beginning, US leaders have punked out and gone along with the anti-diplomatic madness Tyler writes about in Fortress Israel. It’s all there from the beginning, how Ben Gurion blew off all US efforts at diplomacy with Nasser and other Arab leaders. While lying to, or withholding information from, Eisenhower, Prime Minister Ben Gurion, General Dayan, Major Sharon and other determined militarists pursued preemptive attacks and killing forays into Egypt and other neighbor nations in hopes of setting off a larger war that they felt they could win.

So far, Israel has won most of these wars, with the exception of the 2006 invasion of Southern Lebanon, which most analysts say was a victory for Hezbollah. It should also be said, these wars were not entirely instigated by Israel. There’s plenty of sin to go around. But the point is, Israel from the beginning has refused to pursue diplomacy and has, instead, pursued militarism and preemptive violence and war as a means of solving the problem of two peoples claiming the same land. That kind of war-determined policy can only lead to madness.

According to the severe, locked down logic of some Americans, saying this makes me an enemy of Israel. Though I don’t see it that way, that’s how the powerful PR entity AIPAC would have it. This seems to me the problem: As Friedman suggests, things are pretty bad when an argument for diplomacy as a pragmatic means to ratchet down war fever is seen as more dangerous than the current mindless, lockstep militarism.

I look at the 47 images of beautiful Israeli women with weapons and I imagine a similar propaganda piece featuring 47 beautiful Arab and Palestinian women with weapons and fashionable bomb vests. The insanity and obscenity of it all becomes overwhelming. It’s classic tragedy headed for Act Three.

But then there’s another model in which women, as nurturers not sexual provocateurs, play a strong role. Instead of using attractive women as a red flag for war — as in “Come on, take your best shot, Iran!” — why not encourage Israeli women and Palestinian women to forge a diplomatic beginning? Women In Black in places like South America and elsewhere have shown that fed up women in war zones can triumph over their macho, male counterparts in the difficult process of getting along rather than killing.

The best of the left in the US and in Israel have preached this line for decades and no one has listened. It’s as simple as Lennon put it: “Give peace a chance.” The B’nai Jewshurun synagogue in New York seems to understand the wisdom of this. Let’s hope other Americans — Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists and the rest — will follow suit.

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Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

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In Gaza, It’s the Occupation, Stupid

In Gaza, It’s the Occupation, Stupid

By Amy Goodman

“The Palestinian people want to be free of the occupation,” award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed up this week. It is that simple. This latest Israeli military assault on the people of Gaza is not an isolated event, but part of a 45-year occupation of the sliver of land wedged between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, where 1.6 million people live under a brutal Israeli blockade that denies them most of the basic necessities of life. Without the unwavering bipartisan support of the United States for the Israeli military, the occupation of Palestine could not exist.

At the time of this writing, the overall Palestinian death toll of the seven-day assault, dubbed Operation Pillar of Cloud by the Israel Defense Forces, is more than 116, more than half of them civilians, including 27 children and 11 women. Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which, to date, have killed three Israeli civilians.

President Barack Obama said on Sunday, “There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. So, we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians.”

“No one questions that right,” responds Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the author of more than 50 books on war, human rights and international law.

“The question is: When and how is it appropriate? Here, as before in 2008, when Israel launched a similar devastating attack on the population and people of Gaza, there were alternatives, and this kind of approach to security ends up with a new cycle of violence at higher levels of intensity. It’s time for the international community to take some responsibility for protecting the people of Gaza.”

Since 2000, according to an article from the British medical journal The Lancet, the Israeli military has killed more than 6,000 Palestinians. They are harassed at checkpoints, imprisoned arbitrarily, denied clean water and sanitation, and suffer from systemic malnutrition, all part of the illegal siege and blockade. World-renowned linguist and author Noam Chomsky recently visited Gaza, describing it as the world’s largest open-air prison.

Amidst reports of an imminent ceasefire, I spoke with Dr. Mona El-Farra in Gaza. She is the health chair of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of the Gaza Strip, which, as part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, is protected under the Geneva Conventions. “Airplanes are still in the sky, drones are in the sky, and we can h ear intermittent shelling. People are tense, hoping for a cease-fire, but people don’t want a cease-fire at any cost. We want guarantees from Israel that this will not happen again.”

I asked her what it is like to endure an air raid: “Every other minute, directly in my area, the airplanes are there, and they hit within 100 meters of my building. You can overhear from the other areas, because it is very noisy, F-16s bombing with large explosions. The whole building shakes, and some of my windows have been shattered.” Dr. El-Farra and her 20-year-old daughter hide under their table. She gets only a few minutes sleep at a time. “With every air raid, you can see the fire from my window, the fire and the smoke.”

She also braves the open streets to attend to her responsibilities with the Red Crescent Society. They have set up phone banks to provide psychological counseling to Gazans who are dealing with death and injury, who are living under the stress of continuous air bombardment and the threat of imminent ground invasion. “We have terrified children in Gaza, children who do not have enough water, do not have enough food, no medicine ... with all that, children have no safe place. There is no place safe in Gaza. I don’t know what will happen next if this madness continues. In the last week, it has been like hell for us. It is ugly, it is horrible.”

Jody Williams, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative told me, “It is very hard to think about Israel calling what it is doing defending itself when it is occupying Palestinian territory. It’s collective punishment. We cannot support punishing an entire population because of the policies and attacks of Hamas. It’s illegal.”

The answer is simple, and increases the chances of security on all sides: End the occupation.


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Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

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International Film Festival of Marrakech

International Film Festival of Marrakech

The International Film Festival of Marrakech is an international film festival held annually in Marrakech, Morocco since 2000. It is one of the biggest events devoted to the film in Morocco; a location of the principal photography of many international productions.

The jury of the festival gathers international writers, actors, personalities and endeavors to reward the best Moroccan and foreign productions of feature films and short films

Awards

Golden Star / Grand Prize
Jury Prize
Best Actress
Best Actor

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THE ATTACK ZIAD DOUEIRI

THE ATTACK ZIAD DOUEIRI

Synopsis:

 

Amin Jaafari is an Israeli Palestinian surgeon, fully assimilated into Tel Aviv society. He has a loving wife, a glittering career, and numerous Jewish friends. Then a suicide bombing in a restaurant leaves nineteen dead, and the Israeli police inform him that his wife Sihem – who also died in the explosion - was responsible. Amin rejects their accusation absolutely, but his conviction is shaken when he receives a posthumous letter from Sihem confirming her role in the carnage.

Shattered by the revelation, desperate to understand how he missed any signs of her murderous intentions, Amin abandons the relative security of his adopted homeland and enters the Palestinian territories in pursuit of the zealots he believes recruited her.
Once there, he plunges into ever-more dangerous places where he is unwelcome, mindless of his safety as he seeks answers.

But by the end of his journey, Amin is forced to confront a deeper, more appalling truth than heexpected – his inability to see his wife as she truly was and his failure to understand the reality that made her.

"The Attack" is adapted from Yasmina Khadra's international bestseller of the same name. Originally published in France in 2006, the novel has been translated into more than 40 languages and won numerous awards worldwide.

Titre original : L’Attentat

Direction : Ziad Doueiri

Producer :Jean Bréhat & Rachid Bouchareb – 3B Producers

Screenwriting : Ziad Doueiri & Joëlle Touma, based on the novel by Yasmina Khadra

Lebanon, France, Qatar, Egypt & Belgium

2012 I 102 minutes

Format : DCP. In color

In Hebrew & Arabic with Arabic, English & French subtitles

TECHNICAL TEAM

Cinematography

Tommaso Fiorilli

Editing

Dominique Marcombe & Ziad Doueiri

Music

Éric Neveux

CAST

Ali Suliman (Amin Jaafari), Reymonde Amsellem (Sihem), Evgenia Dodina (Kim), Uri Gavriel (le capitaine Moshe/Captain Moshe) Karim Saleh (Adel), Dvir Benedek (Raveed), Ruba Salameh (Faten), Ramzi Maqdidi (le prêtre/the priest)

ZIAD DOUEIRI

Born in Beirut (Lebanon), he grew up during the country’s Civil War. He left Lebanon at 20 and studied in the United States, graduating in 1986 with a degree in Film from San Diego State University. He made then several short films

and worked as an assistant camera on numerous films including Quentin Tarantino’s fi rst three feature films. His directorial debut, West Beirut (1998), won the Fipresci International Critics Prize at the Toronto Film Festival.

1998 | WEST BEIRUT (West Beyrouth)

2004 | LILA SAYS (Lila dit ça)

2012 | THE ATTACK (L’Attentat)

Original title: L’ATTENTAT © EDITIONS JULLIARD – Paris, France

http://en.festivalmarrakech.info/THE-ATTACK_a588.html

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Bollywood ‘demigod’ Khan casts spell on Moroccans

Bollywood ‘demigod’ Khan casts spell on Moroccans

Bollywood “demigod and prince charming” Shah Rukh Khan whipped thousands of Moroccans into a frenzy at the Marrakesh film festival when he danced to the tunes of movie songs at the Jamaa El Fna square.

Khan, 47, popularly known as “King Khan”, was cheered at the square " a mecca of tourism in Morocco " where a giant screen was installed to show a preview of his latest Hindi movie, “Jab Tak Hain Jaan” (Till My Last Breath).

In its 12th edition, the festival which runs until December 8 in this ochre city, is presenting a “special tribute” to Indian cinema as it celebrates its centenary.

“I am pleased to present the star, the icon, the demigod of Indian cinema, Shah Rukh Khan,” said an organiser as the arrival of the star sparked a roar from young fans, who braved gloomy and cold weather to catch a glimpse of him.

Khan, who acted in some 80 films, was specially invited for the festival in Morocco, where Bollywood films rank alongside Egyptian movies in popularity.

A true showman, he warmed up the atmosphere with more than half-an-hour song and dance performance on stage that had the crowds screaming in appreciation.

Later festival organisers screened a preview of “Jab Tak Hain Jaan,” directed by legendary Bollywood filmmaker Yash Chopra who died in October in Mumbai, the home of India’s Hindi-language movie industry, after more than five decades of movie career.

Khan had acted in several box-office hit movies produced and directed by Chopra such as “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” (Bravehearts Will Take The Bride Away), “Dil To Paagal Hai” (Heart Is Crazy) and “Daar” (Fear).

He has also taken lead roles in other blockbusters such as “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” (Something Is Happening) and “Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham” (Sometimes Joy, Sometimes Sorrow) directed by another popular Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar.

“This is the first time I am seeing Shah Rukh Khan. This is a dream. He was two feet away from me. He is so simple and modest,” Khadija Ariba, a young student, told AFP.

“I know all his films. They talk of love, injustice, humanity… things that we speak of. He is the prince of most girls.” For many fans it was an “unforgettable” experience at Jamaa El Fna.

“We watch movies on satellite channels and some movie theatres. But to be present here on Jamaa El Fna is unforgettable for me,” said Ouadie El Ouwad.

Ranked in 2001 as part of the World Heritage List by UNESCO, Jamaa El Fna — site of the April 28, 2011 bombing that killed 17 people — was teeming with joyful fans — mostly students and employees — who cheered Khan.

“I left my workplace at 5 pm to see Shah Rukh Khan from close, but once here the place was already packed with people,” said Ahmed, 32, a carpenter.

“What I like most are his songs. And I have a friend, who speaks very good Hindi which he learned by watching his movies,” he said as he straddled his motorcycle.

Fifteen films are in the race for the top prize at the festival, including “Touch of the Light” by Taiwanese Chang Jung-Chi, “The Attack” by French-Lebanese Ziad Doueiri and “Like a Lion” by Samuel Collardey of France.

The festival’s jury comprises of Canadian Marie-Josee Croze, American James Gray, Moroccan Jillali Ferhati and French Lambert Wilson.

On Friday the festival kicked off with a special ovation for French actress Isabelle Huppert.

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Why Were They Killed?

Why Were They Killed?

Truth and Trauma in Gaza

by KATHY KELLY

Dec 02, 2012

Dr. T., a medical doctor, is a Palestinian living in Gaza City.  He is still reeling from days of aerial bombardment. When I asked about the children in his community he told me his church would soon be making Christmas preparations to lift the children’s spirits.  Looking at his kindly smile and ruddy cheeks, I couldn’t help wondering if he’d be asked to dress up as “Baba Noel,” as Santa Claus.  I didn’t dare ask this question aloud.  ??“The most recent war was more severe and vigorous than the Operation Cast Lead,” he said slowly, leaning back in his chair and looking into the distance.  “I was more affected this time. The weapons were very strong, destroying everything. One rocket could completely destroy a building.”

The 8-day Israeli offensive in November lasted for fewer days and brought fewer casualties, but it was nonstop and relentless, and everywhere.

“At 1:00 a.m. the bank was bombed, and everyone in the area was awakened from sleep.  Doors were broken and windows were shattered.  There was an agonizing sound, as if we were in a battlefield.”

“The bombing went on every day.  F16 U.S. jets were hitting hard.”

“This is more than anyone can tolerate.  We were unsafe at any place at any time.”

U.S. media and government statements are full of accounts about the scattershot Hamas rocket fire that had taken one Israeli life in the months before the Israeli bombing campaign.  The U.S. government demands that the Gazans disarm completely.  Due to simple racism and a jingoistic eagerness to get in line with U.S. military policy, Western commentators ignore the bombardment of Gazan neighborhoods which has caused thousands of casualties over just the past few years. They automatically frame Israel’s actions as self-defense and the only conceivable response to Palestinians who, under whatever provocations, dare to make themselves a threat.

“Any house can be destroyed.  The airplanes filled the skies,” Dr. T. continued.  “They were hitting civilians like the one who was distributing water.”  The Palestine Centre for Human Rights report confirms that Dr. T is discussing Suhail Hamada Mohman and his ten year old son, who were both killed instantly at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 18, 2012 in Beit Lahiya while distributing water to their neighbors.

Dr. T. then mentioned the English teacher and his student killed nearby walking in the street.  The PCHR report notes that on November 16, at approximately 1:20 p.m., Marwan Abu al-Qumsan, 42, a teacher at an UNRWA school, was killed when Israeli Occupation Forces bombarded an open space area in the southeast section of Beit Lahia town.  He had been visiting the house of his brother, Radwan, 76, who was also seriously wounded.

And Dr. T. mentioned the Dalu family.  “They were destroyed for no reason. You can go visit there.”

The next day, I went to the building north of Gaza City where the Dalu family had lived.

In the afternoon on Sunday, November 18, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet fired a missile at the 4-story house belonging to 52-year-old Jamal Mahmoud Yassin al-Dalu. The house was completely destroyed as were all inside.  Civil Defense crews removed from the debris the bodies of 8 members of the family, four women and four children aged one to seven.   Their names were:

    Samah Abdul Hamid al-Dalu, 27;

    Tahani Hassan al-Dalu, 52;

    Suhaila Mahmoud al-Dalu, 73

    Raneen Jamal al-Dalu, 22.

    Jamal Mohammed Jamal al-Dalu, 6;

    Yousef Mohammed Jamal al-Dalu, 4;

    Sarah Mohammed Jamal al-Dalu, 7;

    Ibrahim Mohammed Jamal al-Dalu, 1;

On November 23rd, two more bodies were found under the rubble, one of them a child.

The attack destroyed several nearby houses, including the house of the Al-Muzannar family where two civilians, a young man and a 75year-old woman, also died.  They were: Ameena Matar al-Mauzannar, 75; and Abdullah Mohammed al-Muzannar, 19.

One banner that hangs on a damaged wall reads, “Why were they killed?”  Another shows enlarged pictures of the Dalu children’s faces.

Atop the rubble of the building is the burned wreckage of the family minivan, flipped there upside down in the blast.

The Israeli military later claimed it had collapsed the building in hope of assassinating an unspecified visitor to the home, any massive civilian death toll justifiable by the merest hint of a military target.  Qassam rockets killing one Israeli a year are terrorism, but deliberate attacks to collapse buildings on whole families are not.

“All Palestinians are targeted now,” a woman who lives across the street told us. Every window in her home had been shattered by the blast.  She had been sure it was the end of her life when she heard the explosion. She had covered her face, and then, opening her eyes, seen the engine from the neighbor’s car flying past her through her home.  She pointed to a spot on the floor where a large rocket fragment had landed in her living room. Then, looking at the ruins of the Dalu building, she shook her head. “These massacres would not happen if the people who fund it were more aware.”

Mr. Dalu’s nephew Mahmoud is a pharmacist, 29 years of age, who is still alive because he had recently moved next door from his uncle’s now-vanished building to an apartment that he built for himself, his wife and their two year-old daughter who are also alive.  With his widowed mother and several neighborhood women, he and his wife had been preparing to celebrate his daughter’s birthday.  A garland of tinsel still festoons a partly destroyed wall.  The blast destroyed much of his home’s infrastructure, but he was able to shepherd his family members and their guests out of the house to safety.  Several were taken to the hospital in shock.

“I don’t know why this happened to us,” Mahmoud says.  “I am a pharmacist.  In my uncle’s house lived a doctor and a computer engineer. We were just finishing lunch.  There were no terrorists here.  Only family members here.   Now I don’t know what to do, where to go. I feel despair.  We are living in misery.”

“Any war is inhuman, irreligious, and immoral,” my friend, Dr. T., had told me.

Dr. T. is afraid that Israel is preparing a worse war, one with ground troops deployed, for after its upcoming election.  “We are hopeful to live in peace.  We don’t want to make victims. We love Israelis as we love any human being.”

“But we are losing the right to life in terms of movement, trade, education, and water.  The Israelis are taking these rights; they are not looking out for the human rights of Palestinians.  They only focus on their sense of security.  They want Palestine to lose all rights.”

Election logic aside, Israel has already violated the ceasefire – at any time the missiles and rockets could start raining down once more. Year round, that is what it means to live in Gaza.

I decided not to bring up the Santa Claus question and instead thanked him for his honest reflections and bade him farewell.



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Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

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The Strong and the Sweet

The Strong and the Sweet

The UN and Palestine

by URI AVNERY

Dec 02, 2012

It was a day of joy.

Joy for the Palestinian people.

Joy for all those who hope for peace between Israel and the Arab world.

And, in a modest way, for me personally.

The General Assembly of the United Nations, the highest world forum, has voted overwhelmingly for the recognition of the State of Palestine, though in a limited way.

The resolution adopted by the same forum 65 years ago to the day, to partition historical Palestine between a Jewish and an Arab state, has at long last been reaffirmed.

I hope I may be excused a few moments of personal celebration.

During the war of 1948, which followed the first resolution, I came to the conclusion that there exists a Palestinian people and that the establishment of a Palestinian state, next to the new State of Israel, is the prerequisite for peace.

As a simple soldier, I fought in dozens of engagements against the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. I saw how dozens of Arab towns and villages were destroyed and left deserted. Long before I saw the first Egyptian soldier, I saw the people of Palestine (who had started the war) fight for what was their homeland.

Before the war, I hoped that the unity of the country, so dear to both peoples, could be preserved. The war convinced me that reality had smashed this dream forever.

I was still in uniform when, in early 1949, I tried to set up an initiative for what is now called the Two-State Solution. I met with two young Arabs in Haifa for this purpose. One was a Muslim Arab, the other a Druze sheik. (Both became members of the Knesset before me.)

At the time, it looked like mission impossible. “Palestine” had been wiped off the map. 78% of the country had become Israel, the other 22% divided between Jordan and Egypt. The very existence of a Palestinian people was vehemently denied by the Israeli establishment, indeed, the denial became an article of faith. Much later, Golda Meir famously declared that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people”. Respected charlatans wrote popular books “proving” that the Arabs in Palestine were pretenders who had only recently arrived. The Israeli leadership was convinced that the “Palestinian problem” had disappeared, once and forever.

In 1949, there were not a hundred persons in the entire world who believed in this solution. Not a single country supported it. The Arab countries still believed that Israel would just disappear. Britain supported its client state, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The US had its own local strongmen. Stalin’s Soviet Union supported Israel.

Mine was a lonely fight. For the next 40 years, as the editor of a news magazine, I brought the subject up almost every week. When I was elected to the Knesset, I did the same there.

In 1968 I went to Washington DC, in order to propagate the idea there. I was politely received by the relevant officials in the State Department (Joseph Sisco), the White House  (Harold Saunders), the US mission to the UN (Charles Yost), leading Senators and Congressmen, as well as the British father of Resolution 242 (Lord Caradon). The uniform answer from all of them, without exception: a Palestinian state was out of question.

When I published a book devoted to this solution, the PLO in Beirut attacked me in 1970 in a book entitled “Uri Avnery and Neo-Zionism”.

Today, there is a world consensus that a solution of the conflict without a Palestinian state is quite out of the question.

So why not celebrate now?

Why now? Why didn’t it happen before or later?

Because of the Pillar of Cloud, the historic masterpiece from Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman.

The Bible tells us about Samson the hero, who rent a lion with his bare hands. When he returned to the scene, a swarm of bees had made the carcase of the lion its home and produced honey. So Samson posed a riddle to the Philistines: “Out of the strong came forth sweetness”. This is now a Hebrew proverb.

Well, out of the “strong” Israeli operation against Gaza, sweetness has indeed come forth. It is another confirmation of the rule that when you start a war or a revolution, you never know what will come out of it.

One of the results of the operation was that the prestige and popularity of Hamas shot sky-high, while the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas sank to new depths. That was a result the West could not possibly tolerate. A defeat of the “moderates” and a victory for the Islamic “extremists” were a disaster for President Barack Obama and the entire Western camp. Something had to found – with all urgency – to provide Abbas with a resounding achievement.

Fortunately, Abbas was already on the way to obtain UN approval for the recognition of Palestine as a “state” (though not yet as a full member of the world organization). For Abbas, it was a move of despair. Suddenly, it became a beacon of victory.

The competition between the Hamas and Fatah movements is viewed as a disaster for the Palestinian cause. But there is also another way to look at it.

Let’s go back to our own history. During the 30s and 40s, our Struggle for Liberation (as we called it) split between two camps, who hated each other with growing intensity.

On the one side was the “official” leadership, led by David Ben-Gurion, represented by the “Jewish Agency” which cooperated with the British administration. Its military arm was the Haganah, a very large, semi-official militia, mostly tolerated by the British.

On the other side was the Irgun (“National Military Organization”), the far more radical armed wing of the nationalist “revisionist” party of Vladimir Jabotinsky. It split and yet another, even more radical, organization was born. The British called it “the Stern Gang”, after its leader, Avraham Stern”.

The enmity between these organizations was intense. For a time, Haganah members kidnapped Irgun fighters and turned them over to the British police, who tortured them and sent them to camps in Africa. A bloody fratricidal war was avoided only because the Irgun leader, Menachem Begin, forbade all actions of revenge. By contrast, the Stern people bluntly told the Haganah that they would shoot anyone trying to attack their members.

In retrospect, the two sides can be seen as acting as the two arms of the same body. The “terrorism” of the Irgun and Stern complemented the diplomacy of the Zionist leadership. The diplomats exploited the achievements of the fighters. In order to counterbalance the growing popularity of the “terrorists”, the British made concessions to Ben-Gurion. A friend of mine called the Irgun “the shooting agency of the Jewish Agency”.

In a way, this is now the situation in the Palestinian camp.

For years, the Israeli government has threatened Abbas with the most dire consequences if he dared to go to the UN. Abolishing the Oslo agreement and destroying the Palestinian authority was the bare minimum. Lieberman called the move “diplomatic terrorism”.

And now? Nothing. Not a bang and barely a whimper. Even Netanyahu understands that the Pillar of Cloud has created a situation where world support for Abbas has become inevitable.

What to do? Nothing! Pretend the whole thing is a joke. Who cares? What is this UNO anyway? What difference does it make?

Netanyahu is more concerned about another thing that happened to him this week. In the Likud primary elections, all the “moderates” in his party were unceremoniously kicked out. No liberal, democratic alibi was left. The Likud-Beitenu faction in the next Knesset will be composed entirely of right-wing extremists, among them several outright fascists, people who want to destroy the independence of the Supreme Court, cover the West Bank densely with settlements and prevent peace and a Palestinian state by all possible means.

While Netanyahu is sure to win the coming elections and continue to serve as Prime Minister, he is too clever not to realize where he is now: a hostage to extremists, liable to be thrown out by his own Knesset faction if he so much as mentions peace, to be displaced at any time by Lieberman or worse.

On first sight, nothing much has changed. But only on first sight.

What has happened is that the foundation of the State of Palestine has now been officially acknowledged as the aim of the world community. The “Two-State solution” is now the only solution on the table. The “One-State solution”, if it ever lived, is as dead as the dodo.

Of course, the apartheid one-state is reality. If nothing changes on the ground, is will become deeper and stronger. Almost every day brings news of it becoming more and more entrenched. (The bus monopoly has just announced that from now on there will be separate buses for West Bank Palestinians in Israel.)

But the quest for peace based on the co-existence between Israel and Palestine has taken a big step forwards. Unity between the Palestinians should be the next. US support for the actual creation of the State of Palestine should come soon after.

The strong must lead to the sweet.


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Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

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Knocking on the Iron Wall

Knocking on the Iron Wall

Palestine, the UN and Australian Labor
 
by RICK KUHN
 
Dec 02, 2012
 
One week Australia’s Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard cheers on Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza, the next the parliamentary Labor Party caucus rolls her over recognition of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly.

In the United Nations, Labor foreign minister Bert Evatt pushed for the partition of Palestine and in 1948 as the President of the General Assembly in 1948 supported the new Israeli state. Ever since Australian governments, Labor and conservative, have been hardline backers of Israel.

Has the Australian Labor Party’s position on Israel really changed?

The shift does not mean that Labor is now hostile to Israeli apartheid. Labor has a slightly different view from Israel, the United States and the Coalition about how best to preserve Israel as a racist state. The current Foreign Minister Bob Carr understands that the Arab Spring means that minor concessions have to be made to prop up the credibility of the Palestinian Authority, which is Israel’s policeman on the West Bank.

The laws that define Israel as a Jewish state mean that its Palestinian citizens have second class status. They are not allowed to live in most areas, their separate schools are underfunded, they are ineligible for many welfare services and public sector jobs, Arabic is treated as inferior to Hebrew.

After living for decades under Israeli occupation, the Palestinians of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have no say at all over Israel’s policies. Jews, like me, have a right of ‘return’ to Israel so long as they can demonstrate their hereditary Jewishness through their mothers’ lines. Palestinian refugees born in what is now Israel and their children and grandchildren have no right to return.

Australia abstained in the General Assembly’s overwhelming vote to accept Palestine not as a member of the UN but just an ‘observer state’, like the Pope’s toy state of the Vatican. Gillard had wanted Australia to vote against the resolution, with Israel, the United States and a handful of its clients.

The General Assembly decision will not improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians.

At best, it gives the issue of Israel’s repression of the Palestinians a little more profile and will probably lead to cases in the UN’s International Court of Justice, which will also help publicise the issue. Neither the USA nor Israel accepts the authority of the Court. The USA’s veto on the Security Council still ensures that the UN’s executive body will not act against Israel and that Palestine will not become a member of the UN.

If we want to understand the main reasons for Labor’s marginal departure from the Israel/US script for the Middle East, we have to look to Palestine and the Arab world rather than the New York and the Hague where the UN and ICJ sit.

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has implemented the doctrine of the ‘iron wall’. This holds that the dispossession of the Palestinian people can only be maintained by armed force and that if the Palestinians ever accept the Jewish state it will only be because Israel’s military actions have made them give up hope.

The right wing Zionist Zeev Jabotinsky formulated the doctrine in 1923. But all Israel’s governments, including the Labour administrations of the country’s first decades, have pursued it.

Gillard’s support for Israel’s ‘right to self-defence’ is an endorsement of the iron wall.

The Arab Spring is revolutionising much of the Middle East, including Israel’s neighbours Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The vast majority of Arab people want democracy and better living standards. And, unlike the dictators and kings who formally or informally came to terms with Israel, they have real sympathy for their Palestinian sisters and brothers.

Israel and the United States, which backed the dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt and still backs Abdullah the absolute monarch in Jordan, are much more isolated in the Middle East today than two years ago. Israel is even more dependent on US military and diplomatic backing. The United States needs Israel more than ever, as its one really reliable, powerful and relatively stable ally in a region whose location and oil give it outstanding global strategic importance.

The Australian Labor government’s minor shift on Palestine recognises that it is necessary to prop up the dictatorial Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah party and its allies, on the West Bank.

The PA is invaluable to Israel. Shawan Jabarin, director-general of Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, currently in Australia, this week said ‘To be honest, the PA serves the Israelis’. The PA’s ‘security coordination’ with Israel is coordination in the repression of Palestinians. Without consulting the Palestinians, Abbas recently gave up on the Palestinian right of return.

Particularly after the Palestinians of Gaza resisted the latest Israeli attacks and were even able to secure some concessions from Israel, the credibility of the PA is at a low ebb. The government of Gaza is run by Fatah’s equally dictatorial but less corrupt Islamist rival Hamas.

The success of the PA’s project of gaining observer state status at the UN will be a small boost to its prestige and the declining plausibility of the ‘two state solution’ of the conflict in Palestine, which the Israeli, the US and Australian governments claim to support. That ‘solution’ would leave Israeli apartheid in tact.

The ALP caucus deal no doubt also reflected other considerations much less directly connected with the Middle East. Bob Carr wanted to stay on the right side of some of the governments that voted for Australian membership of the UN Security Council in October. Although the Labor left initially wanted Australia to actually support Palestine’s observer state status, the caucus deal appeared to demonstrate that the left is not entirely irrelevant through a concession on an issue of quaternary significance. The decision might help Labor hold some seats in Sydney with substantial Arab and Muslim populations.

Finally, there has been a major shift in wider public attitudes in Australia to Palestine over the past three decades, as opposed to the solid bipartisan Zionism of the ALP and Coalition. But the government has been quite wiling to ignore overwhelming public rejection of some of its policies, even on issues like equal marriage where Australian national interests, that is corporate interests, are not at stake. Australia’s abstention in the General Assembly vote is part of a strategy that is intended to advance those interests. Whether it will succeed in strengthening the capacity of the US governments to impose their will on the world and hence Australia’s ability to call the shots in the south west Pacific and south east Asia is another question.



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Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!

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