In part one of his interview with Helen Thomas, longest-serving member of the White House Press Corps, Paul Jay asks her about her first question for President Obama. The question, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to “speculate”. Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama’s answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region. Finally, she confides that she has not been called on by the President since that day, but that if she does, she will ask him whether or not he has found any more information about nukes in the Middle-East since their last encounter.
That U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had the courage to tell AIPAC’s conference that Israel’s continued construction of Jewish housing on occupied territory is undermining both the prospect for peace and America’s credibility and own best interests was good news. The bad news is that this and other Obama administration expressions of concern are 42 years too late. Read More…
Editor’s note: If anyone can watch this video without weeping or being profoundly moved by what is being done to the children of Gaza today, you must be made of sterner stuff than me. No one can blame any of the children for what they feel – bewilderment, loss, grief, pain, fear, despair, rage, revenge – after the criminal acts unleashed on them by Israel’s invading army. It is very easy to talk of peace and forgiveness when we are not subjected to such relentless assaults on our society, including a siege that is literally choking the Palestinians in Gaza to death. And the cruelty continues day after day without relief – to our own eternal shame it should be said, because we have done nothing to stop it. While Israel perpetrates this wholesale inhumanity on its doorstep, we regurgitate the nonsense about Israel’s security when blind Freddy can see the disparity between its mighty army and the desperate attempts at resistance by a people condemned to live in a hellhole. One day, those who supported and helped Israel in its diabolical deeds and those who remained silent, will find themselves facing the judgment of history over the deliberate destruction of a people and society.
On Monday 15th March Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled “The Children of Gaza”. It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences. It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children’s literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel’s illegal and ongoing siege. The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from. For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed.
The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film’s theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat.
by Paulette Schroeder - Aletho News – 18 March 2010
I am most concerned these recent weeks in Hebron. Young teens and even smaller children are disappearing from our neighbourhood in the Old City of Hebron. It’s not by kidnapping. It’s not by trafficking. It’s not an unknown person with a criminal record perpetrating the crimes. Rather, the Israeli military is again pressing its boots down harder on the heads of the Palestinian people. If restrictions on travel and commerce, land confiscations, home invasions, and forced business closures have not succeeded in convincing Palestinian families to leave their land, then MAYBE taking their children will. Read More…
Toni Morrison once wrote “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” I feel it is the same for Palestinian refugees, who have struggled for decades for their right to return home. I thought of this connection between water and refugees during a recent meeting about the Middle East Children’s Alliance’s (MECA) Maia Project with Aidan O’Leary, Deputy Director of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) Operations in Gaza. Read More…
The following short video is a geographic presentation of Israel’s increased grip on Jerusalem since the occupation began in 1967. As the discussion of settlements and a ’settlement freeze’ continues, it is clear than many people are unaware of the complex reality that Israel has imposed over time. In this video produced by the Palestine Center, we hope to provide a quick but detailed tool for understanding the extent of Israeli control on Occupied Jerusalem for journalists, educators and all others who seek to understand this critical issue.
While the second intifada (which started in September 2000) was still raging in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Nazareth-born filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s film Divine Intervention (2002) was submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the nominated entry from Palestine for the best foreign language film Oscar category. The Academy rejected the film because, it said, “Palestine is not a country”. In 2006, when the Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad’s film Paradise Now (2005) was nominated in the same category, the Academy accepted it, and identified its country as “the Palestinian Authority”.
The scholar Edward Said wrote in an introduction to a book about Palestinian cinema, Dreams of a Nation: “The whole history of the Palestinian struggle has to do with the desire to be visible.” This desire is what has driven the new wave of Palestinian films in the past decade. Palestinian cinema has reinvented itself many times over the past 40 years, but it’s the films made since the second intifada began in 2000 that have been getting international attention. Not because they exist, but because they make an unprecedented social, cultural and political statement. Read More…
Palestinian comedy show, comedian Imad Farajin courts a young European, asking for her hand in marriage. Espousing the benefits of marrying a Palestinian, Farajin jokes, “We now have ‘indirect talks’ for four months and in just four months’ time, we will have a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, no checkpoints and the refugees will all return. The Palestinian passport will be worth a lot.”
Farajin’s words are greeted in the same way as the statements uttered by the Americans, the Quartet and other members of the international community: with laughter. The latest “row” between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu regime is no different to Palestinians. Read More…
The Israeli government has indicated that it will press ahead with a plan to enlarge the Jewish prayer plaza at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, despite warnings that the move risks triggering a third intifada.
Israeli officials rejected this week a Jerusalem court’s proposal to shelve the plan after the judge accepted that the plaza’s expansion would violate the “status quo” arrangement covering the Old City’s holy places. Islamic authorities agreed to the arrangement after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.
The site eyed by Israeli officials is located at the Mughrabi Gate, an entrance to the mosque compound known as the Haram al-Sharif, the most sensitive site in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Inside are al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-topped Dome of the Rock. Read More…
Subscribe to our RSS feed.
