At some point in our lives, we grapple with understanding our childhood relationships and seek to find answers to unresolved familial ambiguities. This is exactly what Israeli-born Danae Elon chooses to document in her honest film Another Road Home (2004). While Elon’s search focuses on finding one man, Mahmoud “Musa” Obeidallah, the Palestinian caretaker who helped raise her for twenty years of her life in East Jerusalem, her subsequent film openly exposes a unique side of Palestinian-Israeli relations. Read more about Film review: "Another Road Home"
A little over a week ago, some members of our organization, If Americans Knew, met with New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent to discuss the findings of a detailed study we had completed of two years worth of Times news stories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Okrent was going to be writing a column discussing the paper’s coverage of Israel/Palestine, and we felt our study would be an important resource. We presented our findings, complete with charts, spread-sheets, clear sourcing, and extensive additional documentation, to Okrent and his assistant. His subsequent column was perplexing. Read more about When the New York Times' distortion gets up close and personal
The surplus oil industry wealth of the now-deceased former Samson Investment Company CEO is apparently being used to help subsidize the activity of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) and its affiliated David Project. In 2004, for instance, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation — with assets of $100 million — gave a $1,050,000 grant to Hillel to support the Israel on Campus Coalition [ICC] project, according to its website. Read more about The Israel on Campus Coalition and the David Project: Sponsored by US oil and Israeli bank profits?
Sense of Need (2004) begins simply enough with the main character narrating his life for the viewer. Almost switched at birth with a red-haired Jewish boy, Palestinian Joseph was born while Israel was at war with Egypt. At the age of seven his father bought him his first piano and then “began his life in color.” At first one might take this as purely a poetic metaphor, but this is not the case in newcomer Shady Srour’s psychologically complicated and loosely autobiographical plot. Srour, a man of many talents, wrote, directed, and produced his first full-length feature film. He also portrays the protagonist Joseph, a twenty-seven year old aspiring musician who lives in San Francisco and is just a week away from finishing his masters degree. Read more about Film review: "Sense of Need"
Ariel Sharon travelled to the United States as a hero of peace, as if he had already evacuated Gaza and only the follow-up remained to be worked out. What has completely disappeared from the public agenda is what is happening, meanwhile, in the West Bank. Behind the smoke screen of disengagement, a process of slow and hidden transfer is being carried out in the West Bank today. Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart looks at recent developments. Read more about Behind the smoke screen of the Gaza pullout
In April 2005, almost 15 years since German reunification and some 60 years after the Second World War, 21 young journalists of German, Israeli and Palestinian origin, including myself, were invited to take part in a trialogue organised by the German Federal Government, the Goethe Institut and the Herbert-Quandt-Stiftung Foundation (the charitable arm of BMW). The purpose of the trip was to bring aspiring journalists together to produce a newspaper called “The Bridge”, to visit cultural institutions and to meet with government officials. Read more about Bridging Differences: The German-Israeli-Palestinian Trialogue "Youth for Understanding" 2005
During the first week of April, the Occupied Palestinian Territories emerged, yet again, as haven for high profile receptions and media frenzies. Palestinians were honoured with the arrival of more Americans public figures. This time the visitors were not merely American politicians — rather they held more influential positions in contemporary American society — they were Hollywood actors. Unfortunately, yet again, the Palestinian people were unable to seize the opportunity and effectively influence the visiting Americans. Read more about Gandhi comes to West Bank, Palestinians miss opportunity
Malaysia, a South East Asian Muslim state with a booming economy and a successful and peaceful multicultural, multireligious society, may soon establish a new center to spearhead and rejuvenate the global movement for Palestinian independence. This falls exactly fifty years after the birth in Bandung of the once-powerful anti-colonial bloc of non-aligned states that yielded a powerful influence on the international stage for many years. Under the sponsorship of Peace Malaysia, over 500 participants from 34 countries met March 28-30 in Putrajaya, the administrative capital of Malaysia, and unanimously adopted an action plan that called for the creation of a new International Center for Palestine Civil Societies in the South. Read more about New Activist Center in Southeast Asia to Work for Palestinian Independence
Jonathan Pollak is an Israeli activist who grew up in Tel Aviv and lives in Jaffa. He has been involved in nonviolent direct action in the West Bank for the last two-and-a-half years, participating in more than 200 protests with Palestinians in the West Bank with the Israeli nonviolent direct action group Anarchists Against the Wall and with the International Solidarity Movement. On April 3, 2005 an Israeli soldier shot Jonathan in the head with a teargas canister from an M-16 from a distance of approximately thirty meters at a peaceful protest against the Wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in. Bil’in is one of tens of West Bank Palestinian villages losing land because of Israel’s wall construction. Pat O’Connor interviewed Jonathan Pollak by telephone on 7 April 2005. Read more about An Interview with Israeli Activist Jonathan Pollak
Alan Dershowitz is a well-known lawyer and professor at Harvard Law School, a prolific author, and makes regular appearances in the media. When it comes to Israel, he is particularly outspoken and taken quite seriously within certain segments of the North American mainstream. Whether he deserves to be taken seriously is another issue altogether. In a recent talk at York University in Toronto, Canada, Professor Dershowitz repeated many of the controversial claims of his recent book, The Case for Israel, but one claim struck me as — even by his standards — exceptionally far-reaching. Read more about The Case Against Alan Dershowitz: The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel vs. Alan Dershowitz
