also
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2008/12/did-shoe-hit-fan.html
Muntazir Az-Zaydi
I attended the projection of David&Leyla last night at the Arab film festival in Brussels
Among the shameful events of my life …
During the Q&A section of the evening
I did not speak up and yet…
I had felt like leaving well before the end and yet…
since I’ll never know the end of Waltz with Bashir (I could not care less about the lebanese nightmares of zionist assassins) I stayed
but then, why did I not open my mouth ?
I know, it was hard to hurt the feelings of the producer who was present; I am trying to make amends by putting this on line.
I felt the film as a vulgar, American vision of things
A love story between a randy and sex problems ridden jewish New Yorker and a beautiful Kurd
He is engaged to a nightmare of a woman who has the blessing of his family.
He falls in love with Leyla, the beautiful and virgin Kurdish and muslim girl about to be shipped out by Immigration.
Both families object and throw all their racist or national clichés at each other
Leyla can marry David only if he converts to islam
David converts to islam and they marry
During the wedding party David leaves the party discreetly and breaks a glass under his foot in the Jewish tradition.
A few years later, we see them with a son sharing Pessah with the Jewish side of the family.
The positive side of the film
The film maker remains firm on Palestine
Islam is not presented as a caricature
We share the nostalgia of the exiled Kurds
Eventually, the two families blend harmoniously with each side keeping its values
The wonderful Kurdish wedding party and the Kurdish music
And there is humour of course with poor David having to deal with the consequences of his betrayal and struggling to take his admission exam into Islam.
What was totally uncalled for :
the sex scenes. That was really the vulgar part, specially towards the end, the scence between the parents.
I cannot imagine this film being viewed in Damascus if only on this account. If you want to build a bridge between the two sides you have to take the sensitivities of the other side into account.
Two moroccan newspapers have accused the film of being zionist; I would not go that far.
Had I know, would I have gone to see it ? The answer is no. Does not mean you should not.
Cases of deformities in children are escalating at an alarming rate in Fallujah. Could these birth defects have occurred as a result of White-Phosphorous gas used by US troops in 2004 ? – See here
Google Fallujah and cry.
Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News.
For the people in Iraq, the war is full time. A woman wept as the body of a relative was borne to burial in Najaf.
[…]
Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.
“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.
I can empathize with them but with this attitude in life we would never be happy since many good things come to an end. The poor kids are in depression and do we understand them ! May be it will prompt some government to get the whole families out of there.
30 Jun 2008 15:13:20 GMT
AL TANF, Syria, June 30 (UNHCR) – It seemed like a good idea. Take a group of Palestinian children to the seaside to help them escape the monotony and hardship of their lives in limbo on the arid Iraq-Syria border.
But it all proved a bit too much for most of the children taken to the Syrian city of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea earlier this month from the Al Tanf camp, where they and their families have lived for months after fleeing their homes in the violence-plagued Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
The sudden freedom of movement, the cool sea breezes, the abundant food and drink and the other laughing kids showed these nine children what they were missing and what they would miss once again when they returned to Al Tanf at the end of their week’s holiday.
Al-Hajj received support from journalists around
the world during his detention [EPA]
Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman released from Guantanamo Bay earlier this month, is set to return to Qatar.
Al-Hajj will be accorded a public reception by the news network on arriving in Doha on Saturday.
He spent six years in the US detention centre without being formally charged.
ARTICLE HERE
From Layla Anwar’s blog
Do you have any idea what’s happening to the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees also known as DPs (displaced person) ?
DP no. 354,670,890,1001,2003…
DPs walking around with numbers and badges, carrying pieces of yellowed paper, application forms that they’ve shown over and over, old ID cards, expired passports, begging an administrator, supplicating an officer, knocking on NGOs doors only to hear what they’ve heard before —sorry we can’t help you.
Kawthar and her sister. Two orphaned women, the rest of the family has been murdered by the Mahdi Army, you know the Mahdi army don’t you? The ones you support as a “patriotic resistance”. Forced to leave their home in Baghdad and now in Damascus. The deal is they pay a rent they can’t afford in exchange for food, sharing an apartment with a Syrian family.
What about Qutaiba – Do you know Qutaiba ? He’s 20 years old. He dreams of becoming a doctor, no university accepts him and besides, he can’t afford it. He plays football with plastic slippers, he has no shoes. He looks forward to summer, so he can play football barefoot in some garbage dump that he considers his football field. “I am king here” he says, looking at the waste surrounding him.
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted May 20, 2008.
Angry vets testify to horrors of killing innocent people, and the way they came to dehumanize those they were supposedly sent to “liberate.”
“I was ordered multiple times by commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made me feel uncomfortable,” Sgt. Jason Lemieux told a panel of lawmakers last Thursday in a packed public hearing on Capitol Hill. “These orders were given with the understanding that my immediate chain of command would protect our subordinates from legal repercussions.”
READ ON
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
May 2, 2008
Getcha popcorn ready! The Green Zone Puppet Theatre in Baghdad is putting on a new show, The Trial of Tareq Aziz.
The charges against the former deputy premier of Iraq – when Iraq was still free and a country – are related to the execution of 42 Baghdad merchants in 1992. At the time Iraq was under the genocidal embargo imposed by the United States and its British vassal through the United Nations.
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