Human Rights Arts & Film Festival
Five Broken Cameras
Tuesday, 22 May 2012, 8:30 pm
ACMI Cinemas
Australian Premiere
Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi / Palestine/Israel/France/The Netherlands / 2011 / Doc. / 90 min / Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles
Sundance Film Festival 2012, Directing Award for World Documentary
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2011, Special Jury Award and Audience Award
In 2005, Israeli authorities began constructing a separation barrier on contested land near the town of Bil’in in the West Bank. Emad, a Palestinian villager with a hand-held camera, recorded the conflict: six years, and five cameras. With each period he films, he is able to document the unlawful brutality inflicted against Palestinians protesting the wall, whilst capturing the enduring hope held by his community against the odds. Emad’s cameras bear witness in this very personal film, where peaceful resistance is pushed to the limit.
Source: Human Rights Arts and Film Festival
11th grade Jewish boy wins Martin Luther King writing award
CMU Announces Winners of 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Awards
Awards Program Encourages High School and College Students To Personally Examine Issues of Race
First Place (Tie)
Fighting a Forbidden Battle: How I Stopped Covering Up for a Hidden Wrong
Jesse Lieberfeld
11th grade, Winchester Thurston
I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world—and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence, and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering.
Read more
BBC defends decision to censor the word “Palestine”
The broadcaster claims that allowing the lyric “free Palestine” would have comprised impartiality.
In a ruling on 31 January, the BBC Trust defended its decision to censor the word “Palestine” from a freestyle by rapper Mic Righteous on 1xtra in February last year. 3:00 minutes into the performance, he rapped:
“I still have the same beliefs
I can scream Free Palestine,
Die for my pride still pray for peace,
Still burn a fed for the brutality
They spread over the world.”
BBC production staff covered up the word “Palestine” with the sound of broken glass. The censored version was also aired in April. Responding to the original complaints, the BBC said that “Mic Righteous was expressing a political viewpoint which, if it had been aired in isolation, would have compromised impartiality.” Read more
Why is “terror expert” attacking US solidarity groups?
A concerted effort is underway in the US to silence critics of the Israeli occupation and US aid to Israel.
Discredited journalist Steven Emerson, who traded in a career with national news outlets for the his Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), is trying to entangle an American non-profit organization in a shroud of secretive conspiracy theories intent on branding it a “supporter of terrorism.”
Emerson has crowned himself the “expert” on terrorism through his production of scurrilous blog posts and videos that he tries to pass off as credible reports. Now he’s targeting the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the organization for which this writer works, and by extension, Students for Justice in Palestine.
After students convened their national SJP conference in October 2011, Emerson posted an article on his blog, calling SJP a “radical student organization” (“SJP’s ‘Dialogue’ Goes Nowhere”) The accompanying graphic shows a large iceberg labelled with SJP at the top connected to AMP, which is shown lurking under the surface with the bulk of the iceberg. Read more
Confronting intimidation, working for justice in Palestine
If we had a wish list for 2012 as Palestinians and friends of Palestine, one of the top items ought to be our hope that we can translate the dramatic shift in recent years in world public opinion into political action against Israeli policies on the ground.
We know why this has not yet materialized: the political, intellectual and cultural elites of the West cower whenever they even contemplate acting according to their own consciences as well as the wishes of their societies.
This last year was particularly illuminating for me in that respect. I encountered that timidity at every station in the many trips I took for the cause I believe in. And these personal experiences were accentuated by the more general examples of how governments and institutions caved in under intimidation from Israel and pro-Zionist Jewish organizations. Read more
Solidarity with Palestinian Freedom Riders
On November 15th, Palestinian activists boarded segregated Israeli settler public transport headed to occupied East Jerusalem in an historic act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The six Freedom Riders — Fadi Quran, Nadeem Al-Sharbate, Badee Dwak, Huwaida Arraf, Basel Al-Araj and Mazin Qumsiyeh — chose to board a bus that serves Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank on it’s way to Occupied East Jerusalem, wearing kuffiyehs (Palestinian scarfs) and t-shirts reading ‘Justice’, ‘Freedom’, and ‘We Shall Overcome’.
They took this bold action to expose the racism and policies of segregation that pervade every aspect of life in occupied Palestine. To send the message to the world that separate is not equal. Not in the United States and not in Israel or Palestine. They also wanted to bring attention to the role of Israeli and international companies, such as Egged and Veolia, who operate these segreated bus lines, in perpetuating and profiting from the occupation.