Category: Palestine

The Sup on Palestine

Whatever the value of this path that I’m on, wherever it leads, Subcomandante Marcos’s words were a major part of putting me on it. The Chiapas of the Zapatistas is one of the first places I visited and reported from and worked in and it was not that long a two years from Chiapas to Palestine (my first trip to Colombia in between). And so it’s fitting that it’s from Marcos and the Zapatistas that I find the words that I will go back to over and over for, in his words, that little ray of light in the darkness.

“Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we’re lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there’s a professional army murdering a defenseless population.”

When this all started on December 27 I wrote a Palestinian friend thinking exactly of Marcos’s words which I had taken on so completely I only realized I was paraphrasing him after I sent her my note. Gabriel Garcia Marquez asked him what his image of poverty is, and he says a child who died in his arms, and how he felt:

“Impotence, rage. The whole world falls in on you, that everything you believed and everything you did before is useless if I can’t prevent this death, this unjust, absurd, irrational, stupid… “

That was just what I felt, when this all began again. In this week’s piece Marcos asked:

“Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?”

“We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don’t stop a bomb and our word won’t turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters “IMI” or “Israeli Military Industry” etched into the base of the cartridge won’t hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it’s heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.”

“We don’t know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it’s as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.”

Turn off the Canadian Media, Please

If national media help make a nation, then we all need to stop reading and listening to conventional Canadian media if we want to make a decent Canada. Benedict Anderson, perhaps the leading scholar of nationalism, wrote that the daily newspaper (along with other innovations like novels, maps, censuses, museums) played a key role in creating national consciousness. People in a country like Canada use their own media – public (CBC) and private (CanWest, TorStar, CTVglobemedia) – to know what is happening in their own country. Media are also an important part of forging a national identity. They are supposed to represent the broad spectrum of Canadian opinion. When they present information on the rest of the world, they do so from a Canadian perspective and have the Canadian audience in mind.

And today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn them off completely.

In the face of a major ongoing crime like that of Israel’s siege and assault on Gaza, Canadians turn to the Canadian media in good faith to try to learn and understand what is happening, who is to blame, and what they might be able to do to help the victims. On each of these counts, the Canadian media fails. But the days when Canadians would be stuck listening to local radio, picking up the local print newspaper, or watching local television packaged by Canadian media corporations for their consumption are over. There is, for the time being, media choice. And given the choice, on Israel/Palestine, it would be foolish to turn to the Canadian media.

These days I actually don’t have the stomach to do an exhaustive survey of Canadian coverage of these massacres. I have done such surveys in the past (see my letter to the Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter from a few years back), and I spent a lot of time and energy thinking about how to democratize the mainstream Canadian media and pressure it to be more open. These days, though, I mainly follow my own advice. A friend of mine, Brooks Kind, spent some time going through the least biased of the Canadian media, CBC radio, over the past two weeks. He found that the CBC suppressed crucial facts, presented an unrepresentative spectrum of opinion, and falsified the historical record. The suppressions and omissions are in the service of the perspective of the US and Israeli governments (and Canadian politicians), but they are no less false for that. With the reminder that I am picking on the CBC not because it is the worst, but because it is by far the best, here are just a few examples.

First, remember that the pretext for Israel’s attack is that Hamas refused to renew the June 19/08 ceasefire and started rocket attacks in December/08. But Israel violated the ceasefire in two ways. First, by continuing to starve Gaza (as Israeli officials openly admit and have done for years), and second, by attacking Gaza on November 4/08 and killing six Hamas people. Why is this important? There is a pattern here: Israel has repeatedly broken truces, ceasefires, and peace talks with spectacular assassinations that involve killing large numbers of people. This has been a pattern for many years, and has included the assassinations of many of Hamas’s leaders (Abd-el-Aziz Rantisi, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and many, many others). It is an explicit part of Israel’s strategy to provoke its opponents and get pretexts for further attacks. But this timeline, and the November 4/08 attack by Israel, is not part of the ‘boilerplate’ provided when the attack on Gaza is reported in the Canadian media.

Second, Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has been making very strong statements about Gaza in recent months. Falk is an acclaimed scholar and a highly credible source. He works for the United Nations, which Canadians supposedly have special respect for. When Falk traveled to Israel, he was detained, strip searched, and deported. Israel’s contempt for the United Nations could hardly have been more starkly revealed. Except, perhaps, when the Israelis killed a Canadian UN observer (Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener) in Lebanon in 2006, along with 3 others (Du Zhaoyu of China, Jarno Makinen of Finland, and Hans-Peter Lang of Austria). Or, perhaps, when the Israelis bombed the UNRWA school in Jabaliya on Jan 3/09, killing 43 Palestinians and wounding 100. Unlike much of the UN, whose main response to these killings might as well be to apologize for getting in the way of the bombs, Falk has provided urgent warnings to the world about the seriousness of the situation. But Falk’s story is not given any prominence in any Canadian media. An entire story on the UN aspects of the situation quotes Israel’s envoy to the UN and Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and others, but not the important and strong voice of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories.

And then, of course, there are the cliches, the horrible cliches of this conflict. Like this story about how
"World leaders call for Mideast ceasefire as more civilians die." They just "die", these civilians. The lead reads "World leaders called for a ceasefire in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas as civilian casualties climbed in the Gaza Strip." The "casualties climbed", the "civilians died", of their own accord, with no help from the Israelis. Israeli officials are allowed the grace of their titles ("Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak") but Mahmoud Zahar from the elected Hamas government is called "Gaza’s Hamas strongman" (there are no Western strongmen).

Just before the current massacres, on December 8/08, Radio Canada’s ombudsman found that the CBC had erred in running a very factual documentary called "Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land" (3PL). The ombudsman Radio Canada erred in broadcasting because "militant pro-Palestinian groups were involved in researching" it. Who were these groups? FAIR (www.fair.org), or Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, whose principal activity is to act more or less as Radio Canada’s ombudsman should, pointing out inaccuracies and unfairness in US media coverage of critical topics. "Factual errors" pointed out by the ombudsman include that the film "speaks of the occupation as being illegal, but Miville-Dechene points out that this has never been clarified by the courts". This merely suggests that the ombudsman lacks the most cursory understanding of international law. And possibly, an understanding of what constitutes a factual error. In any case, the Quebec Israel Committee (QIC) said that, by changing its policies to prevent documentaries like these from being seen by Canadians, "Radio-Canada has strengthened its credibility and has become a better news organization." The more "credible" a media outlet is to an outfit like the QIC, the better off Canadians would be in turning it off altogether. What is good about this situation is that all Radio-Canada can really do is prevent Canadians from seeing 3PL on Radio-Canada. They can’t prevent Canadians from seeing it altogether (in fact, you can watch it at the Media Education Foundation site or on Google Video. The natural response is the right one: turn off Radio-Canada.

A last example. The rally against the Gaza massacres that happened in Toronto (as well as many cities in the world) on January 3, 2009. I was at the rally. I have been to a lot of rallies over the years. Many of these, I must admit, have been very small. Activists learn how to assess (and yes, unfortunately, sometimes to inflate) numbers at demonstrations. But to say that the January 3, 2009 rally had "more than 1000 people", as CBC did, is simply preposterous. They may as well have said "more than one". There were easily 10,000 people there – unless someone can show me how you can fill Yonge Street between Bloor Street and College Street in Toronto with a thousand people. And no, at no point was the march single file.

In the past, when I, and others like me, have made points like these to Canadian journalists, they reply that we are leftists and biased and merely want them to be biased the way we are. But the above are mostly matters of fact and of professionalism, not of analysis or opinion.

I am willing to declare my biases. I write for ZNet (www.zcommunications.org/znet) and work as an editor for it. I wouldn’t do either if I didn’t think people should read it, and I wouldn’t criticize the mainstream media if I thought it did a good job. ZNet is a site for analysis. It features analysts who write on other sites, like the Electronic Intifada‘s (www.electronicintifada.net) Ali Abunimah, Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies (http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/phyllis), Jonathan Cook, Ha’aretz’s own Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, other Israelis like Neve Gorden and Jeff Halper, as well as folks who write mainly for ZNet. If you’re distrustful of the "alternative media" and fear that folks from the region will be biased, try the mainstream (liberal) UK papers, whose openness to diverse analysis puts the Canadian press to shame. Guardian’s Comment is Free (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree) section has had Leila el-Haddad, Nir Rosen, Seamus Milne, and plenty of others that don’t see the light of day in the Canadian press. Reading these analysts reveals the incredible mediocrity of the Canadian punditry when it addresses international affairs.

But analysis is not news, and people do need news. Not only do they need news, but they need a variety of perspectives, and the Israeli perspective is a very important one. There is, however, a difference between what the public relations line of a state at war and the actual perspective and debates in that state. In other words, if you want the Israeli perspective, you can get it directly, in the Israeli press: read Haaretz (www.haaretz.com) and the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com). They are available in English, and they are much more frank about Israel’s aims and practices than the Canadian media are. Why read what the Israeli military wants Canadians to read, when you can read what they want Israelis to read?

If you want news about how Israeli destruction looks to its victims, there is nothing better than the IMEMC (www.imemc.org), which is a genuine news outlet run by Palestinians, in the Occupied Territories, with as high professional standards as you could want. These are journalistic heroes, and the first place I go.

If you want news that is actually balanced, with "supporters of Israel" and "pro-Palestinian" voices represented, as well as actual reporting from the ground, use al-Jazeera (www.aljazeera.net/en).

[Aside: I can’t use the phrase "supporters of Israel" without reminding readers of Chomsky’s note in Fateful Triangle, where he said "supporters of Israel" should more aptly be called "supporters of the moral degradation and eventual destruction of Israel". "Pro-Palestinian" is another strange term, since it seems that thinking that a group of human beings are, in fact, human beings, makes you "pro-Palestinian", rather like how agreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change makes you an "environmentalist".]

If you want to make your own decision about how many people were at a demonstration or what its message was, you might as well go directly to the people involved: they all have their own websites. The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (www.caiaweb.org) has one, the Canadian Arab Federation (www.caf.ca) has one, and so on.

Let me rephrase my point here. Modern Western armies, like those of Israel, the US, and Canada, think of information as part of warfare. They expend tremendous time and resources mobilizing support for their violence. They do this by controlling information, disallowing independent journalists (as Israel is doing), using embedded journalists, and running a massive public relations machinery designed specifically to deliver arguments and propaganda for the foreign press and for foreign consumption. There is a special machinery just for Canadians, and a special strategy to sell war in Canada. There was one for the Iraq war, there is one for the Afghanistan war, and one for Israel’s wars as well. What is so unusual about the media environment today is that all this expense, all this media machinery, can be circumvented by anyone in its target audience by the simple click of a mouse. So click away.

The Canadian media are a biased little niche of pro-Israeli spin, and should be seen that way. There are times when the Canadian media are useful for news about Canada, if read critically. Even for Canada, there are reasonably good alternatives for analysis, commentary, and features (dominionpaper.ca, rabble.ca, briarpatchmagazine.com), and plenty of direct information from politicians (the political parties have their own sites, as do many individual polticians, activist groups, and so on). Still, read critically, the Canadian media can be a good source on goings on in the country.

But on Israel/Palestine, please, find more serious sources.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. His blog is www.killingtrain.com.

This kind of war

The current crisis in Gaza began with Israel’s breaking the ceasefire with Hamas on November 4, 2008. The five-month ceasefire was unsustainable for two reasons. First and most importantly, because it condemned the Palestinians of Gaza to a slow and wasting death: part of the ceasefire was the continuation of Israel’s blockade of Gaza. As part of this blockade, Palestinians could not leave the territory. This included, in high-profile cases, students who had obtained admission and visas to study abroad, but also people who later died because they could not receive treatment for cancers and other medical problems. Remember that the Gaza strip is 360 square kilometers, with 1.5 million people. The people have skills, strong social cohesion, and traditions of hospitality, but the area is not self-sufficient and the economy cannot function without free movement of people and goods in and out. Leave aside that the moral right and legal right of Palestinians to self-defense was denied by the prevention of arms supplies (to even mention this as a possibility is to break a taboo). Every other aspect of life was also disrupted by the blockade. Education was disrupted as Israel refused to allow paper, ink, books, and other supplies in. Health care was disrupted as Israel refused to allow medical supplies. Nutrition and normal child development was disrupted both by the refusal of Israel to allow food supplies, but also by the use of sonic booms, which the Israeli air force uses to frighten the population, and periodic bombing and assassinations.

At this point, Israel is not even allowing Palestinians to leave, so displacement is not the goal, at least for the time being. On the other hand, when body counts rise into the thousands or tens of thousands, Israel might then allow the Palestinians to flee further massacres, and be lauded for its generousness by the international community.

The second reason the ceasefire was unsustainable was deeper. So long as Israel is unwilling to negotiate a political settlement and share the land, with the US on side and with shedding Palestinian blood being a source of political credibility in Israeli society, Palestinians have no choice but to resist. If they are not starved and bombed, they will be more effective at resisting their own displacement and colonization. With each step Israel takes to try to dismantle Palestinian resistance, a genocidal logic advances. Palestinians have been walled in and blockaded. Now they are bombed and invaded. When they have been thrown off their land and into neighbouring countries, they are attacked in those countries, in their refugee camps. Indeed, the people of Gaza are mostly refugees who were thrown off lands in what is now Israel. If they were displaced from Gaza, into Egypt, what would stop Israel from attacking them there? Would being displaced twice offer more protection than being displaced once?

Once the ceasefire ended, Israel was at war. This was a war of choice, and a war it had prepared for extensively on diplomatic and military levels.

The diplomatic scenario was favourable to Israel in several ways. Palestine had been further divided. The West Bank was controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority collaborates with Israel. The PA is currently maintained in power because the elected Hamas parliamentarians are in either PA or Israeli prisons and because Israeli security forces, as well as the PA, arrest scores of people in the West Bank every week. Gaza was controlled by the elected Hamas leadership. Israel could focus on one enemy and leave the suppression of the Palestinians of the West Bank to the PA. Israel has rounded up hundreds of Palestinian children in the West Bank and shot and killed many demonstrators there in recent weeks, but these violations have become routine and barely register next to the more spectacular massacres of dozens at a time in Gaza. Hizbollah in Lebanon, who in 2006 interrupted a pattern of massacre and strangulation that Israel was conducting in Gaza (“Summer Rains”), have domestic constraints preventing them from intervening in support of the Palestinians, which would bring more thousands of dead to Lebanon in a new Israeli air campaign, against which Hizbollah has no defenses. Egypt has been more co-operative with Israel than ever before, keeping the Rafah crossing sealed and, at the official level, blaming Hamas for bringing the massacres on themselves. According to Hamas, Egypt also told them that Israel was not planning an attack – which gave the Israelis the surprise that helped them to massacre over 200 Palestinians in a single day at the start of their air campaign. As usual, Israel can count on unconditional official US support from all parts of the political spectrum, which seems to be enough to prevent any useful intervention by anyone else in the world. Many progressive governments, including the most progressive ones, Venezuela and Bolivia, have condemned the atrocities, but have not taken any further steps to try to diplomatically isolate Israel or support Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS), which might be part of a strategy that could stop Israel. Street protests have been large, in some parts of the world unprecedentedly so. But without any official political expression, these protests can be dismissed and ignored as the February 15, 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq were ignored.

On the military level, some basic points. Calling the current conflict a ‘war’ is more of an analogy than a description, because the word ‘war’ still evokes the idea of armies meeting on a battlefield and contesting territory. Israel has all of the weapons of war, but it does not really have an opposing army to fight. It can take any territory it wants and easily kill anyone trying to contest it. It can hit, and destroy, any target, anywhere Palestinians live, at will. One compilation by the al-Mezan Centre in Gaza from December 31/08 presented 315 killed (41 children), 939 injured (85 children), and 112 houses, 7 mosques, 38 private industrial and agricultural enterprises, 16 schools, 16 government facilities, 9 charity offices, and 20 security installations. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) figures to December 31/08 were 334 killed (33 children), 966 injured (218 children), 37 homes, 67 security centres, 20 workshops, as well as 40 invasions in the West Bank, killing 3 Palestinians and arresting/kidnapping hundreds more.

Skimming the IMEMC site, here is some of what Israel destroyed since the attack started.

December 27-28/08
-Palestinian Police Headquarters
-Rafah Police Station
-Saraya Security Compound
-Beit Hanoun municipal building
-Rafah governorate offices
-A police jeep in Gaza City
-The Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs
-Greenhouses in Alqarrara
-Charity offices throughout Gaza
-A medical storage facility
-A fuel station in Rafah
-A fuel truck in Rafah
-A police station in Gaza City (al-Shujaeyya)
-al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City
-Houses in Gaza City and Jabaliya refugee camp
-Hamas’s al-Aqsa TV station in Gaza City
-Hamas’s Asda’ media office in Khan Yunis
-Tunnels in Rafah
-An apartment in Tal-Alhawa in Gaza City
-A car in Nuseirat refugee camp
-The Islamic University in Gaza (several buildings, including the female students’ residence)
-A mosque in Jabaliya
-A fishermen’s dock at Gaza shore

December 29/08
-A house in Jabaliya (killing 5 sisters, all children).
-A blacksmith workshop in al-Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City
-A house in Khan Younis
-A house in Abasan town
-The Ministry of the Interior in Gaza

December 30/08
-The Ministries Compound
-The Popular Resistance Committees center in Gaza City
-A house in Beit Lahia
-Another fuel truck in northern Gaza
-The UNRWA school in al-Qarara
-Houses in Rafah
-A house in Jabailya
-A sports club in Tal AL Hawa
-A police station in Beit Hanoun
-Bani Suheila City Council
-Training grounds for the Al Qassam Brigades
-The mosque of Omar Bin Al Khattab Mosque in Al Bureij
-Al Khulafa’ Mosque in northern Gaza
-The governor’s office in northern Gaza
-The Ministries Compound in Tal Al Hawa in Gaza completely destroying it (including the Ministry of Finance, Interior, Education)
-A military camp that was previously used by Force 17, loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.
-A dairy in Gaza City
-A workshop in Beit Lahiya
-Another home in northern Gaza (killing two children)
-The Rafah-Egypt border crossing
-The house of a Fatah leader in al-Mighraqa
-A house in Beit Hanoun (killing two children)
-A house in al-Maghazi refugee camp

December 31/08
-Ambulances in Gaza City (killing a doctor, a driver, and a medic)
-The oxygen refilling plant in Gaza City (used by hospitals in Gaza)

Jan 1/09
-Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City
-The Ministry of Education in Gaza City
-The Ministry of Justice in Gaza City
-A house in Nuseirat refugee camp
-A workshop in Rafah
-A picnic park in Rafah
-Tunnels in Rafah
-A clinic in Rafah
-A house in al-Maghazi
-Nizar Rayan’s home, killing him, his wives, and all of their children (16 people total)

Jan 2-3/09
-An apartment building in al-Qarara
-A house in Jabaliya (killing 2 children)
-A house in al-Boreij refugee camp
-A mosque in Jabaliya
-The American School in Gaza City
-A house in al-Shujaeyya
-A house in Gaza City
-Fishing boats in Gaza City
-A car on the Gaza Valley bridge
-A police station in Gaza
-At least 20 homes in Gaza

Israeli bombing strategy has been to bomb the same targets repeatedly. This means not only more thorough destruction of the infrastructure, but also additional killing of medical personnel and residents who try to help the first round of victims.

Israel’s actions are not constrained by the opposing army but by two political considerations: First, how much killing can it do before it begins to face the threat of diplomatic isolation? Disallowing journalists and observers is part of Israel’s strategy to deal with this, as it was for the US in Iraq. Israel’s ground invasion has been accompanied by a total blackout even of Israeli reporters. Given the intensity of its intelligence and the precision of its weapons, Israel is able to choose the death toll, with some precision. At least some of the current killing is likely designed to push the limits and see how far Israel can go before eliciting any serious reaction.

The second consideration is, can Israeli military casualties be kept low enough that the Israeli public continues to support war? To deal with the latter, Israel uses airpower and artillery to destroy from a distance, and opened its ground invasion at night. Since it has long since dismantled Gaza’s electricity infrastructure, its soldiers are the only ones who can see at night through their infrared goggles – Gaza’s people, civilians and anyone who might want to try to defend them, are in complete darkness.

Israel’s active military is estimated to be some 170,000. With universal conscription, it has some 2.4 million people between 17-49 years old fit for military service and everyone has had some training. Its military budget is 9% of its substantial GDP, totaling some $18.7 billion. It receives about $3 billion per year from the US. It has about 1000 main battle tanks, 1500 lower quality tanks, over 1000 artillery pieces, over 500 warplanes, about 200 helicopters, 13 warships, and 3 submarines. It has the latest unmanned aerial vehicles and can gather very precise intelligence using aerial photography and satellites.

Hamas is mainly a political organization, but it has an armed wing that has the capacity to improvise rockets and explosives and to train fighters with small arms. Hizbollah in Lebanon had some success against Israeli ground forces in 2006 partly because of armaments: they were able to destroy Israeli tanks with anti-tank missiles and fight against Israeli soldiers at night with night-vision goggles. Hamas almost certainly does not have access to such weaponry. In 2002, when Palestinian fighters defended Jenin from Israeli forces, they improvised some explosions but ran out of ammunition and supplies and were ultimately defeated when Israel leveled the central part of the camp with bulldozers.

Because calling it ‘war’ is basically metaphorical, the notion of a ‘military casualty’, as opposed to a civilian death, on the Palestinian side doesn’t make much sense. If a soldier or even a militant is killed in battle, he is counted as a military casualty. If that same soldier is killed in his house by a missile from the sky or a shell from kilometres away, he is the victim of an assassination. If his entire family and various other people are killed because they were in his proximity, they are victims of murder. There are other words that can describe it, such as ‘collateral damage’, but murder is the most accurate, something that would be clear if racism against Palestinians were not so pervasive.

Israel invites us to dehumanize ourselves by estimating how many of its victims were ‘militants’ and how many ‘civilians’. In this game, Israel claims everyone it has killed was a militant and those who were not are victims of the militants because they hide among civilians. The United Nations has accepted the broad parameters of the game, estimating at one point that one fifth of those killed were civilians. The details can then be quibbled over. But no one would accept this game if it were not Palestinians who were being killed. No one tries to divide the victims of Hamas’s rockets or, in years past, suicide bombings. No doubt many of these were off-duty soldiers, since Israel has universal conscription. But everyone understands that these were civilians and killing them, a crime (an act of terrorism, no less). Most people understand that subdividing the young victims of a suicide bombing at a cafeteria based on whether they were active duty or reservist soldiers would be a pretty disgusting thing to do. But the same simple logic fails when attempted to extend it to Palestinians at a marketplace or school or hospital or university, all of whom are legitimate targets of murder unless proven otherwise (and Israel allows no one to see the evidence to prove anything in any case).

Though there is some uncertainty about Hamas’s military capability, the invasion of Gaza will not likely be a replay of Lebanon 2006. Palestinians might be motivated and have little to lose, but they cannot compete with Israel’s weaponry. Indeed, the reason the Israelis were surprised in Lebanon was that they had gotten used to fighting lightly armed and helpless opponents. Israel knows how to occupy Gaza. Before the 2005 ‘disengagement’, their forces operated from fortified settlements and cut Gaza in three parts, blocking the three main north-south roads with armor. They used extensive aerial surveillance and cameras from towers to watch every square inch of Gaza and snipe at people, including children, at will. They came out of their bases in massive armored force and with air support to bulldoze houses and neighbourhoods, after first using artillery and air strikes. Helicopter gunships would make short work of any lightly armed militants, who (unlike Hizbollah) have nothing capable of shooting one down. They can create their own no-go zones and minefields using cluster bombs, making even more of Gaza’s tiny area uninhabitable – and making the concentration camp that much more concentrated.

If everything goes Israel’s way, as it seems to be going, the next question is how Israel will decide if it has won. It can probably destroy many tunnels and, by occupying the area, silence the rockets. It can probably also conduct house-to-house searches and massacres, and will probably attempt to capture or kill the elected Hamas leadership. Since most countries refuse to recognize Hamas’s government and many have accepted Israel’s request that it be listed as a terrorist organization, there is nothing protecting these leaders’ lives any more than the lives of the people who voted for them (or against them). With its soldiers back in Gaza, Israel will be able to return to its noble project of starving the Palestinian population, this time with an even more destroyed infrastructure and from up close. As Alex de Waal pointed out about Darfur, ‘starve’ is a transitive verb: it is something one people does to another.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. He was in Gaza in 2002. His blog is www.killingtrain.com.

Palestine doesn’t get to have a 9/11

In September 2001, a group of terrorists from al Qaeda killed several thousand Americans in New York. US friends and enemies alike condemned the attacks and the attackers. Debates that occurred were about how discriminate America should be in seeking revenge and justice. The horrors of 9/11 are invoked whenever questions arise about US occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan. The US is allowed to use the suffering and deaths of its people to justify what it has done.

Continue reading “Palestine doesn’t get to have a 9/11”

The world ain’t changed yet

I believe the outcome of the US elections provide more openings and more possibilities for positive changes. I don’t think such changes will happen unless those openings are exploited. And such changes are certainly not happening yet. Not for Palestinians anyway. Not for Gaza. Instead, Israel has stepped up its ongoing bloodbath there, in the interest of its own moral degradation and that of us all. 70% of Gaza is in darkness tonight. The power plants for the 1.5 million people run on petrol that can only get in if the Israelis allow it. And the Israelis, instead, feel like letting hundreds of thousands of people freeze in the dark. And starve. And drink dirty water. And get shelled and bombed.

Palestinians live at the mercy of a genocidal regime and an indifferent or intimidated world. Above all, at the mercy of the US. This situation is one test of how much hope and change will come from the US.

The Toronto Palestine Film Festival

I spent the week Oct 25-Nov 1 at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF). Because a friend of mine gets the occasional free ticket, I have attended the Toronto International Film Festival a few times – just for one film, usually. But I have never thrown myself into a film festival the way I did this one, with possibly one exception – the London (that’s London, Ontario) Palestine Film Festival, which I attended as part of a panel in 2005, when I discovered that I love Palestine film festivals. The TPFF was huge, dazzling, and amazingly impressive. I was not involved in organizing it at all, though the organizers are friends and people I respect. It was very nice to attend as an audience member and enjoy all of their work, as well as that of the filmmakers, many of whom were around for the screenings.

Even though I bought the TPFF 10 and wanted to attend every single film, I ended up coming in at around 10 programs (“programs” instead of “films” because each feature was accompanied by one or more shorts). Walk through my journey with me.

On Saturday October 25 the festival opened with Salt of This Sea by Annemarie Jacir. It is a story of a Palestinian from Brooklyn who goes to Palestine to discover her roots and retrace the steps of her grandparents who were displaced from Jaffa. The main character, Soraya, is played by Suheir Hammad – a Palestinian-American poet who brought to the screen the same magnetic presence she brings to her poetry readings (I saw her perform years before closing the “Made in Palestine” exhibit in New York). It was her first movie, but perhaps because the character’s journey has so many important similarities to her own, there was not a false note in her performance. Her co-star, Saleh Bakri, who, if I was half as handsome as I would not complain, is the son of Mohammad Bakri, director of Jenin Jenin (on whom more later). While Soraya is trying to connect to Palestine and finds Israel’s occupation blocking her at (almost) every turn, Saleh Bakri’s character, Emad, has never known anything but the brutality of apartheid locking him in, and he wants out. In the end, apartheid keeps them apart, but it can’t stop them from making a connection. As for the director, Jacir, she’s been banned from travel to Palestine by the Israelis – but they can’t stop you from watching the film. It was a beautiful way to open the festival, through Soraya and Suheir’s eyes – someone a little more knowledgeable than the audience, but making her own way and bringing you along with her, to see the realities of how people survive and live and love despite the walls that are stacked between them.

I missed “This Land Speaks Arabic” by Maryse Gargour, the second show of opening night, because I went to the reception instead, and got to congratulate the organizers and tell Suheir herself how impressed I was. If Suheir wasn’t enough to make a fella a little starstruck, there was also Bashar Da’as, star of Driving to Zigzigland by Nicole Ballivian. Zigzigland was playing on the 26th and 27th but I missed both screenings, unfortunately.

On Day 2 (Sunday Oct 26), I did watch “The Olive Harvest”, by Hanna Elias, though. It is a love triangle: older brother Mazen has been in Israeli prison for years and comes home. Younger brother Taher, who’d been trying to take care of things in the village while also working as a lawyer and activist against Israel’s colony expansion into the West Bank, has also fallen in love with childhood friend and neighbour Raeda. Raeda loves Taher, too, but tradition dictates that the older brother has to marry first. Taher doesn’t tell Mazen about Raeda, and Mazen ends up falling for Raeda too. Meanwhile Raeda’s father is sick and his dying wish is that she marry a man who cares about the land and will hold it. Raeda’s father (played by Mohammad Bakri) has a point, but underrates the importance of the struggle in the city. The film takes place against the backdrop of the olive harvest in Palestine, which has to happen under the continuously expanding colonies of Israeli settlers. The story highlights some impossible dilemmas: the duty of a peasant to the land, the duty of an activist to the struggle, the duty of someone in love to the beloved. How can one of these take priority over the others? How can they be reconciled? Maybe they can’t – and maybe that’s why the movie ends the way it does.

A little frustrated by the ending of The Olive Harvest (which, admittedly, might have been the intent) I did the only sensible thing – turned around and watched another film! We took a break, had some ice cream in the cold, and watched “Telling Strings”, by Anne Marie Haller. The movie is about the Jubran family, master musicians, their instrument (the Oudh), and their music. While I was astounded by the older Jubrans, I was more entranced when the younger Jubran, Kamilya, was on the screen. Listening to her sing is like watching an acrobat from the Cirque du Soleil or Usain Bolt running the 100m dash. You’re watching the very heights of what humans can do, and it makes you proud on behalf of humanity.

Day 3 was in the suburbs, to reach a different audience, and I missed it.

On Day 4, I watched Simone Bitton’s commemoration of Mahmoud Darwich, Palestine’s national poet. I wrote about Darwich when he died months ago, saying that he was one of those who reminds me of the power of words. I had never heard his voice, or his poems in Arabic, and since I’m trying to learn Arabic listening to Darwish’s poetry with an excellent translation is about as good as it gets. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that the poets I know are all extremely clever in conversation, but Darwish’s interviews were as dazzling as the poems he narrated. At one point he’s asked why he is alone. He says something like, while life is not worth living without a partner, a tragedy closed that door for him so he won’t pursue it. And in any case, he needs absolute quiet in the morning without interruptions! He said it so straight-faced that I wasn’t sure if he was trying to lighten something that was obviously incredibly heavy. But that was the effect. And given his power as a poet, it’s hard to believe that if you’re feeling something in a conversation with him, it’s not something he wants you to feel.

Day 5: A double header. First, Memory of the Cactus, by Hannah Musleh. An important film for Canadians to watch, it’s about three villages that were erased in 1967 to make way for “Canada Park”, so called because the funds for the park were raised by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Canada. It includes some fantastic footage of a very smart guide taking Israeli students on a tour of the Canada Park to show them all of the physical remnants of the villages that were destroyed. Three young lawyers from an advocacy organization called Al Haq were present to answer some questions at the end. They were a clever and engaging trio as well. Most fascinating about the film, for me, was the tour guide showing how Israelis are the main targets of so much of this propaganda. I’ve always thought about propaganda of this kind as fairly complex. It works, but partly it works because it falls on receptive ears. Recent events in the US make me wonder what happens when that receptivity changes. A few years ago it seemed impossible to me that it could change in the US, and it seems to have, a little. It seems impossible to me that it could happen in Israel, but it could, too.

The second film of Day 5 was, “All that Remains” by Nada El-Yassir. It is a documentary about Israel’s attempts to concentrate Bedouins of the Negev into townships by destroying their crops and homes and cutting them off of services. Like so much else in the TPFF, it showed some of the beauty of Bedouin culture and peasant life while inevitably exposing the apartheid regime that is trying to wipe it out.

I had thought to skip Day 6 in order to get some work done so that I could settle in for the long haul on the closing weekend. But I finished my work in time to catch the late show on Thursday October 30, “Since You Left” by Mohammad Bakri. For me, with the opening and closing films, this was the film of the festival. What a fascinating person Bakri is, an artist, fluent in Hebrew, spending a life actually trying to work towards coexistence, and watching a life of work unravel as Israel tightens the noose around the Palestinians one turn at a time after 2001. A nephew of his becomes a suicide bomber, and in the apartheid philosophy of mass reprisal, the entire family is attacked for it. After the massacre in Jenin, Bakri sneaks into Jenin and makes a film (Jenin Jenin) which is then banned in Israel for 2 years (an interesting point here: why do try so hard to prevent Israelis from watching such a film? Why are they afraid when Israelis ought to automatically be on side with what their army did in Jenin?) The film is about Bakri’s life, but he writes it as a letter to his dead friend and mentor, novelist Emile Habibi. The scenes of him at the grave of his friend, the way he laments directly to his friend, alternately wishing he was there and being glad he didn’t live through what Bakri had to, is heartbreaking and beautiful.

On Day 7 (Halloween) I watched “Untitled” by Jayce Salloum, a long interview with Soha Bechara, a Lebanese resistance fighter who was detained and tortured for years by the Israelis in Lebanon. Salloum just gets out of the way and lets Soha Bechara speak for 40 minutes, and the result is an amazing document. In form, it reminds me a little of The Fog of War, with Robert McNamara, but I hated the Fog of War and loved Untitled, probably because of who the interview subjects in both films were.

I also watched “Snow White and the Ambassador” by Thomas Nordanstad and Erik Pauser, which was a fantastic movie about Zvi Mazel, the Israeli Ambassador to Sweden’s destruction of an art exhibit on Palestine. It is a document of an amazing little piece of history. The co-artist whose exhibit was destroyed, Dror Feiler, was clever. Some Israeli artist said he overreacted to Mazel’s destruction of his exhibit and called him mentally ill. Feiler responded by saying – oh, so now we let artists diagnose mental illness and politicians decide what is art! If the Israeli ambassador’s destruction of an art exhibit was not surprising, perhaps the Swedish museum director’s response was: he kicked the vandal out. The Israeli co-director of Route 181 said this was the right response, and should show the way for others: Israel should be treated like any other vandal.

Closing night was all about Slingshot Hip Hop by Jackie Salloum. But not before I got to see a PEN Canada commissioned film on two Toronto poets, Rafeef Ziadah and Boonaa Muhammad. The film is called Sedition, it’s by Minsook Lee (who I also respect immensely) and features music by Toronto group LAL. The 12-minute film featured little snippets of the poets’ lives, what moves them to write, and snippets of their poetry as well. Best of all, Minsook, Rafeef, and Boonaa all took the stage after the film and the poets dropped their poems to a packed and revved up audience of 850.

The right mood was created for the closing film of the night, Jackie Salloum’s Slingshot Hip Hop. It chronicles the growth of the Palestinian hip hop scene over the past few years, and the growth of a group of rappers, mainly DAM, the first group on the scene, as they developed and sparked rappers from other parts of occupied Palestine. Watching these young people build relationships with each other across apartheid walls would have been inspiring enough had they not been gifted musicians. DAM describes their music as 30% (American) hip hop, 30% (Arab and Palestinian) literature, and 40% reality (they describe this by pointing out the window at their occupied neighbourhood). The film features female rappers and male ones, and like Darwish, is another testament to the power of words. They are an amusing bunch as well. When their car breaks down on the way to a concert, one of the rappers tells the camera: “Now you know why we’re rappers. Cause we can’t do anything else, we’ll be here for hours because none of us knows how to fix a car.”

When Jackie Salloum came out on stage after the film, the standing ovation was several minutes long. She said, with 850 people, it was the biggest opening for the film outside of Ramallah.

Now it was a full, emotional, and powerful week, and there are many things that can be said about it. It was a cultural event above all, not a political one. But in an apartheid situation, it’s not always possible to separate the two. Art is true to reality, after all, and the reality is one of apartheid.

So here’s one somewhat political point, for me: it’s been three generations of Israel trying very deliberately and systematically to destroy Palestinian life and culture. We don’t know how much the world has missed out on because of all this destruction. But we do know this, anyone who went to the TPFF knows this: that after 60 years, after walls and massacres and assassinations, after every bureaucratic humiliation available, after the theft of land and water, after the bombing of civilians and the destruction of homes, the targeting of cultural centers and the destruction of archives, apartheid has, in the quest to stifle Palestinian creativity and culture, totally, spectacularly, utterly, failed. The words of Palestinians can reach us, if we’re listening. Perhaps in Israel’s attempts to isolate them, it may end up isolating itself, like what happened in miniature in Sweden. If that happens, the world might before too long be able to share in a Palestinian culture that’s not under siege.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer.

Mahmoud Darwish and the disproportion

I am not the best person to commemorate the passing of Mahmoud Darwish, the national poet of Palestine. Any poetry I have written is basically comedic, whether I intend it that way or not. My arabic is not good enough for me to appreciate him in the original, and even of his english translations I only have read or heard a handful of poems. But I do have some sense of what he means and has meant to Palestinians and to poetry.

Continue reading “Mahmoud Darwish and the disproportion”