Film Series Looks at Palestinian Life Under Occupation
This is a press release from Shine a Light on Palestine with Humboldt for Palestine:
Few people in this country knew that Palestine existed. The dominant narrative has been about Israel and the need for a homeland. We’re a small group, Shine a Light on Palestine, that wants to share the little known reality that Palestinians have lived under since 1948. Each documentary addresses a different angle: When Olive Trees Weep is a deep dive into the trauma, loss & resilience of the Palestinian people. Roadmap highlights the frighteningly similar laws and tools used by Israel and the apartheid-era South Africa conflict tracing the future of one conflict from the past of another. 1948 through riveting and moving personal recollections of both Palestinians and Israelis, reveals the shocking events of the most pivotal year in the most controversial conflict in the world. All three films are narrated by and/or include perspectives of both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Panel discussion following the films.
Regardless of how much we know about the history and current crisis and whatever one’s allegiances are, each documentary gives a fuller understanding of a reality that centers Palestinians’ experiences as observed by both Jews and Palestinians. This is a reality and a voice we have not had easy access to until now.
The first film, When Olive Trees Weep was produced in 2024, Directors Maurizio & Zaya Benazzo. “We follow, among others, Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish, grassroots activist Ahed Tamimi and Israeli journalist Amira Hass. We also witness Dr. Gabor Mate offer trauma-healing work to a group of women who were tortured in Israeli prisons” (https://whereolivetreesweep.com).
When Olive Trees Weep August 28
Roadmap to Apartheid, September 25
1948: Creatiion & Catastrophe, October 23Time: 7 p.m. Admission $5-15
Where: Minor Theater, 1001, H Street, Arcata
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Finally, more than 70 years after many Palestinians were dispossessed of their ancestral homes by a concerted campaign of terror, the truth is beginning to take hold.
And the ethnic cleansing was followed up by the illegal occupation of the West Bank and occupation and blockade of Gaza dating to 1967.
Israel is truly an apartheid state founded on terror and sustained by the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians.
Or not. Looking at more than one side would show that, while Israel feels it can’t live with Arab Palestinians, neither are Arab Palestinians anything but ruthlessly apartheid about others too every opportunities they had. The minute oppression on one side is given slack, it ends up with the other taking it as an opportunity for retaliatory violence.
The deep problem for the US is that ProPalestinians can’t seem to address the valid fears of Americans Jews that they are not a reincarnation of old antisemitism that has caused much damage for them. Painting swastikas or throwing red paint on the homes of even avowed zionists, much less ordinary students or businesses , confirms their fears. The one sided hate for Palestinians is to many Jews just the same old thing.
No American should be so hateful out of respect for their fellow Americans. And so far comment here have been hateful despite the occasional acknowledgement that Palestinians have blood on their hands as well. A sophisticated of a brief mention of how hateful Mama’s is without acknowledging that most Palestinians support the violence of 10/7. And most western ProPalestinians are way too ready to excuse by not actually examining the long history from both sides.
It’s precisely the examination of the long history of the conflict that confirms the plight of the Palestinians is the direct result of a deliberate campaign of terror by the Zionist founders of Israel.
Your attempts to equate Palestinian resistance with Israeli terrorism makes as much sense as saying a person acting in self defense is equally guilty as the person attacking them.
And in seems you’re squarely in the camp that equates any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and hate speech.
Just as South Africa reached a point where it could no longer sustain its apartheid regime, so too may Israel.
Take a trip to South Africa. See how the democracy runs there.
No you are wrong. The six days war was overwhelmingly motivated by religious intolerance on the part of Arab Muslims.
Conditions in the region that the Romans named Palestine can be attributed to endless numbers of terrorist attacks committed over decades against Israel.
The “camp” you say I belong to is not what you say it is- that any criticism of Israel is equates with antisemitism. Israel is not an innocent in this issue. Far from it. The problem comes with the ProPalestinian camp refusing to acknowledge that it is not only Israel that creates violence. Palestinians do too. And others who facilitate it. That so many Muslim countries having used Palestine to wage their own proxy wars against each other and/or the West, while the old Soviet Union (now Russia) and US did the same, that it is impossible to address the issues that are only between Israel and Arab Palestinians.
The real “camp” I belong is that the same entities are creating the ProPalestinian protest movement here in the US but have added another proxy player into the cause- the domestic left versus right wing politics . None are interested in resolving Palestinian issues but on the contrary keeping them going for use in their own agendas. The self defense claim cuts both ways. If ProPalestinian protesters can not define their cause without dragging their own old fashioned antisemitism along with them, then yes, that is a problem.
As usual, your comments refuse to acknowledge the root causes of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression, which are grounded in the systematic campaign of terror that led to the formation of Israel and the displacement and oppression of Palestinians that continues to this day.
No one is ignoring Palestinian violence but the Israeli lobby is ignoring, minimizing and denying the 75+ years of Israeli terror attacks and oppression that preceded the horrific attacks of 10/7.
What’s unsettling to you is that an increasing number of people are becoming aware of the many myths embodied in the Israel creation story, beginning with the canard embodied in the central creation myth: “A land without a people for a people without a land.”
This conveniently ignores that millions of Arab Palestinians had lived on the land in question for generations and that they were driven from the land by a deliberate campaign of terror.
Many hundreds were murdered or raped, their villages destroyed, and hundreds of thousands driven from the land in a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing.
But the Palestinians are supposed to forget all that and ignore their ongoing displacement and oppression.
Your premise that “few people in this country knew Palestine existed,’ is absurd. Oh brother. Now you’ll school us in history that you just learned. Just nope.
yeppers ;.)
Few people in which country knew that Palestine existed? They certainly can’t be talking about the United States?!
Free the Ottoman Empire.
I would like to do everything I can to try to stop ringing this genocide. Please include me in any events or gatherings.