telling whose stories?

This short video, Closed Zone, is animated by Yoni Goodman, the director of animation for the recent much ballyhooed Israeli animated film, Waltz with Bashir. The Closed Zone video was made with Gisha - the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, a human rights group in Israel: "Gisha calls on the State of Israel to fully open Gaza's crossings and to allow the real victims of the closure - 1.5 million human beings - the freedom of movement necessary to realize their dreams and aspirations."

On the Gish Closed Zone site, if you scroll down a bit you can watch a clip about the making of the video and listen to what Goodman relates about his methods in making it.

One of the things Goodman says is that he deliberately made the animated character ambiguous, in that he could be either a boy or a young man.

Perhaps, addressing from a child's perspective and through a child-like medium (animation) a message that is actually meant for adults is a good way for opening a space for talking about the issue of Israeli occupation, that no one wants to own or see themselves in (I'm thinking here of an Israeli or non-Palestinian/pro-Israeli viewer). So, through a child, one can come to some realizations in a way that is less accusatory.

By Goodman making him a boy, and an animated character, to boot, the issue that is addressed -- the barriers of Israeli occupation as thwarts to Palestinian boys' dreams -- can be approached in a way that reduces personal finger-pointing and allows the issue to be opened up for discussion rather than shut down.

Interestingly, too, the video clip has no dialogue, only animation. Animation makes it more child-like, too, as it harkens back to comic books and cartoons. Also, as Goodman notes, the boy could be a young man and also he could be either Palestinian or Israeli--it's hard to tell. Is this ambiguity to show that we are more similar than we are different? that it is larger systemic forces that create barriers between us?

But as it is Palestinians who are caught and blocked behind the closures, the ambiguity of the boy's may-be Israeli-ness, is but an introductory hook for the Israeli viewer to identify with the boy as he leaves his home. For he then has to reconcile his identification with the blocks that surface inside Gaza, created by Israel, and hence, revealing the truth of who is hemmed in by who. There is no ambiguity now.

Goodman was a soldier during Israel's bombing of Qana, Lebanon in 1996, what Israel called the "Grapes of Wrath operation" but was revealed to be the Qana massacre. During this military offensive to "get Hezbollah", the Israelis bombed a UN compound--one that had been there for years and is clearly marked-- where civilians had taken refuge. Sound familiar? UN building, with civilians sheltering, yet Israel "accidentally" hits it?

106 civilians were killed and 116 injured, including 4 UN soldiers.



When Waltz with Bashir came out, a number of viewers gushed about it--like Gilad Atzmon, who was an Israeli soldier during the 1982 invasion and killing fields of Lebanon. Atzmon tells us that

"The film is a smashing success in Israel. The Israelis love to weep collectively, and to express regret for the Christian Phalangists who killed on their behalf. They apparently come out of the film saying, ‘Only here, in our wonderful free country, can we confront our past so bravely.’"

Wonderful free country? For who?

Confront the past so bravely? Much of Israel WIPES out the history of how that country came to be. Isreali websites and geographic places are replete with not looking at the past beyond Zionist re-writing.

I haven't seen Waltz with Bashir yet, nor do I intend to. When I first heard about it I thought oh, it sounds like just the kind of film that liberals will flock to. I'm sure it will be very popular, I thought. It sounds like the kind of film that liberal-minded folks can watch and then exclaim about its 'fairness of portrayal'. It sounds like the kind of film that doesn't enter certain grounds that would make for more difficult examinations and troubling realizations; the kind that allows for whole issues to be left out, such as whose stories get told and how and by whom and who promotes them and why and what that then reinforces.

Further, I find very problematic films and stories that humanize soldiers and give them a life that the viewer can sympathize with yet which in that doing leaves their victims voiceless, silent, an afterthought, misunderstood, re-stereotyped, and, in the end, re-victimized. The power relations are not even disrupted, never mind dismantled.

It's the story of "our boys" that I find so problematic, as too often what ends up being reproduced is a division between 'us' and 'them.' Those faceless, nameless, have-no-lives-no-communities-no-dreams-no-families-no-struggles-no-joy-no-laughter not-us Others.

Others have been critical of the film for many reasons. Below are some excerpts of film reviews of Waltz with Bashir that talk about its problematic humanizing of Israeli soldiers at the expense of Palestinians, decontextualizing of political and historical contexts, its focus on the Shabra and Shatilla massacres and its avoidance of looking at the almost 18-20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who dies in 1982 AT THE HANDS of Israel, and what that implies:

Naira Antoun:

"To say that Palestinians are absent in Waltz with Bashir, to say that it is a film that deals not with Palestinians but with Israelis who served in Lebanon, only barely begins to describe the violence that this film commits against Palestinians. There is nothing interesting or new in the depiction of Palestinians -- they have no names, they don't speak, they are anonymous. But they are not simply faceless victims. Instead, the victims in the story that Waltz with Bashir tells are Israeli soldiers. Their anguish, their questioning, their confusion, their pain -- it is this that is intended to pull us. The rotoscope animation is beautifully done, the facial expressions so engaging, subtle and torn, we find ourselves grimacing and gasping at the trials and tribulations of the young Israeli soldiers and their older agonizing selves. We don't see Palestinian facial expressions; only a lingering on dead, anonymous faces. So while Palestinians are never fully human, Israelis are, and indeed are humanized through the course of the film.
....
As Folman and those he speaks with recount what happened when they were in Lebanon, there is a lot of "while they're shooting at us from all directions," "we are attacked, we retaliate." There is no sense that Israel invaded Lebanon -- the word "invasion" is barely used in the whole film. The soldiers are young men going off to war in fighting spirit, fantasizing about women, wondering at how to prove their masculinity, licking the wounds of being dumped by girlfriends. They are singing songs with upbeat tunes and lyrics such as "Good morning Lebanon ... you bleed to death in my arms," "I bombed Sidon," "I bombed Beirut, I bombed Beirut every day." These lyrics are supposed to grate, but one nevertheless gets a sense of naive hapless kids who have no sense of the trauma that they are unwittingly walking into. One imagines that Folman would respond to the criticism that Israel's role is not made clear in the film, that these hapless kids are also members of an invading army committing acts of aggression, by saying that this would be going into the realm of politics, and rather this is intended to be a human film. One of the more disquieting views coming from admiring quarters is that the film is great for a general audience because one doesn't need to know any background information to appreciate the film. That Israel launched a brutal offensive that led to the deaths of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians is apparently not relevant. With "politics" and the "background" rendered off-limits, we are left with something that is misleading and inane. Its principal message becomes "war sucks." And why does war suck? Because it is traumatizing -- principally for the soldiers. When Waltz with Bashir won the Golden Globe for best foreign film in January, while the force of the Israeli military machine was being unleashed against Gaza, while war crimes and atrocities were being committed by Israeli soldiers, Folman could only muster, "My film is anti-war, and therefore would, sadly, always be relevant." Given the evasion of responsibility and decontextualization that lie at the core of this film, this was hardly surprising."

As'ad AbuKhalil:

"The film doesn't want to speak of history. It doesn't want to speak of suffering. Even when Zionist liberals touch upon suffering, they mean the suffering of the murderers. The nightmares of occupation soldiers are more important than the suffering of the victims of Sabra & Shatila. The soldiers speak of only their suffering, and don't allow Arab victims to speak about their own suffering. The nightmares of occupation soldiers were more horrible than the killing of children in brutal Israeli bombardment before and after Sabra & Shatila.
....
Read Zionist literature from the beginning to find in their representation—if they were there at all—backward peasants or lowly bedouins or nondescript refugees without citizenship, later transformed into "saboteurs" (and this is the same name that the Phalangist "Voice of Lebanon" radio used in the course of the war) in the 1960s, until Zionist propaganda finally settled upon the description "terrorist". The film doesn't deviate from the formula, even with regard to that splendid boy when he fires an RPG launcher in the face of the occupier.
But, the (im)moral standard of the film is evident from the beginning when the narrator suffers from nightmares because he killed some dogs in South Lebanon. And in another scene, an Israeli soldier bemoans the plight of the horses in Beirut's hippodrome, for the animals are more valuable than the Arab according to a racial hierarchy that doesn't differ in its essentials from Nazi hierarchy. There is a liberal American organization—which has been utterly indifferent to the lives of the people of Palestine—that ran a campaign to care for the animals in Gaza. The Arab and the Muslim in the liberal standard of the white man is of a lower rank than the animal. The Western viewer will sympathize with the Israeli soldier because he seemed the most affected by the killing of animals at the hands of the Arabs in the devastation of 1982.
....
If a Hamas writer were to shoot a film about his experience in Gaza would the Hollywood community welcome him with open arms, and would the liberal media shower him with praise? With or without the "anguish" of the Israel soldiers."

Remembering Suhmata

I came across an interesting website the other day, Zochrot. This is a Hebrew word that translates to "remembering". Zochrot is a group of Israelis who are part of the Israelis who are decolonizing themselves rather than continuing with the wretched racism of the state of Israel.

The process of remembering includes "to commemorate, witness, acknowledge and repair."

"Zochrot works to make the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public so as to engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful common history."

Zochrot's work of remembering begins with the Nakba, bringing to light testimonies of Palestinians and the histories of the landscape and geography that have been cleansed by the state of Israel. Along with collecting testimonials, they hold seminars, publish literature, and write letters--including this letter written with al-Haq to the President of the University of Western Ontario to ask him to critically examine accepting an honoree award from the Jewish National Fund of Canada. Zochrot also has a learning center, an art gallery, has material available on the net, and do other important work.


Suhmata. Only the stone rubble of a Crusader castle remains.

One of the testimonies they have collected, is the testimony of Hazneh Sama'an (Umm Afif) from the ethnically cleansed village of Suhmata. Knowing the stories of the original Palestinians expelled during the violent creation of the state of Israel intervenes in the white-washed dominant history that is told. Umm Afif's testimony brings to life the people of her village, the village life, and their forced expulsion.

"I always dream that we have returned to Suhmata. There is no doubt we will return, if not us, our children or grandchildren. I wish we would return to our village, I wish we had died before the expulsion."

prisons are not the solution

For our Palestine Awareness Booth at Lakehead University last Tuesday, I carried in two large carry bags and one laundry basketful of books and pamphlets about Palestine. While many of the materials are new, some of the books and pamphlets were from the 70s. Like this one with the dove/hand, which is the image on the back page of a pamphlet published in 1977, called Israel and Torture: an Insight Inquiry.


This is the text on the inside front cover. The pamphlet re-prints a 4 page newspaper report by The Sunday Times published June 19 1977, the Israeli government response to the report, which was published July 3 1977, and then the paper's July 10th response to Israel's "flat denial." Prior to the 80s, The Sunday Times was a leading investigative and left-leaning newspaper, but that changed with the rise of neoliberalism and a new editor with a strongly Thatcherite slant, and the paper's change in ownership to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

The investigative journalists who wrote up the Insight Report on Israeli Torture visited the occupied West Bank and Gaza (annexed by Israel in '67 and put under military occupation rule and control) and interviewed 44 Palestinians. Of the numerous insights provided, the report lists 6 main conclusions, of which the below is no. 3:

Torture takes place in at least six centres: at the prisons of the four main occupied towns of Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron on the West Bank, and Gaza in the south; at the detention centre in Jerusalem, known as the Russian Compound; and at a special military intelligence centre whose whereabouts are uncertain, but which testimony suggests is somewhere inside the vast military supply base at Sarafand, near Lod airport on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road. There is some evidence too that, at least for a time, there was a second such camp somewhere near Gaza.

Today, some of these Israeli prisons where torture was carried out, the ones in the West Bank, are now controlled by Abbas's security forces, who have taken up the methods of their oppressors as they torture other Palestinians.

Sarafand, which is inside what is now called Israel, has been renamed Tzrifin. After 1948, the Israelis re-named streets, towns and areas to wipe out the Arab heritage and inscribe a Jewish identity onto the land. Sarafand was a Palestinian Arab village that was ethnically cleansed in 1948. The British colonial forces had established a military base at Sarafand in 1917; it was strategic because Sarafand was a central railway connection to Jaffa and Lyyda (renamed Lod). After the village was ethnically cleansed and following the British leaving the base, the Israelis re-named Sarafand to Tzrifin. Today, the area is almost entirely taken up by a huge Israeli military complex. The Tzrifin military complex also contains Prison Four, the largest prison in Israel for Israeli soldiers. That's right, Israeli soldiers. "It is estimated that 15,000-18,000 Israeli soldiers (not to be confused with Palestinian detainees) go through an Israeli military prison or detention center every year."

Many of those Israeli detainees are imprisoned for refusing to serve in the Israeli military.


As a military state, Israel has lots of prisons because it takes lots of prisoners. Indeed, it keeps building more prisons. Further, "human rights reports state that Palestinian prisoners are subject to abuses and use of torture."

March 8th, International Women's Day, is a day of solidarity with Palestinian female prisoners.

“The world marks this day to salute women and their important role, struggle and achievements,” [Abdul-Nasser] Farawna said, “but it forgot that there are thousands of Palestinian women suffering under Israeli occupation, imprisoned and abused.”

He added that the world must understand that the detained Palestinian women are facing harsh treatment in Israeli prisons and are deprived from their basic human rights.

“They face torture, both physical and psychological,” Farawna said, “[s]ome of them are even sexually harassed during interrogation.”

He also said that dozens of women are still imprisoned by Israel; some of them have given birth in prison, while others have left children behind, while a number of them are below the age of 18.

International Women's Day: everyday acts of courage

March 8th is International Women's Day. On the UN site it states: "Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights."


Not content to have evicted her from more than one home, the Israeli government demolishes Umm Kamel's tent.

"Just as Umm Kamel and her lawyers submitted Ottoman-era documents to Israeli Courts proving the claim to her family home, Israeli police once again on Sunday demolished the tent of Umm Kamel’s family in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem."


couscous co-op co-founder Zahra Abu Shrar from Ein al-Sultan camp, Palestine's smallest refugee camp.

Palestinians need help in their resistance, not handouts.

"The women unanimously agree that since they've been working at the couscous co-op their lives have improved dramatically. For the first time 'we're no longer dependent on humanitarian aid,' said Abu Shrar. Not only are they now independently taking home their well-earned wages, but they are finally able to simultaneously provide opportunities once inconceivable to their children, and fix-up their run-down homes. Furthermore, their self-confidence has grown alongside their social status, which has been propped up by virtue of their fortitude, self-determination and goodwill."


Palestinian women hold a sit-in at the Red Cross in Gaza City, Palestine to call attention to their imprisoned family members and to demand action on releasing them from Israeli prisons, that is,

Israel's very own Guantanamos:

"There are currently as many as 12,000 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli detention camps, many of them without charge or trial. They include hundreds of university professors, engineers, school teachers as well as religious and civic leaders, students, resistance fighters and women activists."

According to Sumoud, a Political Prisoner Solidarity Group, "There are at present about 80 women political prisoners in the Israeli jails: about 38 in Hasharon Prison (Tel Mond), about 37 in Damoon Prison (Carmel Mountain), 2 in Neve Tirza Prison (Ramle) and the rest in several detention centers."


Another day at the checkpoint. Hawara checkpoint by Nablus, West Bank. Watch this Ha'artz report that explains how the Hawara checkpoint, "the biggest, most crowded and most volatile" checkpoint was put under renovation by request of Condaleeza Rice. Part of the reason for its "makeover" was to make it safer FOR THE ISRAELI SOLDIERS. Perhaps if all Israeli citizens had to go through the checkpoint everyday the state would think about getting rid of the checkpoint, not giving it a makeover!


Another day of scraping by under the watchful eye of Israeli soldiers. Near Qualqilya, the West Bank town completely entombed by the Apartheid Wall, cutting it off from the rest of Palestinian society.



What does the Wall look like?

"The Wall takes on a variety of forms; around Qalqiliya the Wall is pure concrete eight meters (25 feet) high and fortified with armed watchtowers and in other areas it may be part concrete/part fence or a series of razor wire and/or electric fencing all of which includes a 70-100 meter (approximately 230-330 feet) “buffer zone” with trenches, roads, razor wire, cameras, and trace paths for footprints. In Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the Wall is made up of a combination of these edifices.

Regardless of the Wall’s structural differences, the implications are the same for Palestinians-- the inability to travel for employment, medical care, and education atop of the theft of land and resources by and for Israel."


She has a lot of very difficult work on her hands: Haneen Zoubi, first Palestinian female representative of a Palestinian party to be elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Also, Haneen is "the first Palestinian citizen to graduate from a media studies course in Israel, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and she established the first media classes in Arab schools. For the past six years she has headed an organization exposing Israeli media bias."


photo Hatem Moussa

A Palestinian female supporter of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is seen during a rally by the group celebrating forty years since its founding in Gaza City, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009. Founded in 1969 the DFLP is a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist, secular political and military organization.


Rawhiyya. She is the woman with the white flag who was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper, during the recent massacre in Gaza.

Al-Jazeera correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin visited the village of Khuza'a where residents and human rights experts believe a possible war crime took place during Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip.

"Rawhiya was leading them [the women and children who had remained behind]. She said if all the women and children start moving out then everyone else could follow afterward. So she distributed white flags and led them out," Iman says.
"She walked at the front carrying a white flag, followed by other women carrying white flags or holding out their children."
Yasmine al Najar, another of the women, was at the front of the group with Rawhiyya when they spotted Israeli special forces positioned in a house opposite them.
Despite the presence of children and white flags allegedly on display the soldiers began to open fire."


Mohyeldin's documentary about Rawhiyya's story

Rick Mercer at the Hoito

Rick Mercer, one of Canada's best comics and possibly our funniest political commentator, visited the Hoito Restaurant recently--Family Day to be exact. Being on the board, I got short notice the night before that his film crew would be at the Hoito around noon, so I made sure to be there! I went with my eldest son, Tammem, and my sister, Katja, and her son/my nephew, Elijah. Our table was just by Mercer's, so I snapped a photo of him over my son's shoulder. What did he order? That I don't know, but I had a Finlandia burger. Mercer came to Thunder Bay to fry some Finnish pancakes, to climb some ice, and to fry in the sauna and then freeze in the snow. You can see all of that in the CBC video, which I found on Facebook, posted by Saku, Pasi's brother. Pasi, the eldest son of Kaija Pinta, the former head cook of Hoito, is the president of the Hoito board. In the interview at the beginning of the video, Pasi is to the left of Rick Mercer; on the right is Marvin Salmi, the president of the Finlandia Club board. You can see me in blue and long hair and my sister, too, in the distance between Mercer and Salmi but we're just a flash! (at about the 34 sec. spot on the video). That's my .005 minutes of fame.