For those of you in the New York City area, the critically-acclaimed documentary USA vs. Al-Arian is being shown at the Human Rights Watch 2008 International Film Festival this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Even if you can't make it yourself, please invite your NY friends to attend.
CASE UPDATE: Dr. Al-Arian is still in legal limbo, being held by the immigration authorities without any formal charge. Government attorney Gordon Kromberg is still planning to bring an indictment of contempt of court against Dr. Al-Arian, but has repeatedly delayed doing so. Nevertheless, Kromberg will act soon.
If you have not done so already, please do these 3 SIMPLE BUT POWERFUL ACTS:
1. Call Vincent Archibeque, Assistant Field Office Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): (703) 285-6221.
Stress that Dr. Al-Arian’s prison term ended on April 11th and that his imprisonment since then has been COMPLETELY ILLEGAL. Ask Mr. Archibeque to do everything he can to ensure that Dr. Al-Arian is released and deported as soon as possible in accordance with the terms of his plea agreement.
2. Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (Department of Homeland Security):
(866)-644-8360 (press 1 for English and then press 5 to leave a message)
Stress that Dr. Al-Arian’s prison term ended on April 11th and that his imprisonment since then has been COMPLETELY ILLEGAL. Ask that Dr. Al-Arian be released and deported as soon as possible in accordance with the terms of his plea agreement.
Again, always be polite but firm.
If you don't speak to a live person:
- simply leave a message on the answering machine; and
- call back later that day or the next day to try to get through.
3. Email Attorney General Michael Mukasey: ASKDOJ@usdoj.gov
Ask Mr. Mukasey to ensure that Dr. Al-Arian is deported as soon as possible in accordance with the plea agreement.
- Before sending the email, make sure to BCC samialarianactioncommittee@gmail.com
NOTE: In any given civil rights campaign, there are always more people willing to make a phone call than write an email. Your emails are very important. Just use our letter template and take JUST FIVE MINUTES to write out your message. Precisely because so few people ever write their own letter, yours will be EXPONENTIALLY more powerful for that.
If you have not signed our petition, please do so by visiting http://petition.freesaminow.com
To learn how you can help EVEN MORE, please visit: http://www.freesamialarian.com/help.html
Thanks again for all your support at this critical time.
[Tarboush Tip: John Halliwell]
Sunday, June 22, 2008
NYC Screening of USA vs Al-Arian / Update of Case
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Madonna to save the world (again)
Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie (born August 16, 1958), raised not too far from Dearbornistan Michigan, known artistically as Madonna... has decided to produce a documentary about the Zionist-Arab conflict.
The project will provide her with another opportunity to both save the world and collaborate with her gardener/nanny/director friend, Nathan Rissman (again) via a highly-acclaimed documentary film that no one will watch. (Again.)
From reports I've been getting, it sounds like her newfound inspiration was triggered after watching a documentary about a school in Israel (Bridge over the Wadi?) where the children of the Arabs and the children of the Jews go to learn together and their parents fight over things like the Nakba, Israel's "independence" day celebrations, and 9 year-old existential guilt. I'm assuming.
Haaretz (G-d bless Haaretz) could care less about the documentary:That's all well and good, but Israelis who are certainly accustomed to hearing foreign celebrities' vague proposals for projects involving their country have other pressing concerns, such as whether the singer will stop in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem on her upcoming concert tour.
Pressing concerns, indeed. The singer hasn't performed a concert in the country since 1993.
Can't say with 100% certainty how the kabbalah devotee stands politically on the Israel-Palestine issue. She pissed off a couple of orthodox rabbis last year, but that doesn't mean much -- lots of them hate the Zionism too. That she professed her love to Shimon Peres ... now that might be a better clue. [JPost]
Maybe she'll return home to England having saved a Palestinian baby to play in solidarity with its equally rescued, equally stolen Malawi twin. She's already single-handedly "put Malawi on the map" you know. Maybe taking a Nazarene baby home will do the same for Palestine. That'll show those Israelis a thing or two about maps.
On the other hand, if anyone spots her leaving Ben Gurion with an Israeli baby in her gardener/nanny/director friend's arms, I think it's safe to say we'll know hundred bercent where her allegiances lie.
[Tarboush Tip: Diana]
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
So Sue Me
Five Israeli reservists who took part in the incursion into and destruction of a large part of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 are suing the maker of a documentary for making them look bad.
Jenin, Jenin director Mohammed Bakri testified that everything in the film is true. The litigants claimed that selective editing made it appear that a tank purposefully ran over a group of Palestinians.
What a joke!
Judge Michal Nadav of the Petah Tikva District Court recommended the parties reach an agreement. The claimants want 2.5 million shekels in this defamation suit. Such a flimsy suit would never fly in places with defamation laws protecting free speech.
Italian filmmakers have organized a petition in defense of Bakri. Unfortunately, Israeli and Arab artists have done very little to support him. About the Italian petition, Bakri said, "I hope that this initiative will reach the hearts of the good people of Israel. I think it sends a message to Israeli artists, who should have stood by me, not one of whom, Arab or Jew, lifted a finger."
If the reservists suffered a loss of reputation for their involvement in "Operation Defensive Shield," maybe they should sue the Israeli government for making them do it. Jenin is under occupation, and such Israeli operations against refugee resistance fighters will always be seen as a crime of occupation. The IDF is what made them look bad.
They could also sue the bulldozer operator, also a reservist, who took pride in his 75 hour rampage bringing down as many homes as he could:No one refused an order to knock down a house. No such thing. When I was told to bring down a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses; not because I wanted to - but because when you are asked to demolish a house, some other houses usually obscure it, so there is no other way. I would have to do it even if I didn't want to. They just stood in the way. If I had to erase a house, come hell or high water - I would do it. And believe me, we demolished too little. The whole camp was littered with detonation charges. What actually saved the lives of the Palestinians themselves, because if they had returned to their homes, they would blow up.
Wow, he was so concerned for the well-being of the Palestinians. Isn't that sweet? If he really cared about them, he would advocate for ending the occupation.
The Unrecognized
I mentioned this video (by Adalah) once before as an afterthought to this post. I am posting it again because I want to bring your attention to the awesome woman interviewed near the end of the film.
Please click here to stream the video from the Adalah site so you can actually read the subtitles.
After all of the lawyers and such who give their professional information about the situation of the Bedouin in the unrecognized villages in Israel, and all of whom speak with varying levels of proper, Modern Standard Arabic, we hear this woman. She is Amal ElSana AlH'jooj, the Director of AJEEC, The Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation. She speaks with passion that would blow all the rest out of the water, and in dialect, and comes across with simultaneous rawness and eloquence regarding the most fundamental problem driving just about the entire conflict here. She is speaking of the Palestinians inside of Israel, but the sentiment applies to the whole darn thing. She hits it right on the nose:First of all, and this is a fundamental point, the state must start changing its attitude toward Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is a difficult issue. The state must stop seeing us as a security threat. The state today sees us as a security and demographic threat.
To this day, when an Arab woman gives birth, it frightens the Israeli Interior Minister and the Israeli Foreign Minister. This is the first thing that must change.
Secondly, the state cannot consider itself a 'democratic' state in the Middle East while 72,000 of its citizens are without drinking water.
Either the state decides to be democratic with equal rights for all, or it is not democratic. If it is not democratic, then we will know how to relate to it. But Israel can't have it both ways.
In completely unrelated news, I would also like to bring your attention to my new phrase of the day: 7elli 3an 6eaz aboui. Used to express 'leave me alone.' Translates to 'get off my dad's ass.'
Saturday, November 24, 2007
On Thanksgiving I went to the Naqab
This double rainbow greeted Haifa Thursday morning after the rainstorms. It stretched up from Haifa University and touches down here, in the middle of the chemical plant from which waft carcinogenic fumes for the noses of all who drive by. This was actually a Hezbollah target during the war in 2006- if a rocket hit here a lot of people would die from poisoning. Makes you wonder what they're manufacturing.
Naqab is the Arabic word for the Negev Desert. I was taken on a driving tour Thursday of a few of the 47 unrecognized Bedouin villages, the majority of which are located there. The people living here are the remainder of the indigenous Bedouin Arab population that somehow avoided expulsion in 1948 to Gaza, the West Bank, or Jordan. They have Israeli citizenship, many serve in the army, and they pay taxes. About 76,000 people are currently living in the unrecognized villages, any of which has more residents than your average Kibbutz. To be unrecognized by the State of Israel means that you do not have the services that people whose existence is recognized are entitled to- water, electricity, schools, health centers. Ambulances even don't go there- they just stop on the highway.
It was the proximity that surprised me. These people aren't out in the boondocks. Far from it. Five minutes outside of Beer Sheva, a thriving university town, we passed the first tin shacks that serve as family homes. The shacks were yards from the city water pipe emerging from underground, and underneath electric lines, but forbidden to connect to either.
Wadi Al Na'am:
In this village, just outside of Beer Sheva, 8,000 people live in a small sea of tin shacks, next to an electricity generating plant. They are not allowed to access the electricity. They have to bring their own water from elsewhere in tanks that aren't inspected and may not be clean. A strong chemical smell hung in the air around the plant. Wadi Al Na'am has one of, if not THE as I was told, highest cancer rates in the entire country. If you didn't see the numbers, you could just feel in the place that it wasn't good for your health. Every breath had that smell to it. Then, a BOOM made us all look around to a mushroom of smoke about 3/4 of a mile to our left, on the other side of the sea of shacks. The military was conducting a test. (In the Negev, where no one lives, of course!) The thing about Wadi Al Na'am is that people KNOW they are getting sick from living there, and they have told the government that they want to leave. Now that they want to leave, the government is telling them wait. When we left to the highway, yards from the last house, the sign for the turnoff was for the electric plant only. No sign for the village of 8,000. [I grew up in a town of about 4,000 and we had a lot of signs and also three stoplights and a McDonald's.]
A note on signage: our driver stopped by one of those electric grid things that come out of the ground that was surrounded by fence and on the fence there were signs warning of mortal danger- only in Hebrew. This is in a place surrounded by 8,000 people who speak Arabic.
Bir Haddaj:
One day, 3,000 people from Wadi Al Na'am decided they weren't going to take it anymore. On this particular Friday morning in the 1980s, the state woke up and there were more than 1,000 tents housing 3,000 people in the area now known (and recognized!) as Bir Haddaj. What to do what to do?! It's not very easy to just remove 3,000 people! The people of Bir Haddaj gave the government ultimatums. They said, if you don't give us another place to live, in 6 months we will build tin houses. After another 6 months, if you still don't give us a place that you recognize, we will build proper houses. Now, the village is recognized. (And as such, they have a school, a mosque that has an actual minaret, and of course the black water lines snaking across the ground and electricity that mark the 'recognized.')
There is a major problem with the way the government tries to settle the Bedouin in towns that they set up for them. The Bedouin know how to live a rural lifestyle, cultivating and herding animals. When they are crammed together in a place where the houses are all in single square lots, they suffer from an increase in poverty and there is a rise in all different kinds of diseases. But as it is with land in all of Mandate Palestine, if you don't have the power then you don't have access to the land. The guide pointed out that Jewish people can choose to live wherever they want- in Haifa, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, or even Nablus or Hebron. But the Bedouin are stuck in places like Wadi Al Na'am breathing carcinogenic fumes that get into their food and water.
The story of Bedouin land ownership pre-1948 is also indicative of the greater history of land confiscation, whereby the state would prevent farmers from cultivating their land, and then declare it unused and usurp it. The 1950 law was used not only to bring absentee property (that of refugees who'd fled) under state ownership, but it also was used to take Bedouin land even if the owners hadn't fled. Under the British, if you made a land sale, you would have had to travel all the way to Tel Aviv to register the transaction with the colonial authority. That cost time and a lot of money. So, people settled on written contracts between themselves. Then come Israel. Since the person whose name the land is under on the books can't be found, the land MUST be absentee property that is for the State of Israel now (even though there are people farming it- just a small snag, nothing major).
For more on the unrecognized, I recommend THIS FILM by Adalah.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Palestine: Peace not Apartheid book tour coming to a theater near you
Jimmy Carter documentary on way to theaters
Mon Aug 20, 2007
By Gregg Goldstein
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Jimmy Carter is coming to movie theaters in a documentary centered on his controversial book about the Middle East.
"Jimmy Carter Man From Plains" follows the former president on a recent promotional tour for "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," which was viewed by some Jewish groups as an attack on Israel. He was dogged by protests on the tour.
Sony Pictures Classics picked up North American rights from Participant Prods., the socially-conscious production company that backed Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
"Jimmy Carter Man From Plains" will be shown at the Venice International Film Festival later this month, and is rumored to be among the films on the slate at Toronto next month.
It was directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme, whose documentary credits include "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" and the Talking Heads concert movie "Stop Making Sense." He won an Academy Award for directing "The Silence of the Lambs."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
[Previously from The Hollywood Reporter:
Demme helms docu on Carter for Participant, Dec 5, 2006]
For our friends in So Cal, the film is slated this week at
For our friends in Toronto (you listenin’ KB?), Carter is expected to make an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. I'm thinking guest blog post... perhaps?
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
JESUS CHRIST! That's a lot of hair...
On Sunday, July 15th, Fatah gunman Amjad Halawi came out of hiding in the West Bank city of Bethlehem after seven years of being on the run from Israel. According to the AP, "Halawi grew a thick mane of black hair well below his shoulders because he said he was too afraid to come out of hiding, even for a trip to the barbershop." Funny? Yes. Outlandish? No. Remember Fayyad's post about How a Haircut Could Land You in Jail?
He was able to come out of hiding after Palestinian "President" Mahmoud Abbas struck up a bullshit Fatah-only "amnesty" (i.e. - let's skrew with Hamas) deal with Israel that allowed for about 180 Fatah-affiliated men to be removed from Israel's "wanted" list in exchange for their promise to lay down arms and refrain from participating in any sort of military resistance against Israel's illegal occupation.
Also among those granted amnesty was Jenin-based Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade commander Zakariya Zubeidi. What will he do now, you ask? Pursue his love for theatre of course! Surprised? Don't be - just pick up a copy of the documentary Arna's Children and you'll know why.
Fayyad will post more on Zakariya Zubeidi and the Abbas - Olmert "amnesty deal" in the near future. Until then... more TERRORGASMIC hair pictures!!!
Friday, July 13, 2007
REEL BAD ARABS: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
Based on Southern Illinois University professor Jack Shaheen's book by the same name, the new documentary, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, discusses the treatment of Arabs in more than 900 films released between 1896 and 1999. Films included in the "worst" list (in alphabetical order):
Back to the Future (1985), The Black Stallion (1979), The Black Stallion Returns (1983), Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero (1994), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Chain of Command (1993), The Delta Force (1986), Freedom Strike (1998), Iron Eagle (1986), Ishtar (1987), The Taking of Flight 847 (1988), Killing Streets (1991), Navy SEALs (1990), Operation Condor (1997), Protocol (1984), Rules of Engagement (2000), Terror in Beverly Hills (1988), True Lies (1994)
Eric Hooglund's review of the book, published in the Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), p. 117), provides a short summary of Shaheen's findings:
Only 5 percent of the films reviewed, about fifty movies, depart from the depiction of Arabs as villains and actually presented some of them as "admirable characters" (p. 34). None of the rare Arab good guys include Palestinians. The latter, Shaheen found, uniformly have been depicted as terrorists in the forty-five movies featuring Palestinians. Surprisingly, the majority of anti-Palestinian movies have been released since 1980. This cinematic "defamation" of Palestinians is so total, says Shaheen, that one may ask, "Is there an unwritten cinematic code stating Hollywood will present all Palestinians as irrational and bad, all Israelis as rational and ood?" (p. 26).
Peep the trailer
Buy the book
Check for film screenings
Host your own REEL BAD ARABS night
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Free Market at Work
When Israel withdrew is last soldier from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, it was to mark an end to Israel’s 38 year-long occupation in Gaza. Yet, Israel has continued to exercise control of all of what surrounds Gaza; most notably, access between Gaza and the outside world through all of its sea ports, air space, and border-crossings. The latter includes Gaza’s border with Egypt at Rafah – a boundary not contiguous to Israeli territory. This is Gaza's only viable access to the outside world and the key to Gaza if the place is to be even a shadow of livability for any human being.
Perhaps the most accurate way to describe the post-disengagement experience in Gaza is as life in an open-air prison. One of the world's most densely populated areas -- 1.4 million residents living in 360 square kilometer area -- is on the verge of humanitarian disaster.
"Disengagement" has not been followed by Gaza' autonomy, and it certainly has not absolved the Israeli government from any responsibility there.
A new short documentary on Gaza's underground economy by Saeed Farouky and Laila el-Haddad (Laila runs an excellent blog about life in Gaza and at the Rafah border) recently aired on CBC's On the Map with Avi Lewis and can be accessed online: http://www.cbc.ca/onthemap/fullpage.php?id=70 The CBC coverage wraps up with commentary by Israel's Ambassador to Canada, Allan Baker, who flatly denies that Israel is responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Flatly denies.
***
The post-disengagement period – with its signature creation of “hard borders” along the Israel-Gaza border governing Palestinian movement and access of both people and goods and continuing effective Israeli control over the Gaza-Egypt frontier, the airport, and nascent sea port – has failed to establish a reliable, efficient, or transparent foundation for Palestinian economic revival and independence.
- Geoffrey Aronson, "Building Sovereignty in Palestine" April 2007
Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC)
"Far from improving the economy and welfare of Gaza residents, Israeli actions since September 2005 – including severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza and an economic stronghold on the funding of civil services – have contributed to an economic and humanitarian crisis in Gaza not seen in the 38 years of Israeli control that preceded the withdrawal of permanent ground troops."
- Gisha, "Disengaged Occupiers", January 2007
Legal Center for Freedom of Movement (Israel-based)
"The movement of crops crucial to farmers' livelihoods, the decision on when residents of the coastal strip can leave and when they can come back, permission for a foreign-born spouse to move to Gaza -- it's all still up to Israel."
- Karin Laub, "Israel gone, yet still in Gaza's life" April 7, 2007
Associated Press
