For Israel, propaganda-hasbara­-has always been as integral as extreme violence to the formation and maintenance of the state. In fact, the two elements are intertwined; hasbara is needed to justify this extreme violence against the natives and continually portray it as purely defensive. That takes a hit when the world sees pictures of children with horrific white phosphorous burns or policemen murdered en masse at their graduation ceremonies, which is why the Zionist entity and its backers have attacked the Goldstone report (or more accurately, attacking Judge Goldstone himself)-it is the first internationally sanctioned report documenting Israeli violations of human rights and international law.

Aside from slandering those who expose its criminality, hasbara requires Israel to be proactive-hence the much documented propaganda effort in Haiti. The other tactic is to deflect attention; Iran’s nuclear ambitions are the biggest threat to world peace, but Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is somehow benign.

Underlying the importance of propaganda to Israel, a former ambassador wrote a piece in Haaretzurl today claiming that hasbara is both intelligent and necessary. That is only true to those so heavily ingrained in ideologies incompatible with logic, such as Zionism. They need propaganda to explain the enormous damage and suffering they cause, and to justify such a blatantly outdated and supremacist philosophy, both to themselves and to the rest of the world.

The former ambassador, David Admon, shamelessly pushes the need for a state propaganda ministry. He mentions that he suggested this in the 70’s to Menachem Begin who compared Admon’s idea to the Nazi propaganda of Goebbels. Nevertheless, Admon presses on; to him, everything Israelis do must feed the improvement of the Zionist state’s image. In response to accusations that Israel used the Haiti disaster for propaganda purposes he counters “What is the alternative? To remain indifferent?” In Admon’s mindest, the alternative to not using a foreign disaster as a PR event is to do nothing at all.

Admon’s methods are as laughable as his call for an official propaganda ministry is dangerous. His claim that Jerusalem was never a Palestinian capital comes from a Thomas Cook guidebook in 1900-he calls it an ‘indisputably reliable source’- which states that Jews in the city outnumber Palestinians (it doesn’t suit hasbara purposes to point out that those Jews were actually Palestinian). It gets worse:

“Before I set out on my mission in Hungary I bought more than 100 copies of the book “The Case for Israel,” written by American lawyer Alan Dershowitz. I gave it out there to people in the administration, academics and ambassadors. The well-reasoned, fact-based book gave them an opportunity to understand the Israeli side better and to admire the State of Israel.”

Fact based? Again, Zionist propaganda fantasies necessitate some strange beliefs. With their distortions, half-truths and outright lies, Dershowitz’s books are a joke, but they play a major role in hasbara efforts. The man himself has been especially vocal in his criticism of those who dare to criticize Israel since the Gaza massacre; he was consulted as part of Israel’s response to the Goldstone report and yesterday publicly attacked Judge Goldstone as an ‘evil, evil man’ and a ‘traitor to the Jewish [because in the parlance of hasbara, Israeli equals Jewish] people’.

However, Judge Goldstone isn’t is a traitor to honesty and human rights-which is precisely what David Admon and his ilk want to replace with lies and distortions, wrapped up in a shinier façade known as hasbara.

I think we are missing the point. The fact is that corporate, special, and powerful interests already have effective control of our political system. As Jon Stewart’s coverage of the State of the Union effectively shows, our public discourse is already in the shits. Fox offered only vapid criticisms, saying the President was not acting “presidential” — whatever the hell that means. MSNBC the most desperate praises; and CNN the most useless collection of raw data from Twitter. This is the discourse we desperately need to save, say the Democrats?

Perhaps it’s irresponsible for me to refrain from thinking about the merits of this decision–but it’s more important to look at our political system and public discourse before the ruling, which Democrats have treated as apocalyptic. For from being the valiant resistance, Democrats are actually part of the problem. Their monopoly on progressive, left, or liberal forces in the United States, whose leaders, no matter where they start, once filtered through the party machine, end up spouting meaningless make-believe like Obama on Palestine in Tampa, is part of the same special interest control that has incapacitated our country.

Last September, as the Court was hearing arguments on the case, Eliot Spitzer penned an op-ed calling for the regulation to be overruled. In his more persuasive points, Spitzer argued that the exclusion of “media companies” like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News from the restriction, was “a distinction that makes no logical sense” — especially since these are all channels with clear political agendas, with clear loyalty to the two-party system, if not to individual candidates, and with clearly little substance to contribute to our discourse. It’s hard to see how the systemic bias and inanity of the mainstream media (which is also corporate, by the way) is not part of the problem, especially if the proclaimed goal of such legislation is to facilitate a healthier public discourse.

I can’t help but think that there is a larger problem here. When we call for restrictions on corporate speech, we are missing a larger picture. My gut sense is that this call is informed by a patriarchal attitude towards the mythical “average American.” We place ourselves outside of this fictitious person (Joe Six-Pack, if you will) when we call for his protection, since we–unlike him–are apparently so well-informed and intelligent that we’re not susceptible to the same influence and mind-control as he.

This apparently patriarchal dilemma leads us to our real problem: sure, we can try all we want to patch the holes in this leaky dam of corporate rule, rushing from one plugged hole to the next one that bursts. None of these short-sighted regulations will address the larger issue of corporate power in this country, however. Surely we can’t believe that if corporations can’t spend money on explicit endorsements of political candidates 30 days before a federal election, that they will suddenly lose their stifling powers, thereby finally allowing our political creativity and freedom to flourish.

How can we buy such a fanciful idea when every aspect of our society, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, is pervaded by corporate influence? Our educational systems are designed and developed in coordination with corporate needs; our pop culture has become an industry; our streets are overwhelmed with corporate pollution in the forms of advertisements and billboards; even our humanitarian efforts are sponsored and guided by corporate money — and this one weak restriction, which does not even limit corporate donations to candidates (a separate issue from speech) is supposed to hold back the floodgates?

We cannot change the way media works if we rely on a vertical remedy, as the patriarchal approach attempts, hoping only to limit its excesses. We must adopt a more horizontal approach to inspire and spread the critical modes of thought that are necessary to rejuvenate our political culture. Underlying the notion that corporate money unduly “influences” people is the demeaning idea that Americans will gobble up whatever their televisions beam at them — if that is the case, we have to change the way people engage with media, as much as, if not more than, we need to change the media.

I empathize completely with the need for media (and politics!) that is more transparent, honest, and sophisticated. To that end, however, we have to fundamentally re-think and re-approach the issues. It’s myopic to understand the relationship between corporations and our political system against a First Amendment backdrop alone; that relationship is so imbricated in our society at large that focusing the discussion on some ghost ideal of free speech simply obscures the real power dynamics and issues at stake.

Cross-posted

Update

: You may watch “They Do Not Exist” online here. (Tarboush tip: Laurie King)

from Sight and Sound Magazine

The Palestinian Film Archive vanished during the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut. Sarah Wood’s ‘For Cultural Purposes Only’ revives the memory of its contents through verbal description and drawings. Palestinian writer Adania Shibli finds her own memories stirred

Sometimes, when you talk to someone, for instance about your first day in school, the other person rushes to remember their own first day in school as well. I am well aware that this can be annoying. Still, this is exactly what I shall proceed to do in relation to Sarah Wood’s experimental film For Cultural Purposes Only.

The film consists of flashes of memory that run parallel in the said and in the seen. In the former one hears a number of people, including Palestinian film-makers, describe specific scenes they remember watching from Palestinian films that, at least in their original versions, were lost with the disappearance of Palestinian Film Archive during the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. The seen part of the film attempts to document these scenes, which are no longer possible to watch, by drawing them.

The story of the loss of the Palestinian Film Archive is one that is being lived out by those interested in Palestinian cinema, rather like the way in which the Palestinian refugees are living the story of their loss of all they owned following the Nakba (‘Palestinian Catastrophe’) of 1948. The Palestinian film-maker Azzah al-Hasan made a documentary on the issue, Kings and Extras (2006), in which she attempted, like a private detective, to search for the archive and all those connected with it up until the moment of its disappearance. And just last August, al-Aqsa University in Gaza (yes, Gaza!) hosted a conference that dealt with the issue of the loss of the archive and its consequences, including the inability of early Palestinian cinema to take its place in the archive of world cinema.

For me, however, as for many of the younger generation, the question of the archive’s disappearance has meant something else completely. It has meant our inability to watch these pioneering films, or to even know that they exist. Our knowledge of Palestinian films is restricted to those produced since the 1980s, as if Palestinian cinema did not exist before then. And so I had not watched any of the films that Wood referenced in her film, or even recognised any of their titles, bar one – Qasim Hawl’s Aa’id ila Haifa (Return to Haifa, 1981).

I got to know about the existence of this film only in 2004, when I watched it during the Palestinian film festival titled ‘Dreams of a Nation’, organised by Hamid Dabashi, a film professor at Columbia University in New York, and Palestinian film-maker Annemarie Jacir. The festival screened that film on videocassette, along with others whose original prints had also been lost. Among them was Laysa Lahum Wujud (They Do Not Exist, 1974), by Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the pioneers of Palestinian documentary cinema, and one of the film-makers to whose works Wood refers in her film.

They Do Not Exist takes its title from a reply by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, to a question about the Palestinians, and it depicts scenes of life from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nabatiyeh in Lebanon. It begins with long shots that carefully but unassumingly contemplate a casual morning in the camp, with women busy eating breakfast, hanging up washing, sweeping the courtyard or kneading dough, while the children are either playing or disturbing their mothers. One of the women sidesteps this disturbance by pressing a piece of dough into the hand of her breastfeeding child, whose body in her lap surrenders to the rhythm of her movements that are dictated by the kneading. In the background, one can hear one of Umm Kulthum’s songs, which women normally listen to in the morning. Later, this music is replaced by the voice of a little girl reading out a letter she has written to someone, in which she explains that she is giving him a towel and a piece of soap as a present; then she apologises for the meagerness of her gift. The voice of this young girl in turn transports the viewer out of the camp to the recipient of the letter, a resistance fighter huddled in the hills out in the wilderness, then to Israeli warplanes hovering in the sky, which bring us back to the camp, now completely destroyed. At that moment, one cannot help but recall the images of that casual morning in the camp, with its women and children, as well as the little girl who was reading the letter, all of whom “no longer exist”.

I had met Abu Ali, the film’s director, a few times before. But until then I had not seen any of his films; nor had I been particularly keen on doing so. I do not know if this was because of his bellowing laughter, his thick glasses, or his voracious smoking. After watching the film, I felt terribly ashamed of my sheer ignorance of what he had offered to documentary cinema, especially that pertaining to Palestine. Usually, films of this kind are impressive to the same extent as news from Palestine is impressive. The story of Palestine has been impressive for at least the last hundred years. Yet They Do Not Exist does not depict any impressive story, but instead a simple, normal daily life that the viewer cannot overly sanctify. And suddenly, this life no longer exists. That is all there is to it. In other words, the film does not follow any particular event to narrate the Palestinian tragedy. Rather, by merely documenting the non-event and its disappearance, it manages to penetrate the extent of this tragedy.

A few weeks ago, Abu Ali unexpectedly passed away, having offered nothing of note to Palestinian cinema since 1982. And just as his film consecrates the memory of a life that no longer exists, and so summons it back to existence anew, Sarah Wood’s film consecrates the memory of this film-maker who is no longer with us, along with the Palestinian Film Archive, and summons them both back to existence anew.

Translated by Suneela Mubayi.

‘For Cultural Purposes Only’ is one of four AnimateTV 2009 commissions screened on Channel 4 on 20 November and at Tate Modern on 3 December. All four are available to view at animateprojects.org from 21 December.
Sight & Sound

]]> http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/for-cultural-purposes-only.html/feed 2 http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/and-were-the-stinky-ones.html http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/and-were-the-stinky-ones.html#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:09:49 +0000 Programmer Buydatti http://www.kabobfest.com/?p=7062

As reported by the AFP:

Israel’s foot soldiers are getting new odour-free socks that can be worn for two weeks straight without smelling or stinking up the feet, the Maariv daily reported on Thursday.

“It may sound ridiculous… but this is a very important issue that causes many problems during training,” the newspaper quoted Brigadier General Nissim Peretz, the commander of the Israeli military’s logistics division, as saying.

The socks, which will be distributed to all new infantry recruits beginning in March, also prevent athlete’s foot — “a nuisance with which every soldier is very familiar,” the paper said.

The fabric includes metal components to keep bad odours and fungal infections at bay, it said.

On behalf of the Palestinian people, Shalom Fayyad has reportedly called for “an apology in principle” from the Israeli government for 62 years of mischaracterization as “stinky Arabs.” The Turkish government is mediating the high-level talks surrounding the issue.

]]> http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/and-were-the-stinky-ones.html/feed 0 http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/at-tampa-town-hall-obama-confirms-that-peace-precludes-palestinian-rights.html http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/at-tampa-town-hall-obama-confirms-that-peace-precludes-palestinian-rights.html#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:12:38 +0000 Yaman http://www.kabobfest.com/?p=7057 Responding to an unexpected question about US funding for Israeli human rights violations at a town hall in Tampa yesterday, President Obama made a remark reminiscent of the last eight years and its frequent Bushisms.

On top of his tortured remark however (“The Middle East is an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”), President Obama reminded us that the so-called peace process has become incompatible with Palestinian human rights. According to Obama, Palestinians must renounce violence, but not Israel, even though Israel is the country with a navy, air force, army, nuclear weapons, and an active intelligence apparatus, and even though Palestinians are the ones with an internationally recognized right to use violence against their occupier.

Joseph Massad’s analysis of this trend back to the Oslo Agreements could not have come at a more opportune time, given the way that Obama did not address Palestinian rights but instead responded to an un-asked question about the fantasy peace process, vividly demonstrating the dichotomy that has come to represent a new form of racism against the Palestinians.

It is thanks to this logic that Israel can charge that the Goldstone report, extensively documenting human rights violations, will cause “harm” to the peace process. Under the same pretext, the British government tries to prevent arrest warrants against accused Israeli leaders, because “Israel’s leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks.” As if a peace process actually exists!

We cannot accept the notion that addressing the injustices against the Palestinians is an obstacle to this “elusive” peace, because it is precisely those injustices that stand in the way. Increasingly, the two-state solution espoused in words only by Israel, the State Department, and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas looks like nothing more than another phase in perpetuating those injustices against most Palestinians, even if it helps create an elite VIP political class that can travel freely and make money under occupation.

To that extent the idea that every discussion about Palestinians must be centered on the chimera of “peace” aka Israel’s conception of the two state solution actually stands in the way of restoring to Palestinians their rights.

That the President can respond so audaciously and dishonestly with a recycled script practically written by the Israel lobby should dispel all fantasies that change on this issue will come from the top, or that they should even be aimed at the top. The Israel lobby will exist as long as Israeli apartheid does, so we cannot act as if the two issues are separate. All these claims only emphasize the need for more agitation and substantive organization at the grassroots level.

There are those who will act as apologists for the President, pointing to the Israel lobby, or to the fact that Florida is a swing state and the President is simply being realistic. That might be palatable, detriments to an honest and transparent political discourse aside, if there was actually something positive happening for Palestinians behind the scenes — but there isn’t.

]]> http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/at-tampa-town-hall-obama-confirms-that-peace-precludes-palestinian-rights.html/feed 89 http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/ten-things-hamas-got-right-in-gaza.html http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/ten-things-hamas-got-right-in-gaza.html#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:09:34 +0000 Hanitizer http://www.kabobfest.com/?p=7048 Like many organizations Hamas is not a one unified group and it seldom speaks with one voice. In Gaza, there are few reasonable men and women who are in leadership positions in Hamas Gaza government. Those Hamas leaders, many educated in the West have no military background and that’s why many in the international community do not mind working with them. However, since those leaders have no militant connection, they are often weak in the ranks of Hamas and its decisions making. The bands of tugs and militant groups that is commissioned with protecting the establishment of Hamas and its leaders are the dangerous one. Most Hamas militants do not mind breaking into people’s homes and even kill individuals of interest. As long as you are away from the Radar of those Hamas militants, you are safe.

The reasonable and educated Hamas leaders often has no leverage with those groups, as the militants only answer to the Hamas leader in Damascus. I have seen countless graphic images of Hamas brutality against individuals in Gaza. Having spoken of Hamas’ brutality does not take away the few dozen of accomplishments that Hamas government has put in place. Anyone visiting Gaza will feel that with the entire negative image Hamas has, they remain defiant and strive to govern and to improve life in Gaza. Here are ten accomplishments Hamas working against many odds, has delivered to the people of Gaza.

1. Traffic in Gaza is better managed since the Hamas police force gives people the appearance of toughness and willingness to do anything to enforce the law. Drivers and cabbies now respect the traffic laws. They complain too much, but the city is a lot easier to navigate for pedestrians and drivers under the control of the bearded officers. It’s true they have few random control checkpoints here and there and guns on every corner, but the fruits of their labor are enjoyed by all Palestinians in Gaza. This often the reason Hamas supporters share to credit the Hamas government.

2. Markets are better organized. Trying to go to the market before was at your own risk–too many vendors, crowded and narrow streets, constant fights between street vendors…chaos. Hamas police forces took control of the markets and anyone who does not obey the law, they beat them up on the spot. They made examples of a few vendors and since then everybody does what they are told. Under the previous administration, if a policeman roughed up a guy for violating the law, then the guy could get his family to beat up the officer and no one would care. Try beating up a Hamas officer and see if anyone will ever find you.

3. In Gaza large families who intimidate others have been broken and subdued. In the past, and during Fatah control of Gaza, large clans in Gaza bragged about how many weapons and ammo they could get ready if a fight broke out with a member of their clan. In other words, those few families even intimidated the government. Hamas said, “We are not going to take this!” In the first faceoff with those clans, Hamas threw whatever guns and man power they had to break the will of those clans and they did just that. Since most leaders in Hamas come from small families, the assault on large clans makes sense. Now size no longer matters in Gaza. Said Syyam, the former Hamas Minister of Interior successfully spearheaded this front.

4. Dubious financial transactions and frauds are kept to a minimum. As my dad and siblings own several businesses in Gaza, I can tell you that in the past people can write you a check with no credit and once the check bounced, you weren’t able to collect your money because they legal system did not enforce the law it made. Hamas now says if anyone of those guys does not pay you the money, come to us and we will make sure you get your money. My dad tells me that if he takes a returned check to the proper authorities, the first thing they will do is put the person who issued the check in jail for 21 days. It gets worse after that.

5. Debt collection is easier under the new government. Dad tells me that if a member of the Hamas government does not pay when he says he will pay and dad files a complaint against him/her then the government will garnish the debtor’s paycheck and pay the debt collector right away. If the person is not affiliated with the government, the Hamas guys will call him and ask him to pay. If he does not pay, they ask him to come in. By then most people pay up. Dad brags about how he uses this service regularly. He says most people who like to be seen with Hamas guys are afraid of being punished by Ramallah government who fires and cuts the salaries of any employee of theirs who has contact or has been perceived as such dad does not mind it as he is retired and frequently disses Hamas.

6. Taxi services function 24/7 due to the increased security. This is the one service I enjoy the most in Gaza. Taxi offices are spread all over the narrow Strip. Now we can spend all day and night on the beach or visiting family and know that we can get a ride anytime. This service would not flourish if the sense of security and safety did not exist. Under the previous government, this taxi service late at night was not an option. Random gunmen were seen throughout the night and fear was all around.

7. Random killing is kept to minimum because any unauthorized use of firearms is investigated and punished. In the late years of the previous government, Gaza was a replica of the Wild Wild West. People get killed for no reason and no one knows who fired. People used to lose their lives for being in the wrong places the wrong time or for just being themselves. Nowadays, every time one uses a gun, it gets reported to the police who take it seriously (I suppose Hamas does not want Fatah guys carrying firearms). If you shoot a gun you better be a policeman or have a compelling reason for doing so. The only people who have arms other than the police are the Palestinian resistance groups–mainly Islamic Jihad.

8. The Gaza beach is now a place where families can actually enjoy themselves, as opposed to the past where a few jerks harassed any female that went into the water. It used to bother me to see young men changing their clothes in public in front of kids and women. This is no longer a major problem. For example, I swam last summer with my fiancé and no one harassed us–maybe because it was dark. In the past we would have more personal freedom, but that also means others would have had more personal freedom to harass us–mainly her. Now, anytime you complain of the improper conduct of the youngsters, they take it seriously. To be honest, we had to take our IDs and rings in case an extremist element of Hamas wanted to make sure we are Halal.

9. Hamas has done a better job in embracing technology in governing. In Gaza, many government services can be done online. No need to stand in a long line, eliminating the uncertainty and promoting transparency. There are few government services that can be delivered to cellphones to save people the commute where limited gas is a problem. It seems that smaller groups are quicker to embrace new technologies. That perhaps explains why Hamas has a superior and an extensive media arm than Fatah.
10. Favoritism is kept to minimum, or so it seams… Gaza is like the rest of Palestine and like the rest of the third world. An area where people count on friends and relatives to push their case on their behalf. Hamas has managed to stay above the fray by simply ignoring requests to play favorites. Obviously not all Hamas officials are saints, there is abuse, but anytime an abuse is reported people lose their jobs. I think this is largely due to religious convictions and to a lesser extent Hamas’ intentions to be different than Fatah. I had a young Fatah activist tell me about Fatah “In the past, they used hire women who do not have many work related experiences”, “they only need to show some cleavage and legs and they are hired Manager C level”, “Now, this does not fly with them” This is true to a certain degree, but I think now a mosque connection can help get you a job with Hamas.

To be fair, those accomplishments do much to make life better in Gaza, however, they do little to ease the brutal siege placed on Gaza. Hamas remains unable to govern effectively because they fail to secure food supplies for their population, and worse they feel to secure freedom of movement for an entire people. Weather Hamas agrees to form a unity government or not, this has to be seen in the next few weeks For now, I am hoping the people of Gaza will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, pun intended.

]]> http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/ten-things-hamas-got-right-in-gaza.html/feed 12 http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/7039.html http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/01/7039.html#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:18:24 +0000 Fayyad http://www.kabobfest.com/?p=7039 www.itisapartheid.tv

Israeli Apartheid Video Contest

Put your ideas and convictions on film!

itISapartheid.org in partnership with Stop the Wall announce the first international Israeli Apartheid Video Contest.

As part of the colonial conflict in Palestine, Israel has instituted a policy of apartheid that separates Palestinians from Israelis and Palestinians from each other, creating an oppressive and racially discriminatory system. It denies basic Palestinian rights to land, education, movement, and housing while devastating the economy, trying to undermine civil society, and forcing continuous displacement upon the majority of Palestinians.

You are invited to submit short [less than 5 minutes] videos on the theme of “Israeli Apartheid.”

Videos should reflect the nature, realities, and/or consequences of the apartheid policy in Israel, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora.

Click here to read more.

The contest is Co-Sponsored by: Badil, Code Pink, Friends of Sabeel North America, ICAHD-USA, and Unitarian-Universalists for Justice in the Middle East; AJJP Boston

Endorsers:  MECA, Lajee Center, Al-Rowwad Center, and Al-Rowwad USA, Boston Palestinian Film Festival,  ADC American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee Massachusetts and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

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