Co-directed by Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat and Israeli activist Guy Davidi, the images in 5 Broken Cameras are beautiful, haunting, and bring about dozens of other questions about the history of the occupation and the tactics around love and resistance. Thanks to their fabulous publicist Eseel, I got to interview Guy and Emad and ask them about their lives, their work, and what they think the future holds for Israel and Palestine.

Emad: It has been a sometimes good experience, a sometimes bad experience. In 2005, when I started to resist with my village, I decided to film to protect myself and to protect the other protests and to show the footage for other people, and to use the footage sometime to prove what is going on. Over the last seven years, [I documented] how what happened in the village affected me, my family, my children, and my friends, week by week. After many years of documenting, I thought that there was a huge story that I have to tell to other people. We decided to construct a documentary from my personal life and personal story. [5 Broken Cameras] is not a political film or just a film about conflict – it’s a film about life, and how the people can survive and how people live, and how kids grow up. For my kids, everyone loves those boys, and I wanted to make for them a good life, I wanted to take care of them, and protect them. I can’t tie them in the house every day, keep them 24 hours in one room. This is our life, like this. I tried to build for them a good life and a good situation. And I wanted to put my life and my experience in the village in one documentary.

Maybe [other people, in other parts of the world] see footage on the news, but they don’t know the reality and they don’t know the life of these people. I hope that this film does make some change, so we can change the life for everyone – in Palestine and Israel.

Guy: I came to Bil’in in early 2005, one of the first Israeli peace activists that came. I was already interested in what was happening in this movement, I wanted be a part of it. My first main motivation is a bit selfish, it wasn’t just to help the movement – it was also for me. Israel is like a ghetto – it is closed, like a bubble, not sensitive to the others. You’re not allowed to go here, not allowed to go there – so I wanted to break that. I wanted to live in a free way. If we live in a free way, we have to confront the shadows – and what happens in the shadow is in Palestine and the settlements.

So I met Emad. He was a very known character from the start, because he was the only cameraman who was basically staying in the village all the time. He became what we say in the film, “the village’s eye.” So we met many times while filming. We didn’t work together until 2009, when Emad approached me to make the film, so we decided to make it as a personal narrative. When I thought in the beginning to make a film on Bil’in, there were many that were similar. We had to have a new and refreshing take and I was happy to find out in the material that we could tell the story in this very intimate and personal way. You could see in the world both the context of the movement and the occupation, and you can have a really intimate family moments.

Guy: First we have to know that there are many kinds of settlements and many kinds of settlers. It is the Israeli machine that is making it move. These are not necessarily ideological settlers going because they want to conquer the land or wipe out Palestinians. They just want to improve their lives. The government is subsidizing the apartments in the West Bank, and using [the people's] financial circumstances to move an agenda forward. Some settlers don’t know what is going on – the way Israel is designed, you can travel through parts and not really know where you are. Some settlers do know what’s going on and don’t care. And then you have a very small minority, a violent minority, the fundamentalist Jews that are creating terror in Palestine. They are small, but noisy and strong. If Israel would like to change its ways, they will have to find a way to root out the fundamentalists, to pull the weeds.

Emad: I think that from the beginning in ’67, the settlements were the Israeli government’s plan to place them on Palestinian territory to confiscate land and bring people from outside to [stabilize] the settlement. If the government wanted to remove it, they could. But I don’t know what’s their problem. The settlers have power – the government helps them, the developers help them, and sometimes they do bad things to their Palestinian neighbors. They are not connected to this land or this area. When you are connected to something you love it, you want to protect it – you wouldn’t cut down the olive trees if you loved the land. Sometimes, settlers come because of the economy, but sometimes it is ideology.

Emad: I think that in our lives are about experiences. Sometimes I lived a quiet life and sometimes I lived in a bad situation. We have to continue our lives, like normal, even if we live under the occupation and bad conditions sometimes. As a father, I have to give my children some hope for the future – we have to live our life in the bad and the good. When we want to go to the sea, we go to the sea, when we have to resist, we have to resist. I wanted to share and show this experience to people who aren’t living this life. So maybe we can touch and reach their minds and their hearts, and create a good life for everyone.

Guy:I don’t want this to sound cold or unfeeling, but I think that suffering has always been with us. It was in the past and it will be in the future. Sometimes you are the victim, some times you are the oppressor. Most of the time you are both in some ways – I may be an oppressor by paying my taxes to Israeli government, and I’m a victim of these systems at the same time. And every one of us is like that. Of course it is important for us to try to change our reality out of responsibility – not blame or pity. What is important is how we carry suffering, and how we deal with it in life. Maybe [Emad] will never see peace and justice and freedom in his life. Maybe his sons will see it, maybe not. But what gives us a kind of liberty and freedom is what we do in our lives. That can bring joy and a sense of power. That’s the challenge we all face in life. I cannot say what we do will or won’t change reality – I can be pessimistic or optimistic, but in the end what’s really important is what everyone is doing in this situation. If everyone will focus on that, change will come faster.

Emad: I think there is something wrong in the system, not just where I live. There are many places in the world where something wrong has happened. You find people who live in peace and people who suffer all over the world. My message for the world and the people who have power, is to just to feel with people who have nothing – give them feeling, create something good for them, try to say something in their life.

Emad halts the interview for a moment to pray.

Guy: That’s complicated. It was a big debate in the village, and definitely with the Israeli peace activists, whether to use the Israeli system at all. Israel thinks it is a democratic country and they have a good law that balances between civil rights and justice and security needs. This is how they see themselves. But on the ground, we see that this system is so far from just plain common sense – we don’t need international courts to know that what is going on is completely unjust. We are not seeing a system that works with justice. It corresponds with political needs. So the activists and the villages are using that system to try to get some [leverage.] But no one is under the illusion that this is justice. Getting back the land isn’t a good result – we may make things better for some people, but this is not a victory, this is not a change. The aim of this movement is some kind of hint for out strength, the idea that we can do much more.

Emad: I think that with the Israeli court, no one in the village believed they would remove the court and the fence from Bil’in land. But after the demonstration and the march, the Army kept saying “why don’t you go to the courts?” The Army told us all the time they have to come here and protect the fence and the security – it is not their decision, they need to change things in court. The Army wanted us to go to court – they wanted to make a political decision, not just to give the people feeling that the protest led to the removal of the wall, they wanted to make it more beautiful – “the Israeli court chose to remove the wall.” At the same time, they use this decision to take another illegal decision for the settlement. That settlement was illegal – so they wanted to make the decision both remove the wall and legalized the settlement.

Guy: So the court is a political instrument. If you have time, you can see The Law in These Parts, about military law and how the law works in occupied territory, with a focus on Israel.

Emad: By the way, the decision to build wall was the decision by the Israeli court. They can’t just make a government decision, the court has to sign off. It’s a huge subject, we could talk about it all day.

Guy: I don’t need to speak about the future of Israel because it is already very bad. The future we have now was put into motion 10 years ago – and what we have now is horrible. We are living in an oppressive, violent society. Our rights are being taken day by day, there are new laws and new legislation targeting human rights organizations and freedom of speech. What is happening right now is worse than before. And what’s stupid about it is that Israel is in one of the best positions to create a wonderful new thing. With Palestine, all the conditions are there. In 10 years, we won’t talk about suicide bombers, because there is a period now where we can change that. But these are opportunities we don’t use and we are building the conditions for more violence. It’s hard to be Israeli in these times, I think because many people that I know, even people who are not politically engaged or didn’t care much for Palestinian issues, they feel that there is something going that is destructive in our society. And because we are so indifferent and numb in an emotional position as Israelis, we are paying for that and we are going to keep paying for that. That’s why I can be optimistic – we’re really at a bottom in our culture.

I cannot estimate how unknown forces and undercurrents will create change. We have a very strong social movement in Israel, last summer, a lot like the Arab Spring. But we don’t know how that will develop.

We’re always speaking about peace and about justice. If we’re speaking about justice we’re already good. In order to have peace, Palestinians have to live with a sense of justice, which is hard, because some things are unfixable. But for Israelis we don’t just need to confront how to create justice in theory, they have to want to heal themselves as a society. I think Israelis and Jews took a moment in their lives to wallow in their past and wallow in fears that are both justified and unjustified. We have to find a way to heal from our fears and from our past. We have to find a way to remove these destructive forces from the inside. That’s why I find the film & Emad an inspiration – he’s a victim of the occupation, but he still makes a beautiful thing out of it. Israelis, with our past and with our history, we couldn’t create a beautiful thing. And that’s very sad.

Emad: The Palestinian people decided to struggle against the occupation to get freedom – so it’s a long time for the Palestinian people and a long time for resistance – 60 years of resistance and struggle against the occupation. The people, they still have hope and think this is the only way they can get freedom – it is through resistance. It is about the future for their boys. I think for everyone who wants to create a new future for his boys, we believe and we have hope that we can do this. The only thing I can say for sure about the Palestinian is future is that no one knows what will happen. We always have hope for the situation and good luck, so we make things like films, so maybe we can affect or do something good for the future. And all of this is part of the resistance. It’s not just to make films, or play games – it’s not easy to make something like in a risky situation. This is what we are doing to create and make a good life in the future, we can do this and succeed. But nobody knows when and nobody knows what is coming up, good or bad. But I think that the Israeli government, they react like this because they didn’t care about creating good situations and a good life or future for Israeli residents. I think they have fear, they think something big will happen, so all they want to do is buy more time. This is not the right way to create a good life for the people. They don’t want to give Palestinians rights or a state, because they think it is an issue of security – if we give them power, in the future they will attack us. So they are always scared.

Guy: These are hard questions. I can say what I wish for Palestine, while thinking that the occupation will stay, and what wishes I have for Palestinians. Unfortunately, I don’t see the occupation retreating. I don’t have any evidence of reversing that process being a possibility – it would be wishful thinking to say otherwise. So what I wish for Palestinians in that situation is to provide inspirational ways to handle this situation, to find ways to get out of their despair and of their misery and their sense of dependence, and their sense of helplessness, and that feeling of helplessness, because I don’t think they are helpless and they don;t have to be victims. The Israelis and the Israeli government are putting them in the role of victims, but they don’t have to play that role in life. When I look at Emad and Bil’in, they chose not to be victims. And to do that in their lives, knowing there may not be change.

I wish that more people would find faith to do that.

In 2007, women from the Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic took part in the annual 8th of March demonstration in support of women’s struggles. At that time, the American campaign against Iran had begun. We decided to march behind a banner that’s message was “No feminism without anti-imperialism”. We were all wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs and handing out flyers in support of three resistant Iraqi women taken prisoner by the Americans. When we arrived, the organizers of the official procession started chanting slogans in support of Iranian women. We found these slogans extremely shocking given the ideological offensive against Iran at that time. Why the Iranians, the Algerians and not the Palestinians and the Iraqis? Why such selective choices? To thwart these slogans, we decided to express our solidarity not with Third World women but rather with Western women. And so we chanted:

Solidarity with Swedish women!

Solidarity with Italian women!

Solidarity with German women!

Solidarity with English women!

Solidarity with French women!

Solidarity with American women!

Which meant: why should you, white women, have the privilege of solidarity? You are also battered, raped, you are also subject to men’s violence, you are also underpaid, despised, your bodies are also instrumentalized…

I can tell you that they looked at us as if we were from outer space. What we were saying seemed surreal, inconceivable. It was like the 4th dimension.  It wasn’t so much the fact that we reminded them of their situation as Western women that shocked them. It was more the fact that African and Arabo-Muslim women had dared symbolically subvert a relationship of domination and had established themselves as patrons. In other words, with this skillful rhetorical turn, we showed them that they de facto had a superior status to our own. We found their looks of disbelief quite entertaining.

Another example: After a solidarity trip to Palestine, a friend was telling me how the French women had asked the Palestinian women if they used birth control. According to my friend, the Palestinian women couldn’t understand such a question given how important the demographic issue is in Palestine. They were coming from a completely different perspective. For many Palestinian women, having children is an act of resistance against the ethnic cleansing policies of the Israeli state.

There you have two examples that illustrate our situation as racialized women, that help understand what is at stake and envisage a way to fight colonialist and Eurocentric feminism.

— Houria Bouteldja, spokeswoman for the PIR (La Indigènes de la République) speaking at the 4th International Congress of Islamic Feminism, in Madrid, 22 October 2010

(Hat Tip to Huimin)

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

I am from Toronto, though I now live in Houston.  I get most of my Toronto community news through Facebook, and I have been watching with disgust and amazement for the past two months as my Facebook feed has filled up with reports about Pride Toronto, Blackness Yes! – a community organization that celebrates black queer and trans history – and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA).

Long story short: Pride Toronto, which is an internationally famous week-long celebration of queer and trans pride, has made conscious or unconscious attempts to curtail the wholehearted participation of queer and trans folks of colour and their allies in Pride. They have attempted to relocate and shrink black-identified spaces, and they have banned QuAIA from participation in Pride 2010.  This year queer & trans people of colour (QTPOC) and their allies may participate in Pride, but only as long as they check their histories and politics at the door.  Short story long? Hang on to your hats, this is an epic tale.

Blackness Yes!

The first news I heard of this mess was in April, when the Blackness Yes! Blockorama party was asked to move by the Pride Toronto organizing committee for the third time in 4 years.

Blackness Yes! organizer Syrus M. Ware describes Blockorama and Blackness Yes!:

Since 1998 Blockorama has been a party at Pride where black queer and trans folks, their allies, supporters and people who love them came together to say no to homophobia in black communities and no to racism in LGBTQ communities. To say Blackness Yes at Pride – loud and proud…We have built Blockorama out of love, through sweat and toiling. For 12 years, we have claimed space, resisted erasure, found community, shared memories, built bridges, embraced sexuality, and found home. Blockorama is not just a party or a stage at Pride. It is a meeting place for black queer and trans people across North America- Blockorama is the largest space of its kind at any Pride festival on the continent.

Yet Pride Toronto has multiple times tried to move Blockorama further away from the main events, or relocated the party to smaller spaces that will not fit the huge crowds Blockorama draws.  Blockorama is a hugely important part of Pride, not only a black space where queer black folks go to party, but also a space that has always been immensely welcoming to non-black folks of colour.  Pride Toronto’s moves – whether or not they are racist – indicate a lack of sensitivity, care or even basic awareness of the size and meaning of Blockorama.

University of Toronto professor Rinaldo Walcott wrote this letter to the Pride Toronto organizing committee, upon news that Blockorama was to be moved again:

…at the same time that Pride Toronto has moved Blocko three times, Pride Toronto has also taken on the mantle of global human rights as its signature issue.

It is in fact the discrepancy between Pride Toronto’s treatment of local black communities participation in pride events and its attempt to position itself as a global player in the LGBTQ global rights movement that I find particularly offensive, disrespectful and unmindful of the very communities residing here that Pride Toronto would seek to champion overseas.

How can this be? How could it be that Pride Toronto did not see this ethical dilemma before it? Is it because Blocko is the last non-commercial space at pride? Is it because like much else in this country Pride Toronto too believes that black people as a constituency can be ignored? These are genuine questions, not accusations.

…We will not as black people here and globally stand to be exploited by white folks who now want it to appear that all is well at home, but not elsewhere.

On April 13 Blackness Yes! held a community meeting to protest these moves.  Deviant Productions, an alternative youth media collective, made a video of the meeting:

You can read a transcript of the video here.

In many ways this community mobilisation was successful.  3 days after the meeting, Pride Toronto agreed not to relocate Blockorama to a smaller venue for this year, and agreed to work with Blockorama, starting in July, to put a stop to the yearly migrations and find a permanent home for Blocko at Pride.

However negotiations are stalled around the matter of a dancefloor. This is a queer dance party, after all.

Blockorama site coordinator Syrus M. Ware says of the Blockorama site for this year: “Where we have been put is lovingly refered to as the ‘swamp’”: Blockorama requires temporary flooring in the park to ensure the safety and accessibility of its dance space.  Pride Toronto agreed to find funding for said dancefloor, but it is two weeks to the party and the money has yet to come through.

Ware says, “The sponsorship ask has still not been sent to me. I worry that this will not come through this year –  it does not seem to be one of Pride’s priorities. We have not yet been contacted about a date to plan for a better site for next year…we will wait and see what happens on the day of.”

He continues, “We have deliberated very long and very hard about whether or not to pull out of Pride this year. After our meeting, we met and strategized with QuAIA…We have decided to stay in the festival for this year- but we dont know about next year. We are committed to creating space to celebrate and shout Blackness Yes!, and we will do this with or without Pride Toronto.”

Israeli Apartheid

At the very same time as they were dealing with Blockorama drama, Pride Toronto was doing some shady dealing around another group of QTPOC and their allies. A letter dated April 14th (as in, the day after the Blockorama meeting) from the City of Toronto’s executive director of culture detailed a conversation where Pride Toronto’s board discussed ways to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from marching in the Pride parade. On May 25, Pride Toronto announced that QuAIA would not be allowed to march in the parade or participate in Pride, due to the City of Toronto’s complaints over the term “Israeli Apartheid”:

…the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) may contravene the City’s own anti-discrimination policies in relation to “place of origin” and that Pride Toronto, as a recipient of City of Toronto funding, is required to adhere to said policies…

QuAIA states that they use the word “apartheid” because it is the best way to describe a system of differentiated (queer) rights based on race. On their website they explain:

Today, in response to increasing criticism of its occupation of Palestine, Israel is cultivating an image of itself as an oasis of gay tolerance in the Middle East. As queers, we recognize that homophobia exists in Israel, Palestine, and across all borders. But queer Palestinians face the additional challenge of living under occupation, subject to Israeli state violence and control. Israel’s apartheid system extends gay rights only to some, based on race.

QuAIA is a diverse group, their membership including Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and white queer and trans folks.

This ban hinges entirely on language – QuAIA would be allowed to participate in Pride and even articulate solidarity with queer Palestinians, if only they would stop using the word “apartheid.”  After expressing her distaste for the ban, Ellie Kirzner, editor of a leftist entertainment weekly in Toronto wrote:

I think it’s time to try the window; Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, change the name of your organization…I fear the use of [the word "apartheid"] has unmindfully offered a lever to the other side. It’s time to declare less and deliver more…Would the sky fall if Queers Against Israeli Apartheid became Queers Against the Occupation? Or Queers for Mideast Justice? Or just about anything that would advance the plot on behalf of Palestinians?

While I understand Kirzner’s just-do-whatever-works-for-the-movement approach, doesn’t the kerfuffle kicked up by a single, shocking word – because again, it is about the word, not the existence of the group all together – mean that we should talk about why this word upsets us so much?

In the world history of oppression, we often like to attach fixed definitions with specific illustrations to fluid terms. And so our definitions are too small to capture our terms; we have the language to describe our world, but we don’t know how to use it. For example, we attach “American slavery until 1865″ to “racism” – so anything that happens in America that isn’t on the level of the enslavement of others based on race, cannot be racism. Or we attach “assault in a darkened place by a stranger” to “rape,” so that when a woman is attacked by a man she trusts, it cannot be rape. Or we attach “South Africa before 1994″ to “apartheid”, so that anything that does not involve the worldwide horror at South African apartheid, cannot be the systematic separation of rights by race – even when it is.  Oppression, racism and systemic cruelty are ideas and machines that work by changing shape.  If we hope to confront and dismantle them, we need to blow open our definitions.

Depressingly, money is at the heart of Pride Toronto decision to ban QuAIA. From the CBC:

The use of the words has put the Pride organizers on a collision course with the City of Toronto, which says the name of the group ‘Queers Against Israeli Apartheid’ violates its anti-discrimination policy.

In 2009, the city gave the Pride festival $121,000 to help defray costs.

Xtra! quotes Pride Toronto board co-chair Genevieve D’Iorio:

D’Iorio says city and corporate sponsors are threatening to pull funding, and banning the phrase “Israeli apartheid” is the best position PT organizers could take. Pride simply wouldn’t happen, she says, without the city’s financial and in-kind support.

Pro-Israeli groups in Toronto have been pushing for QuAIA’s ban since last year; the May 25 decision has been on the table since last November.  A group called Reclaiming Our Pride argued that QuAIA was a “disgruntled group using Pride as a platform to further their own political agenda…only groups supporting gay rights can be in the parades.”  This stance seems to miss the point that QuAIA’s mandate is to support gay communities in Palestine (key word: gay).  The whole “this Palestine stuff is diluting my parade” line is unpleasantly close to the whole “anti-racism is making feminism lose its focus” argument that we are all so tired of hearing.  Both gay rights activists who only want to talk about sexuality, and feminists who only want to talk about gender, forget that there are many women and queer & trans folks who are also…people of colour. You can only parcel out sexuality and race when your worldview is imbued with white privilege.

Lobbyists who pushed for the banning of QuAIA have also complained that QuAIA is trying to make Pride “political.” Yet the nature of Pride is political to begin with and that is inescapable: pride celebrations exist around the world to celebrate and take space for a identity that is political because it is politically marginalised.  And yet in Toronto Pride is contorting itself to betray its own purpose, as it attempts to silence members of its community when Pride is supposed to be about coming out into the open.  In an gruesomely ironic turn, the slogan for this year’s Pride Week is “You Belong.”

And the commercialisation, depoliticisation and white-ification of Prides worldwide has become a matter of grave concern. San Francisco has an alterna pride called Gay Shame; this year in Toronto a counter-Pride celebration called Take Back the Dyke has been set up in order to, organizer piKe Krpan says, return Pride to its political roots and reject the commercialism, police escorts and censorship policies of Pride Toronto. On Sunday, an international group called No Homonationalism announced that superstar academic Judith Butler has refused her Zivilcourage (civil courage) Prize from Pride Berlin, saying

the parade had become too commercial, and ignor[ed] the problems of racism and the doublediscrimination suffered by homosexual or transsexual migrants.

3 days after Pride Toronto announced their decision to ban QuAIA, the grand marshal for this year’s Pride parade stepped down. Dr Alan Li wrote:

I was a keynote speaker at the second Pride celebration in 1982. I thus remember very clearly our communityʼs battles against censorship that attempted to invalidate our concerns, minimize our struggles and silence our voices. I remember struggles to ensure that the many diverse voices in our community were heard.

Prideʼs recent decision to ban the term “Israeli Apartheid” and thus prohibit the participation of the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from participating in Pride celebrations this year is a slap in the face to our history of diverse voices. Prideʼs choice to take preemptive step to censor our own communitiesʼ voices and concerns in response to political and corporate pressure shows a lack of backbone to stand up for principles of inclusiveness and anti-oppression.

In early June, 23 recipients of Pride Toronto awards – honoured dykes, grand marshals, special award honourees and international grand marshals – returned their awards in protest of Pride Toronto’s banning of QuAIA.  You can read a full list of their statements here.  This is a video of the event, also from Deviant Productions:

A surprising addition to the list of honourees returning their awards is Matthew Cutler, who identifies as a Liberal Zionist and makes the argument for why the term “Israeli Apartheid” should be allowed in the parade, despite the fact that it causes distress to some members of the Toronto queer and trans community. At 3:48 he states:

[The] use of a term “Israeli apartheid” continues to offend me, but has led me to conversations Israel, Palestine and the Middle East…conversations which have helped me to become a more engaged and informed Liberal Zionist. [I return my award] with the hope that generations of young people like myself will continue to be offended, will continue to grow learn and discuss difficult ideas and issues…

The Guardian (a UK paper – news of Pride Toronto’s ban  has reached far) makes similar criticism:

At a time when many countries are becoming more critical of Israel’s policies, Canada seems to be moving in the opposite direction. A general reluctance to engage in open debate about the Palestinian issue is exacerbated by pro-Israel groups’ efforts to shut down discussion…Since the beginning of 2010, the federal government has systematically cut funding to Arab-Canadian organisations and to UN relief works in Gaza. In March, the Ontario provincial legislature issued a unanimous condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week, while the federal government considered introducing a similar motion.

However, self-censorship reached new heights last month when Toronto’s Pride Committee – which organises one of the world’s largest gay pride celebrations – announced it would be banning use of the term “Israeli apartheid” at the festivities…But when asked, neither Pride Toronto nor Giorgio Mammoliti – the Toronto city councillor mainly involved – could explain in detail what was discriminatory about describing Israel’s privileging of its Jewish citizens over others as a form or racism and apartheid.

QuAIA plan to march in the Pride parade anyways.

Sticking Together

While news of the active exclusion of queer and trans folks of colour and their allies from Pride Toronto has made me feel depressed and tired – this is my hometown, and many of those excluded are people I love – I also have been deeply moved by the mobilisation of my community, and the solidarity across communities of colour.

Ware from Blockorama told me a grisly tale about attempts to fracture Toronto’s QTPOC communities:  ”We were approached by many ‘Blocko supporters’ after [our April 13 meeting]…the most concerning was an ally from TD Canada Trust.  This ally has been a great supporter of Blocko…during the weekend of April 19, 2010, while we were considering whether or not to accept Pride’s offer and to stay in the festival or not, we were contacted by the TD rep. They indicated that they would offer us their full support, but wanted to know first, ‘what was our position on QuAIA.’”

In other words Blockorama were offered funding that they desperately needed to keep their black-identified party afloat, in exchange for breaking rank with a queer Muslim, Arab and Jewish group. Ware says TD’s support would’ve been enormous for Blockorama, to the point of putting pressure on Pride to treat Blockorama better, since TD is a huge sponsor of the entire Pride celebration.

Blockorama declined TD’s offer. Ware and Blackness Yes! say

Our liberation and freedom will not come at the expense of another communities. We stand in solidarity with QuAIA and all of the other groups marginalized within Pride and also broader LGBTTI2QQ organizing.

Blockorama and QuAIA have been working on a Pride Community Contract together to strategise a way forward.

What truly depresses me is how the battles that both Blockorama and QuAIA are fighting are just so normal. Which is why I called this post “an everyday epic battle” – all this debacle with Pride Toronto is typical of the struggles that people of colour face every single day to make themselves a space, even within supposedly inclusive spaces. The insensitivity, meanness, attempts to divide and the silencing are cruelly banal.

But it also warms my little heart that these everyday violent putdowns so often meet a Fight: a kicking and screaming refusal to back down, and a determination to stick together.

–
Apologies that transcripts are not available for the posted videos. I contacted the creators of the videos and they hope to have transcripts eventually, so I will come back and add them in if that is possible at a later date.

Thanks to Elisha, Syrus, piKe, Alexis and Michelle for all their help with this piece!

UPDATE: The Blockorama Displaced video now has a transcript. Thanks Lali and Deviant Productions!

UPDATE:

23 June 8:30 pm: Pride Toronto has lifted its ban on “Israeli Apartheid.” From Xtra:

Pride Toronto (PT) has reversed its May board resolution banning the term “Israeli Apartheid” and will instead require all participants to sign and abide by the City of Toronto’s non-discrimination policy.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) — the target of the ban — has declared a victory and congratulated the queer community for pushing PT to reverse its censorship decision

“This is a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement, which has faced censorship and bullying tactics from the Israel lobby for far too long,” said QuAIA member Tim McCaskell in the release…

Brad Fraser, another member of the coalition, says that the ban would not have been lifted had it not been for the popular revolt of queer people over the last month.

“It’s a tremendous victory for anyone who dared to speak out,” says Fraser.

On Memorial Day, twitter was abuzz with news about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and what happened.  Mainstream media, not so much.

Here’s a quick run down for those not familiar with the chain of events.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla is a part of the Free Gaza movement.  The boat trips were designed as an act of international civil disobedience to challenge the State of Israel’s blockade which prevents ship travel into Gaza.  According to the Free Gaza’s “A Simple Idea” section:

The Free Gaza Movement began in the Fall of 2006 with a simple idea: Instead of waiting for the world to act, we would sail to Gaza ourselves, and directly challenge the Israeli siege ourselves. For almost two years, Free Gaza activists in Australia, Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Lebanon, Palestine, and the United States worked to raise money, locate ships and crew, and train and organize for our first attempt to break through Israel’s blockade. By August 2008 we were ready, and we sailed to Gaza in two, small, wooden fishing boats: the FREE GAZA and the LIBERTY.

Since then we have continued to sail to besieged Gaza, bringing in human rights workers and lawyers, journalists, academics, and parliamentarians, as well as several tons of desperately needed humanitarian aid. We are students and teachers, human rights observers and aid workers, lawyers, medics, activists – parents and grandparents. We are of all ages and backgrounds, from countries all across the world. We will go to Gaza again and again and again. We have not and will not ask for Israel’s permission. It is our intent to overcome this brutal siege through civil resistance and direct action.

We will continue to challenge Israel’s illegal closure of the Gaza Strip and collective punishment of its civilian population until the Israeli siege is forever broken and the people of Gaza have free access to the rest of the world.

The Guardian has posted a Q & A about the flotilla, which reads:

What was the aim of the Gaza Freedom flotilla?

The Free Gaza movement says it was intended to deliver aid to Gaza to get around the Israeli blockade and “to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation”. The movement is an international coalition of pro-Palestinian human rights organisations and activists. It has been endorsed by Desmond Tutu and Noam Chomsky and counts on the support of a number of Jewish groups that campaign for the rights of Palestinians.

Israel‘s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, said: “The armada of hate and violence in support of the Hamas terror organisation was a premeditated and outrageous provocation. The organisers are well-known for their ties to global Jihad, al-Qaida and Hamas. They have a history of arms smuggling and deadly terror. On board the ship we found weapons that were prepared in advance and used against our forces. The organisers’ intent was violent, their method was violent, and unfortunately, the results were violent.”

Israel has singled out the Turkish-based Insani Yardim Vakfi or IHH (“humanitarian relief fund”) as a radical Islamic organisation.

The boat was filled with both aid and an international group of activists, many of whom had protested directly on the ground in Gaza or had joined the 2008 flotillas.

On Sunday night, Israel made the decision to storm the vessel, with lethal results.The Guardian’s blog has a great running commentary of what is happening, with lots of videos.

Here, the Israel Navy issues a warning to the Mavi Marmara (the lead ship, and site of the siege) telling them that Israel supports the delivery of aid to Gaza, but only through sanctioned ports and land delivery. However, the aid is not getting to those affected in Gaza, which is one of the reasons why the ship was choosing to head there directly. (It should be noted that even when aid does go to Gaza, it is governed by politics first.)

There is some controversy about whether or not Israel had the right to storm the vessel. Some reports say that Israel followed the needed protocols before boardings, others say that the ship was not within the boundaries of Israeli waters and should not have been boarded at all. However, the government chose to act and the ship was boarded. As the soldiers began dropping onto the ship, the activists began to resist. Once again, reports vary as to what happened – this video, released by the Navy, depicts one solider being pitched overboard and others being attacked.

However, Al-Jeezera’s reporter, who was aboard the ship at the time of the siege, reports that the scene was calmer, and live fire by the soldiers continued even after the white flag for surrender was raised:

The reported civilian death count from the ship is “at least 10″ – some reports find as many as 19. I have not seen any released death counts for the soldiers involved, as of yet.

Onboard witnesses are starting to speak out, saying that the reports are distorted and that the activists were predominantly peaceful. However, the international community has already reacted condemning the excessive force used. The UN’s statement from the Security Council says:

“The Security Council deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting form the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza. The Council, in this context, condemns those acts which resulted in the loss of at least 10 civilians and many wounded, and expresses its condolences to their families.

“The Security Council requests the immediate release of the ships as well as the civilians held by Israel. The Council urges Israel to permit full consular access, to allow the countries concerned to retrieve their deceased and wounded immediately, and to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance from the convoy to its destination.

“The Security Council takes note of the statement of the United Nations Secretary-General on the need to have a full investigation into the matter and it calls for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.

“The Security Council stresses that the situation in Gaza is not sustainable. The Council re-emphasizes the importance of the full implementation of resolutions 1850 (2008) and 1860 (2009). In that context, they reiterate their grave concern at the humanitarian situation in Gaza and stress the need for sustained and regular flow of goods and people to Gaza, as well as unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza.

“The Security Council underscores that the only viable solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an agreement negotiated between the parties and re-emphasizes that only a two-State solution, with an independent and viable Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours, could bring peace to the region.

Meanwhile, the US appears to be siding with the Israeli government:

The United States remains deeply concerned by the suffering of civilians in Gaza. We will continue to engage the Israelis on a daily basis to expand the scope and type of goods allowed into Gaza to address the full range of the population’s humanitarian and recovery needs. We will continue to work closely with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, along with international NGOs and the UN, to provide adequate access for humanitarian goods, including reconstruction materials, through the border crossings, while bearing in mind the Government of Israel’s legitimate security concerns. However, Hamas’ interference with international assistance shipments and work of nongovernmental organizations, and its use and endorsement of violence, complicates efforts in Gaza. Mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by governments and groups that wish to do so. These mechanisms should be used for the benefit of all those in Gaza.

Meanwhile, half the world appears to be locked in protests, with the strongest coming from Turkey (four to six Turkish nationals have been reported among the deceased):

I just wanted to tip our readers in the L.A. area off about the West Coast premiere of After The Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United, which has been garnering praise around the documentary circuit for its’ story about Bnei Sakhnin F.C., a football team based out of the city of Sakhnin, an Israeli town that is home to more than 25,000 Arab Israelis. The team’s roster is comprised of both Arabs and Jews, and though some elements in the film hew close to more traditional “underdog” fare – because Sakhnin is a small club, for example, its’ facilities aren’t as modern as its’ competitors – it does change up the formula in one significant way: After The Cup deals with Sakhnin in the season after it won the Israeli Premier League’s championship, the State Cup. Slight spoiler here: the team soon finds it really is harder to stay on top than to get there.

Unfortunately, I can’t make the premiere – I live too far away – but if any of our readers can catch it this weekend, I’d be interested in getting your take on the film in this thread.

Fatemeh Fakhraie spoke with Cherien Dabis, the director behind the film Amreeka, a story about a Palestinian woman and her son as they adjust to their new life in America.

It seems that your experiences as an Arab-American have really shaped the way you tell stories. I remember reading in another interview of yours that the story behind Amreeka is a personal one. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Cherien Dabis: The story is very much inspired by my family and the love, strength and pride that held us together during a difficult time. I grew up in a small town in Ohio where there was no anonymity. So everyone knew that my parents were Arab and that we spoke Arabic at home and went away to Jordan and the West Bank every summer. That was all it took for people to treat us differently. Mostly they were just ignorant, asking questions like: Are there cars in Jordan? It wasn’t until the first Gulf War when ignorance turned into racism. My father – who’s a physician – lost a lot of his patients because people didn’t want to support an Arab doctor. We got death threats on a daily basis. And the secret service even visited my high school because of a tip that they got that my 17 year-old sister allegedly threatened to kill the president. I was 14 years old at the time and actually lost a lot of my friends, that’s how ostracized we were. When a so-called friend came up to me at my locker one day and said, “my brother could go to war and die because of you,” I knew it had gone too far. I knew that I needed to try to do something about it. But not only is the film loosely based on what happened to my family in 1991, my family members also inspire the characters in the film. In fact, the main character Muna is inspired by my Aunt who immigrated to the U.S. with her teenaged son in 1997. What struck me about my aunt was her attitude. She was so full of hope and optimism, despite the daily challenges that she faced. She was so trusting of people that she unknowingly disarmed them. Even people who didn’t want to like her or would have otherwise been suspicious of her couldn’t help but ultimately fall in love with her. It’s this quality that inspired Muna. When I sat down to write the script, I kept thinking: If more people were like my aunt, the world would be a better place.

When making Amreeka, did you feel the need to portray things a certain way to satisfy certain politics or placate all parties?

CD: No. I set out to tell a story from a humanist perspective about who we are as everyday people, without all the politics that too often defines who we are. So while the context is political, the heart of the story is the relationship between the mother and son. That was my focus.

Do you feel that you face any discouragement or hostility for Amreeka, from any political, religious, or social groups?

CD: No, actually the response has been remarkably encouraging, across the board, both in the Western world and in the Middle East. Audience members have walked out of the theater and saying things like: anyone who comes from a family can relate to this film. Or anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider can relate. I wanted to show a world where religion and politics becomes secondary to the humanity that the characters share. That’s how it should be.

In an interview with Film Independent you talk about your next project, which is kind of the reverse of Amreeka. Could you tell us more about that?

CD: Sure. It’s another cross-cultural story, a dramatic comedy about a Palestinian-American who goes to Jordan to plan her summer wedding despite the fact that her entire family disapproves of the groom. I’m currently working on the third draft of the script and hope to shoot it this fall in Jordan.

Though Amreeka focuses on the mother/son relationship, there are definitely stereotype-breaking elements to the film, and it sounds like your next film will have similar themes. Do you feel that this is a large part of how you tell stories and make films?

CD: Absolutely. What my family experienced during the first Gulf War really opened my eyes. I became obsessed with the media and the stereotypes it perpetuated. I realized that there were virtually no authentic portrayals of Arabs anywhere in popular culture so I made a conscious choice to try to do something about that.

I grew up feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere because I was neither Arab enough for the Arabs or American enough for the Americans. So the only way my life would make any sense was if I was able to bridge the gap between these two vastly different worlds, shatter their misconceptions and help them understand one another better. I started naturally doing this through storytelling. I would tell my American friends about my life in the Arab world. And would tell my Arab family about my life in the U.S. I desperately wanted to bring them closer. It was this conundrum that led to my need for artistic expression. My personal goal as a filmmaker is to continue making socially responsible films that are accessible to mainstream audiences. Of course my passion is in specifically telling Middle Eastern stories because I see that as my unique contribution.

Do you have any advice for Arab-Americans or other people of color who are interested in getting into acting and filmmaking?

CD: My first advice is to just do it! Believe in yourself enough to take the risk, even if you don’t have the support. Don’t let fear get the better of you. If you don’t invest in yourself, why should anyone else? Gather the tools that you need to do the best job you can. Then will your work in fruition. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission. You have to make it happen yourself. Film is a really powerful medium with which to tackle people’s misconceptions. It utilizes the universal language of emotion to tell a story. Therefore, it has the potential to give people new eyes and ears from which to see the world. There is a huge void of Arab-American voices in the industry, so we need to fill it together. Not to mention, we have so many stories to tell, and we could use some more of them right about now!

From my own experience, I can say that the biggest obstacle I faced with Amreeka was in finding the financing. I think it had something to do with the fact that I’m an Arab American woman (emphasis on the Arab American) making a movie about the Arab immigrant experience in post 9-11 America. When I started looking for a producer and financing, a lot of the feedback that I was getting was that Amreeka was “too light,” either “too political” or “not political enough” or “too culturally specific,” which could only mean too Arab! And much like me, the film didn’t fit into any one category. It wasn’t American enough for the Americans and wasn’t foreign enough for the Europeans. After dozens of very nice rejections, I realized that I needed to look to my own community and partner with producers and financiers who shared my passion for telling this specific story. I ended up partnering with three Arab female producers, and together, we found financing mostly through Arab American private equity and pre-sales in the Middle East – at a time when no one thought it was possible. So what could’ve been a challenge – being an Arab American woman – instead became a huge advantage. So look to your own community for support! And encourage others in the community to support the arts! We need you!

Amreeka is now available on DVD by Virgil Films & Entertainment.

Special thanks to Latoya Peterson and Yusra Tekbali for their help on this.

I finally got around to watching AmericanEast this weekend. Full disclosure: I had originally read Tariq Nelson’s review, which was a pretty good rundown.

AmericanEast is an attempt at mainstreaming American Muslims and attempts to portray the struggles Muslims face in the United States. In my opinion, they overdid it and never established a coherent plot. And on top of that, I found that the characters had no depth and some were cartoonish caricatures.

The movie centers on Mustafa, an Egyptian immigrant who owns a café in a heavily Middle Eastern part of Los Angeles. His life, and the lives of several close to him, is one problem or tragedy after another: at one point during the movie, I asked myself whether anything good was ever going to happen to anyone.

Mustafa has a sister, Salwah. Tariq outlines her character:

Salwah Marzouke, Mustafa’s sister, was a nurse that styled hair in the back of her brother’s restaurant and was arranged to marry her cousin Sabir. However she did not like him and they did not get married. But the cousin was never informed (at least not on camera) and the story was dropped. Salwah was also interested in a doctor at her hospital who was not Muslim.

The movie stresses over and over that marrying Salwah off is Mustafa’s duty (or so he believes). Sabir comes from Egypt to marry Salwah and take him back home with her, although she is less than excited (that’s an understatement) about this arrangement. Even though she often fights with her brother, she gives off major submissive, dutiful vibes that plague many female Muslim characters in the form of wide-eyed, helpless stares contrasted with humbly averted eyes and lowered chin.

She is attracted to a white, non-Muslim doctor who works with her at the hospital, and after the arranged marriage “thing” magically goes away, she agrees to let him cook Japanese food for her at his house. They start getting hot and heavy, but Salwah asks him to stop suddenly. She nervously apologizes, stammering that she thought she could “do this” but she can’t, and gives him the whole “it’s not you, it’s me, you wouldn’t understand” before rushing out.

Because Salwah’s character isn’t developed enough for us to know what she’s thinking (did she realize that she’s just not that into him? Did she decide that he was going too fast for her, and maybe she’d like to begin again under different circumstances? Did she think that maybe she should give Sabir a chance? Or maybe she realized she was on her period?), the viewer must fall back on the dutiful vibes and assume that she’s backing out of sex or maybe a relationship with this doctor out of an obligation to culture or religion or tradition, despite the fact that one of her friends stated that Salwah is “no Virgin Mary” earlier in the movie.

Salwah’s inclusion in the movie symbolizes The Great (and imaginary) Conflict between America and the “Muslim World” or a clash between tradition and modernity. The movie sets up these false dichotomies through Salwah, having her arranged marriage illustrate tradition (which is often synonymous with religion) and her career and brief date illustrate “modernity.” The burden of “marrying her off” is a traditional one her brother feels he must carry, although she is not interested in being such a burden. In fact, because Salwah has two jobs and supports Mustafa and his rapidly failing café, it is he who is the burden.

Mustafa also has a daughter. Tariq explains her role in the movie:

Leila Marzouke, was Mustafa’s dope smoking/dawah giving daughter. She had a scene that was like an infomercial in which she is talking about Islam and Middle Eastern history with her friend while smoking marijuana. That seemed to be her only purpose in the movie. Came off as very forced and as if the movie was preaching to the audience.

I definitely agree with Tariq’s analysis of her character, and have serious issues with the cartoony “history/philosophy” lesson about Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, having all the Arabs in the movie be portrayed as brown dudes with turbans and huge noses was incredibly off-putting.

Second, condensing an entire region’s millennia of history into a cartoon is mistake enough, but so is leaving out everyone but American, Israeli and Arab players, as if Kurdish Saladin was the only non-Arab/non-Israeli/non-American to make a significant difference in the area’s politics. Whatev.

What irked me the most, however, was when the Crusades were over, and supposedly everyone was cool. The cartoon showed Christian and Muslim man alike at a huge party, complete with camels and I Dream of Jeannie-inspired women ornaments. Camels and bellydancers. Really? Perhaps here’s where I should remind you that this movie is intended to break down stereotypes. I guess that doesn’t extend to racial or sexist ones.

But, as Tariq says, this is the largest reason for Leila’s inclusion in the movie. The other main reason is to get ordered around by her father (“Leila, see what the customer wants”) or serve as a catalyst for escalating troubles for her father (like when she irritates a consistently rude café regular, who then yells at her father).

In fact, women in general seem to be nothing more than props or catalysts in this movie. Murad, an anti-Jewish café regular, uses women to establish a connection with Jewish Sam as they smoke a hookah pipe: “The best sex I ever had was with a Jewish girl and a Muslim girl at the same time. You know how people fight over Jerusalem? That’s how they fought over my dick.”

Classy. And it also helps break down the stereotype that Arabs and Muslims are sexist pigs who have little regard for women. Oh, wait…

Despite the fact that this movie really did bother me long after I saw it, the aim of Hesham Izzawy, the director, was a noble one. The movie, however exaggerated and exclusive of women, does highlight issues and problems that Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans often face in a country whose mainstream gives us “War on Terror” products like 24 and Obsession, which vilify Muslims and Middle Eastern people through flat characterizations of “angry bearded terrorist #1” or “captive veiled woman #5”.

The movie does so while addressing uniquely American issues. Fikri, a café regular, states that all this hatred toward Muslims and Middle Eastern people is because of our newness: “This happened to the Italians, the Irish, the Jewish when they were new here. Now we’re the new ones.” A definitely interesting and relevant historic observation that hints at a brighter future.

Ray Hanania might be a little more rosy on his assessment of the movie and it’s impact than I (the film wasn’t picked up by theaters), but I believe that this movie, written and directed by Arabs and Muslims, and featuring a large Middle Eastern American cast, is part of a larger media movement by Middle Eastern Americans and Muslims designed to mainstream themselves into America’s culture. Television shows, movies, books, and comedy tours featuring Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans are actively working to get their voices heard and represented. Though the waves of immigrants from Ireland and Italy had to wait for generations to be accepted into the mainstream, Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans like Izzawy are refusing to play the same waiting game.

Cherien Dabis is having one of those dreamlike weeks. She was named one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2009, and her film Amreeka had its world premiere at Sundance this past weekend to a standing ovation and positive reviews. Now all she needs to do it sell the film and get an agent.

Not being in Sundance, I haven’t seen the film but if I were there, it would been tops on my list. Here’s the description from the catalog:

Director Cherien Dabis’s auspicious debut feature, Amreeka, is a warm and lighthearted film about one Palestinian family’s tumultuous journey into Diaspora amidst the cultural fallout of America’s war in Iraq. Muna Farah, a Palestinian single mom, struggles to maintain her optimistic spirit in the daily grind of intimidating West Bank checkpoints, the constant nagging of a controlling mother, and the haunting shadows of a failed marriage. Everything changes one day when she receives a letter informing her that her family has been granted a U.S. green card. Reluctant to leave her homeland, but realizing it may be the only way to secure a future for Fadi, her teenage son, Muna decides to quit her job at the bank and visit her relatives in Illinois to see about a new life in a land that gives newcomers a run for their money.Dabis weaves an abundance of humor and levity into this tale of struggle, displacement, and nostalgia and draws an absorbing and irresistibly charming performance from actress Nisreen Faour as Muna, who stands at the heart of this tale. Amreeka glows with the truth and magic of everyday life and signals the arrival of an exciting, new directorial talent.

She took a couple of minutes to discuss the film and her Sundance experience.

Women & Hollywood: What made you want to make this film?

Cherien Dabis: The story is quite personal, inspired by my family and loosely based on true events. I grew up in a small town in Ohio of about 10,000 people. I actually grew up between Ohio and Jordan but most of my time was spent in this small town where as Arab Americans we were isolated because there was no Arab community and not a whole lot of diversity. For a while everything was fine and we fit in relatively well until the first Gulf War when my family was scapegoated and overnight we virtually became the enemy. All kinds of absurd things happened. My father who is a physician lost a lot of his patients because they wouldn’t support an Arab doctor and then it came to a head when the Secret Service came to my high school to investigate a rumor that my 17 year old sister threatened to kill the president.

It was an eye opening time, my coming of age. I became politicized, and very aware of the media and how the media were perpetuating the stereotypes that were directly effecting us. So I decided to become a storyteller. I don’t know if it was as conscious a decision as that, but I was knew that I wanted to do something that would change the way the media related to Arabs, to change the way we were represented. To also change the fact that we are underrepresented. I simply wanted to get our stories out there because we have so many and I thought if people could see it from our point of view they would realize how funny and absurd it is.

W&H: Is the film contemporary?

CD: The film is relatively contemporary. It’s a soft period piece and takes place during the 2nd Iraq invasion in 2003.

W&H: You are trying to give a different vision of Arabs and breakthrough typical Hollywood stereotypes.

CD: People can be lazy in their storytelling and then characters become one dimensional and easy to villanize. Then it becomes the story of good vs. evil rather than people are people. I think it is much more difficult to create characters that are complex, rich and multidimensional and it’s easy to fall back on the formulaic stereotypes.

W&H: This film seems quite timely with what just happened in the Middle East.

CD: The film is not really political. It’s political in context but the heart of the story is the relationship between the mother and son. It’s the story of a woman who desperately wants to secure a better future for her son and will do anything for him including leave her homeland and start over completely. She wants to flee her controlling mother, her failed marriage and start anew to get to be someone else, somewhere else. The backdrop of the film is the adversity they have to overcome and the stereotypes and prejudices that people have about Arabs and those are some of the challenges she faces. But she is optimistic and hopeful and she surprises others with her optimism.

W&H: Do you think it’s a good time for this film to come out? Will people be more receptive to it now?

CD: Absolutely. We have a president with an Arab middle name. He’s the first African American president. There is a feeling of hope. It’s a new era. Barack Obama represents the new America and in some way my film represents the America that this country should be – what this country could be if people were a little more open, friendly, trusting and accepting like Muna. So much of this business is about timing and the timing is really good with the change in the administration.

W&H: It’s hard for people to make films nowadays, harder for women’s stories, harder for a woman writer and director and even harder for stories about women of color. Talk about the struggles to get this film made.

CD: I started writing it in 2003 when I was a graduate student at Columbia studying film. I already spoke about my experience in 1991 and exactly a decade later I moved to NY in September of 2001 and started film school. It was surreal to be in NY right after 9-11 and what was happening set the tone for my film school experience. 9-11 got a lot of people to stop and think, what am I doing with my life and why am I doing what I chose to do. It made everyone re-evaluate where they were, and it was especially true for people in film school because film seemed so frivolous at the time. People were going to donate blood and we were making movies, who cares. That was the feeling for a little while after 9-11.

For me it reminded me of why I became a filmmaker when I was again hearing stories of middle easterners being scapegoated and then when the US invaded Iraq again and history was literally repeating itself that was when I said OK I have to sit down and write this story. The world is ready for a Palestinian immigrant story, one that can reach mainstream audiences. I was aware of not wanting it to be political, I wanted it to have humor. I want people to see it. I don’t want it to be ghettoized because I didn’t make it just for the Arab community.

W&H: What do you want them to think about when they leave the film?

CD: I want them to really fall in love with the characters. It’s a glimpse into a world they might not have otherwise seen. I want them to walk away knowing that the culture is beautiful and should be appreciated and that stereotypes are unnecessary. I want them to walk away with a feeling of love and hope that they have just met people they have really liked.

W&H: Talk about the Sundance experience.

CD: It’s been a whirlwind.

W&H: What was the biggest high?

CD: My world premiere was on Saturday afternoon at the Eccles Theatre which seats 1400 people and it was entirely packed. It was such a thrill and I was so nervous. I had to introduce the film and was sad that my mother couldn’t be there so I called her on my cell phone and had her on the phone while I introduced the film and everyone say hi to her. Everyone shouted hi mom. I got so emotional and she was giggling and sobbing. It was such a sweet moment that I will never forget. Then the movie started and everyone was laughing in the right places and they were so with the film and afterward there was a standing ovation. It was a magical moment.

W&H: The films about guys are generating most of the buzz have you noticed that?

CD: Yes, it’s interesting. I wasn’t prepared for how tremendously postive the response has been. In some ways it is the perfect reception for this movie and maybe if it wasn’t such a difficult market we would have sold the film already. But I am hopeful and the prospects seem good. I have noticed that it is easier to get a film with a male lead financed, and to get those movies seen and sold and I don’t know why.

So, I’ve noticed that a few readers have asked why Racialicious has been so quiet on the situation in Gaza. As the violence continues to escalate, it is hard to not post about what is happening.

However, as much as it troubles me to remain silent, it troubles me more to see the responses that the posts on Israel and Palestine receive. Generally, they are met with silence from normally chatty and informed commenters while the same six people rehash their opinions on thread after thread.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why this occurs. Why are so many people reluctant to discuss what is happening in Israel and Palestine?

Perhaps, they are too intimidated.

After all, this conflict is rich and multilayered, and most people new to the discussion exhaust their knowledge base within the first few minutes, lapsing into silence while those with the longest memories tend to dominate the conversation. However, I do not believe this is a worthwhile tactic – while those in the know debate strategies and bring up failed resolutions and broken promises, the majority of the people blink and begin to disengage. There is too much information. The opposing sides are ruthless in their arguments. And most tend to watch the conversation dispassionately, or click away.

On this blog, we try to break down social issues using a more human aspect to explain points of global policy or racial theory. But that has not been working. So it occurs to me that there may be a fundamental lack of information about the origins of the conflict and what is at stake. So, the question becomes how do we get more people this information in a way that they will find it accessible?

When I tuned in to the first episode of the IFC Media project, I didn’t know what to expect. I know I didn’t expect Gideon Yago to go off on a tangent about “missing white girls” dominating the news, or to see IFC clearly tackle race-based reporting bias.

And I didn’t expect the program to send someone to track down the issues involved in talking about Israel.

I initially transcribed most of the program to talk about the race related aspects of the first episode. In the 26 minutes of the show, I have about seven pages of notes. However, with the current situation, I think I will focus solely on the discussion of reporting on Israel for this post, and revisit the other items at a later date.

Segment: The Third Rail of Journalism

The segment opens with what appears to be an old movie reel describing the creation of “a new Jerusalem.”

Mark Levine, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at UC Irvine begins his voiceover: “These are images of Israel I grew up with.”

Movie voiceover: “Over an area of some 500 square miles, Jews from around the world have been bringing about a miracle in the desert.”

Levine: “What an amazing country. I was taught that Israelis made the desert bloom, and created a paradise out of empty land.

Movie voiceover: “To live happily and courageously as free men and women.”

Levine speaks as a photo montage plays showing his growth and faith: “This vision of Jews and Israel shaped me as a kid. But by the time I traveled to Israel as an adult, I’d found something different. There were these other people there, the Palestinians, and they told an entirely different story. For them, the founding of Israel was a catastrophe, al-Naqba, which pushed them from their homes, and began a cycle of misery that continues to this day. Why hadn’t I heard about this other history in the news? The Israelis at least talk about it in their news.”

A segment of an Israeli news show plays.

Levine continues: “So I was curious. Why don’t we have this debate here in America? What shapes the way we talk about Israel? Why does there seem to be so much that we can’t talk about?”

Levine travels to Chicago to meet with Professor John J. Mearsheimer, the co-author of The Israel Lobby.

Mearsheimer: “One of the reasons – just one – but, one of the reasons that Osama Bin Laden attacked us on September 11th is because of our support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians. But hardly anyone makes that argument. […] The real tragedy here is that Israel is becoming an apartheid state and the lobby is helping them drive itself off a cliff.”

Levine poses a question about how the lobby shapes the media and public landscape.

Mearsheimer: “First of all, there are a large number of people in important positions in the media who are deeply devoted to Israel. There are also a lot of people who are not inclined to support Israel no matter what it does and who would be willing to be critical. What the lobby does is that they monitor those people very carefully and everytime they say something that is critical of Israel, they land on them like a ton of bricks.”

Switching subjects, Levine says: “That ton of bricks fell on Rob Malley, when his efforts to bring the Palestinian point of view into the national debate drew the ire of the Israel lobby.”

Levine meets with Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group who explains: “You have to be careful when you talk about settlements […] You have to be careful about how you talk about Israeli actions in the territories.”

Malley notes that this discussion is very active and multifaceted in Israel, pointing out: “There was an Israeli government official who recently said ‘Either we end the occupation or the occupation is going to end us.’ “

A clip from the Daily Show airs about all the candidates attending the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference while on the Presidential campaign trail.

Levine’s voiceover from his hotel notes: “AIPAC. The New York Times called them the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel. Why? What do they do?”

Levine calls Josh Block, the Director of Media Affairs at AIPAC and gets stonewalled. He is informed that AIPAC does not talk to the media. Block gets dismissive, calls him “Bro” and informs him this just isn’t something AIPAC does. Block: “I wish I was in a position where I was gonna help you, but I’m not.” Levine asks for someone else to speak to, Block shuts him down.

(Random note of awesomeness: Levine has a book open on the desk while he is speaking to Block called Heavy Metal Islam. This is a book he wrote about “Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”)

After hanging up, Levine asks: “AIPAC is an organization that gets coverage on every major network. Why do they have a policy of not talking to the press?”

Levine then goes to speak to Morris Amitay, former President of AIPAC.

Amitay: “AIPAC, I know, does not work to try to influence the media. AIPAC basically works with the administration and Congress on issues affecting Israel and the relationship between the two countries.”

Levine brings up the heavily covered convention. Amitay responds: “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the media buys everything that AIPAC is advocating.”

Levine touches on “the ubiquitous feeling” that if you criticize Israel you find yourself on the wrong side of the pro-Israel lobby.

Amitay gives him a look, then says: “People who consider themselves friends of Israel, how [do they react] any different than any other interest group in Washington? You reward your friends and you try to defeat your enemies. Isn’t that the American way?”

(An IFC Note pops up on the screen: Since 1967, US Aid to Israel has totaled over $100 Billion.)

Levine goes into another voice over: “With our free press, journalists should be able to say anything they want about Israel, but they don’t. Is this the result of pressure from the lobby, or something deeper? When Ken Silverstein was at the LA Times, he wrote a potentially controversial article about the conflict. It never got published and he ended up leaving the paper.”

What Silverstein says here is illuminating (emphasis mine):

“Towards the end of the editing process, I had some very, very serious problems, where I felt like the piece had been significantly altered in ways that I wasn’t comfortable with. There was one key point that I really wanted to include that repeatedly was cut. [What was cut was] simply that one of the officials I interviewed who is with Hezbollah, we were talking about the question of Iran and the Holocaust came up, and he said ‘There’s no question this took place. I’m not denying that the Holocaust took place. My point though is that Europeans committed this crime and we paid for it with our land.’ And I thought ‘This is the Arab narrative.’

We don’t hear the Arab narrative very often at all. But it created a little bit of discomfort because it looked like it would be a little too ‘pro-Arab’ and I think that just made certain people nervous. And they just decided to ‘fix’ the piece. You know, it got to the point where I was just ultimately decided I would be uncomfortable publishing the piece as it was edited in its final version and I ended up just pulling the piece. “

Silverstein is currently at Harper’s.

A montage of videos culled from media coverage plays with varying people discussing actions to be taken against Hezbollah, the Palestinans, Arafat’s headquarters, and other targets, with Silverstein’s voice over: “There’s almost no point of view that would be pro-Israel, that would be deemed too extreme to appear in the American Media.”

Silverstein also says: “It’s hard to get my own head around it […] you’re always wondering do people consciously tell lies or not.”

Still traveling in search of answers, Levine explains in a voice over: “Despite tens of billions of dollars in aid to Israel and millions of lives at stake, Americans are still in the dark about what’s really going on.”

Levine ends up talking to Christopher Dickey, the Mideast Regional Director for Newsweek. The best points of the segment are made in their conversation. (Again, bold emphasis mine.)

Levine: “Why is it that the media has been so reluctant or unable or unwilling to get Americans to understand not only the reality that is there, but how we are implicated in it by our quote-unquote ‘special relationship’ with Israel?”

Dickey: “Is any news organization or reporter going to make it its cause to set the record straight on the Israeli occupation? So, instead of one report, we have lots of reports. We have daily reports […] If you do that then you’re not just telling the news. You’re creating a narrative and espousing a cause. It may be a worthwhile cause, but most American media don’t see it as their cause.”

Levine: “Perhaps one of the reasons why we have these boundaries that you can’t cross, these sacred cows about Israel, is because the sacred cows about Israel, and what it does, are actually in many ways the same sacred cows about who we are, and what we’ve done and what we do.”

Dickey: “There is a kind of understanding of America by Israel and of Israel by America that is almost unique. The fact that you’ve got two nations of immigrants, that you have a lot of different backgrounds, that there is, in a sense, original sin connected with the creation of the state, whether it is the extermination of the American Indians or the displacement of the Palestinians. All of that creates a kind of an affinity between the two that I think is much, much more complicated than the idea that a lobby, some insidious force […] just controls American people. It may know how to tap into that […] but that’s a different issue.”

Levine’s final words end the segment, and provide a much needed reality check on the current media situation:

“Israel was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust as a beacon of hope. But to really understand the country’s troubled present, we need journalists to look beyond one sided narratives and to offer up a more accurate picture of what’s happened in the past and what’s going on today.”