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Arab Media Watch urges its members and the public to watch the Dispatches programme "Children of Gaza" on Channel 4 tonight (15 March 2010) at 8pm, or on Channel 4 + 1 tonight at 9pm. The documentary is repeated on Channel 4 on Sunday 21 March at 4.15am, and Channel 4 + 1 at 5.15am.
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By Max Blumenthal
15 March 2010
Electronic Intifada
One night about two weeks ago, while I was walking down Bleecker Street in New York City's West Village, I crossed paths with Norman Finkelstein. He was wearing a light jacket and eating a banana, seemingly impervious to the bitter wind and heavy snowfall pouring from the sky. I told Finkelstein that a YouTube clip of him parrying attacks from Zionist student activists during a speech he gave at the University of Waterloo was gaining popularity online. "Well, that scene hasn't been very good for me," he remarked in a near whisper.
The YouTube clip was an excerpt from American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein, a riveting 2009 documentary that has just opened in US theaters. In the scene, a female student tells Finkelstein that his comparisons of the Israeli government to the Nazis are "extremely hurtful" before she breaks down in tears. Instead of offering the demonstrative young woman a token gesture of empathy, Finkelstein grows indignant, angrily dismissing what he called her "crocodile tears." He then launches into a stentorian tirade about "the lessons of the Holocaust" he learned from his Holocaust survivor parents, booming above a chorus of heckles from pro-Israel students, "If you had any heart in you, you would be crying for the Palestinians!" While the young woman holds her head in hands as though she was bracing for an air raid, a substantial portion of the crowd leaps to its feet with wild cheers. Finkelstein may have regretted the spectacle he generates later on, but he seemed to be enjoying himself at the time.
With unfettered access to Finkelstein during the most dramatic stage of his career, American Radical directors David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier provide a compelling look at one of the most roundly vilified academics in recent American history. If the film had simply rehashed the tale of Finkelstein as a rabble-rousing iconoclast who defied the Jewish-American consensus to agitate for Palestinian civil rights, it would have been prosaic at best. But by giving equal time to Finkelstein's critics, who proved unable to conceal their visceral disdain for him even though they have succeeded in isolating him from the intellectual mainstream, the film offers a devastating portrait of an academic establishment that will go to extraordinary lengths not only to rebut but destroy potent critics of Israel, even obviously idiosyncratic characters like Finkelstein. Even with his excessive tendencies and strident style on bold display, when seen in the shadow of his adversaries, Finkelstein appears more than odd -- he becomes utterly sympathetic.
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During the week of 8-14 March 2010, Arab Media Watch issued an Action Alert urging its members and the public to thank Independent columnist Johann Hari for a commentary entitled "Palestinians should now declare their independence."
AMW met with Reuters and Agence France Presse.
Al Hayat published an article by AMW adviser Guy Gabriel on offensive Google results for the search term 'Arab.'
AMW adviser Tahrir Swift wrote to the BBC about its coverage of the Iraqi elections.
AMW liaised with the BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera English, Al Hayat, Al Quds Al Arabi, the Global Arab Network, Arab News, JNews, Arab News Broadcasting, the Palestine Telegraph, the Arab Media Centre at Westminster University, Al Hiwar, the UN, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the Moroccan and Saudi embassies.
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On 12 March 2010, the Independent published a commentary by columnist Johann Hari entitled "Palestinians should now declare their independence." It is arguably the best commentary to be published in the British press since Israel's latest announcements of new settlement construction. The Independent and Hari will no doubt be condemned for this, so please spare a few minutes to thank the newspaper and columnist.
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By Rime Allaf, Arab Media Watch adviser and associate fellow at Chatham House
11 March 2010
Bitterlemons International
The Obama administration is
still an international novice compared to other governments around the
world, but it can already claim to have achieved results with its
approach to the Arab-Israel problem. Every time US officials have made a
request or embarked on a trip aiming at resuscitating a process of some
sort, they have been met, sometimes preemptively, with a significant
Israeli gesture.
Indeed, Israel believes in confidence-building measures and will spare
no effort in finding new opportunities to demonstrate them, as long as
they achieve the desired goal: boosting its own position and its own
confidence. And nothing can build Israel's confidence like the public
rejection of a request, let alone a requirement, made by an ally: the
closer the friend, the bigger the humiliation, the greater the Israeli
self-confidence and the more futile the subsequent interchange.
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By Brenda Heard, Arab Media Watch member and Friends of Lebanon co-founder 11 March 2010 Antonio Cassese, President of the Special Tribunal for
Lebanon
(STL), recently presented the First
Annual
Report on the operation and activities of the Tribunal during the
period
from 1 March 2009 to 28 February 2010. With
its remit to investigate the 14 February 2005 Beirut bombing that killed
former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others, the international Tribunal
has been
busy. The year has been spent "establishing
the basic structure of the institution" and gathering "evidence against
both
the direct perpetrators of the crimes, as well as the 'perpetrators
behind the
perpetrators' - i.e. those senior political, military and paramilitary
leaders
who - although physically, geographically or temporally removed from the
crimes - in fact bear the greatest responsibility."
Cassese notes the "obvious discipline and
sophistication of
those behind the attack." He explores at
length the theoretical ethos of the work being undertaken, a step he
terms "indispensable." He concludes that:
"All the organs of the STL are not
unmindful of the host of hurdles they will have to face, both at present
and
when they begin to discharge their judicial mandate fully. But they are
prepared to surmount those hurdles with intrepidity. After all, the
undertakings of anybody struggling for the realization of human rights,
and in
this case, for the vindication of the rights of the victims and the
punishment
of the authors of very serious misdeeds, is a labour of Sisyphus."
Intrepid as they may be, however, it must be
remembered what
the tale of Sisyphus has come to symbolise: a task that accomplishes
nothing
beyond its own futile implementation. The mythological figure, you will
recall, was subject to the eternal
punishment of pushing a boulder up a hill, waiting for it to roll back
down,
and then pushing it up again and again.
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From the Council for Arab-British Understanding
11 March 2010
A
British parliamentary delegation that returned from the Gaza Strip on
Monday
has welcomed the release of journalist Paul Martin, after the group
raised his
detention with Hamas officials.
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By Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center
10 March 2010
Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa, is the story of one Palestinian family over four generations. It can be argued, however, that it is also a story about any and every Palestinian family. The novel begins in the picturesque village of Ein Hod in the north of Palestine. The Abulheja family leads the simple life that most Palestinian farmers led before their tragic dispossession in 1948. Love was plentiful in Ein Hod. Love for life, for family, for God, and for the land. This was the essence of a farming society for generation upon generation.
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By Rami Khouri,
Arab Media Watch adviser,
director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of
Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star,
and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.10 March 2010Watching US policy in the Middle East as I do these
days from Boston, and seeing the deep and persistent tilt towards
Israel, it is hard to see any breakthrough emerging from the
US-concocted "proximity talks" to launch this week between Israel and
the Palestinians. At the same time, it would be irresponsible simply to
write off this effort as the latest example of that bizarre process that
sees American romanticism or amateurism in mediating peace combine with
strong American support for Israeli colonialism (settlements
expansion), barbarism (the siege of Gaza that now results in stunting
among Palestinian children), and recidivism (refusing to deal with the
Goldstone Report on war crimes in the Gaza war).
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In February 2010, Arab Media Watch adviser Victor Kattan gave a talk on international law and the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict at the MIT Centre for International Studies, with an introduction by Noam Chomsky.
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