And the Resistance can even cure cancer!

Last Monday was Liberation Day, and to celebrate the end of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in 2000 we went to Bir Hassan to see the movie ‘Ahl el wafa’ (‘the loyal people’). It’s the story of a Resistance operation in 1994 against the Israeli army and their collaborators (the South Lebanese Army) in the valley of Nabatiyeh, as directed by the famous Syrian director Najdat Anzour. A group of fighters from the Resistance (the name of their party is never specified) is smuggled into an old house in an occupied village, from where they attack an Israeli convoy that is patrolling the road below Beaufort Castle. We knew the movie was coming because we happened to be in Beaufort Castle on the day they were training for the special effects, and we expected quite a bit of it because they had flown in a stunt-team from the USA – and those people know how to make dead bodies fly around, after all.

We were not disappointed in the flying bodies department. There was plenty of blood, explosions, burning soldiers and throwing of handgrenades. The fighting scenes, preceded by lots of crawling around in the bushes to get to the desired destination unseen, were supported by upliftingly ballistic music known from the promotional videos of Hezbollah on Al Manar TV.

The acting, however, was worse than a Mexican soap-opera. On top of that, there was a second storyline about a girl whose nagging mother suffers from cancer and cannot get the right medication because of the occupation, and the girl is harassed by a member of the South Lebanese Army who doesn’t care that she’s already married – he wants her, and he and his evil grin just pretend that her wounded husband doesn’t exist.

The girl is obviously added to show human dilemma: she discovers the group of Resistance fighters hiding in her (grand)parents’ abandoned house, but they trust her and let her go when she promises she won’t tell anybody. The girl is torn; if she tells the Israelis about her find, she can get money to help her mother! Or get the SLA-guy to stop harassing her! It’s so hard to decide what to do! But she doesn’t rat on the Resistance fighters, and is rewarded for her loyalty by the fact that the evil SLA-guy is among those who die in the attack on the convoy, and the Resistance transfers her mother to a beautiful hospital where she suddenly stops nagging.

They added one more scene – in the end, she offers the Resistance the key to the house, a not so subtle invocation of the Palestinian symbolism of carrying with them the keys to their old houses as the last proof that the places were really theirs, and here she voluntarily gives it to the Resistance… a fitting ending to a beautiful piece of propaganda ideological movie. Go see it if you have a chance.

Closed Zone

Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement 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.

For more information visit their website: Closed Zone
(Thanks to Lenie for sending me this.)

Ramptoerisme van het 'beschaafde' soort

Je kent het wel, die beelden: ergens in de Westerse wereld is een aanslag gepleegd, en onmiddellijk gaan er in het Midden Oosten een paar jongens de straat op om juichend en toeterend hun blijdschap te uiten. Zeker als het gaat om aanslagen in Israel (een land dat ondanks haar geografische ligging constant tot het ‘Westen’ wordt gerekend), worden deze scooterbrigades breed uitgemeten in de Nederlandse media, om te laten zien wat een barbaren het toch zijn. Zouden wij, beschaafde mensen uit democratische landen, nooit doen, juichen om andermans leed en pijn! Integendeel, ‘Wij’ Westerse democratieën doen dat op een veel beschaafdere manier: wij genieten ervan met een kopje koffie erbij.

Onderstaande video gaat over de bombardementen in Gaza vanaf Israel bezien. Luister vooral naar het commentaar van de toeristen.

(Volgende video toegevoegd omdat de bovenstaande verwijderd is)

Reading material, for it has already been 22 days in Gaza

Israeli Assault Injures 1.5 Million Gazans – Jonathan Cook “Talking of Gaza's civilians, where did they all go? Israel's so-called "war" on Gaza must be the first example in human history of a conflict where there are apparently no civilians. Or, at least, that is the impression being created by the world's leading international bodies, from the World Health Organization to the United Nations. Instead they refer to a new category of "women and children." […] The implication -- one with which Israel is presumably delighted -- is that the rest are Palestinian fighters, or "terrorists" as Israel would prefer us to call them. It also suggests that every man in Gaza over the age of 16 is being defined as a non-civilian -- as a combatant and, again by implication, as a terrorist. In short, all Gaza's men are legitimate targets for Israeli attack.”

War Diary from Sderot – Nomika Zion

“It frightens me to see my town lit up, as if for a festival and decked out with Israeli flags, groups of supporters distributing flowers in the street and people sounding their car horns in joy at every ton of bombs that's falling on our neighbours. I am frightened by the citizen who admitted to me, with a beaming face, that he never attended a concert in his life but that the Israel Defence Forces bombs is the sweetest music to his ears. I am frightened by the haughty interviewer who doesn't question his worlds by one iota.

I am frightened that, underneath the Orwellian smokescreen of words and the pictures of [Palestinian] children's' bodies that are especially blurred for us on TV as a public service, we are losing the human ability to see the other side, to feel, to be horrified, to show empathy. With the code word "Hamas" the media paints for us a picture of a huge and murky demon that has no face, no body, no voice, a million and a half people without a name.

A deep and gloomy current of violence seeps through the dark pores of Israeli society like a grave illness, and it gets worse from one war to the next. It has no smell and no shape but one feels it very clearly from here. It is a kind of euphoria, a joy of war, lust for revenge , drunkenness on power and burial of the Jewish command "Do not be joyful when your enemy falls". It is a morality that has become so polluted that no laundry could remove the stains.”

How to Sell ‘Ethical’ Warfare – Neve Gordon

“The Israeli media continuously emphasises Israel's restraint by underscoring the gap between what the military forces could do to the Palestinians and what they actually do. […] The message to the Israelis is a moral one. The subtext is that the Israeli military could indiscriminately unleash its vast arsenal of violence, but chooses not to, because its forces, unlike Hamas, respect human life.

This latter claim appears to have considerable resonance among Israelis, and, yet, it is based on a moral fallacy. The fact that one could be more brutal but chooses to use restraint does not in any way entail that one is moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have razed the entire Gaza Strip, but instead destroyed only 15% of the buildings does not make its actions moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have killed thousands of Palestinian children during this campaign, and, due to restraint, killed "only" 300, does not make Operation Cast Lead ethical.”

Forget about Lebanon, worry about Gaza

And the death of the people was as it has always been:as if no one, nothing had died, as if they were stones falling on the ground. or water on the water

Y la muerte del pueblo fue como siempre ha sido: como si no murlcra nadie, nada, como si fueran pledras las que caen sabre la tlerra, o agua sabre el agua.

Pablo Neruda Canto General, 1950

Found on Hakaya, Muzna's blog.