DOCSLIB.ORG

Lyd in Exile

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Lyd in Exile LYD The story of a city thatIN once connected EXILE Palestine to the world. Contents Log Line Synopsis Treatment Director Statements Still Frames Budget Production Stage Financial Plan Production Company Portfolio Director and Producer Bio Filmographies. Director and Producer Portraits Links to Project and Select Previous Work Technical Details and Crew Title: Lyd In Exile Genre: Creative Documentary Runtime: 75 minutes DCP Color HD 1920 x 1080 and 4k Country: US and Palestine Producers: Rami Younis and Fivel Rothberg Executive Producer: Roger Waters Associate Producers: Reda Sabassi and Nancy Kallow Directors: Sarah Friedland and Rami Younis Contact http://www.lydinexile.com/ Perinspire LLC By Sarah Friedland, Rami Younis, and Fivel Rothberg Contact : [email protected], Sarah Friedland: +1-917-859-8328, [email protected] Fivel Rothberg: +1-215-990-4442, [email protected] Rami Younis: +972-54-320-1894, [email protected], Logline The story of a city that once connected Palestine to the world. Synopsis There are moments when time abruptly stops, when daily routines are forever interrupted and the order they maintain is turned upside down. Over the course of two days in July of 1948, the city of Lyd, in what was then Palestine, experienced one of these moments. When Palmach soldiers (a Zionist militia) invaded the city, they found it swollen with refugees who had already been forced to leave their towns and villages in order to make way for the new State of Israel. Lyd was one of the few remaining Palestinian strongholds. However, after two days of ferce resistance, the Palmach persevered and the fghting culminated in the massacre of hundreds of civilians and the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the city. Today, Lyd is called Lod in Hebrew and it is known for two things: it sits beside Israel’s international airport and it is the epicenter of Israel’s drug trade. It is also the site of contemporary displacement. New waves of religious Jewish settlers - supported by the State of Israel - have moved in to resettle the city, building new state-subsidised Jewish-only neighborhoods. The mayor, a Trump-like bombastic fgure, has openly proclaimed that the far-right Jewish groups “saved the city” from the Arab threat. This wave of ethnic cleansing and apartheid began in 1948, but continues today as an ongoing Nakba, or catastrophe. This feature length hybrid documentary/fction flm uses multiple voices and stylistic approaches to question the construction of history and the shape of the present. Observational, essayistic and hybrid, the flm combines vérité, drone footage, archival and testimonies to create a visually striking storyscape. By weaving together different character-based vignettes rooted in Lyd, the flm creates a vivid portrait of a splintered community: Palestinian elders remember the events that turned their world upside down; Zionist soldiers return to the scene of the massacre and expulsion they committed in 1948; Jewish settlers re-shape Lyd in their own image, burying Palestinian archaeological sites in the process; a young educator fghts to preserve Palestinian identity for the next generation; all the while, Lydian refugees bide time in a refugee camp for 70 years. Elias Khoury wrote, “The specifcity of the Palestinian Nakba...is a continuous tragedy without borders in space and time.” Lyd in Exile will explore how multiple pasts and presents convene in one city with an open wound that stretches far beyond its borders. But the flm also asks the audience to consider an alternative — or “What if?” — narrative. What if this moment never occured? What would an alternate present, not scorched by this foundational violence, look like? In collaboration with the flm’s characters and visual effects supervisor Suhel Nafar, we will develop fctional scenes that depict an alternate present that never experienced the massacre and expulsion. These scenes will be woven into the flm like surreal punctuation marks. Street names will change, houses will be re-built and people will have never been expelled. Treatment Present: Your blood has changed? The flm opens with vérité footage of present day Lyd, showing the mix of people who live in the city: Palestinians, Jewish Israelis and immigrants from all over the world. Residents talk to camera about how they view the city. A Palestinian baker talks about discrimination in Lyd; a man with a huge star of David around his neck shares that he was one of the frst people in the city in 1948; a group of men explain that their families have been racing horses in Lyd for hundreds of years, and even though the city tries to prevent them from doing it, they will never stop. We enter the house of Manar Memeh, a 34 year old Palestinian educator from Lyd, as she prepares to leave for work. Her father picks grapes from the vine that has been in his family for generations as her niece cries, not wanting to be seperated from Manar for even a few hours. Manar comes from a family of native “Lyddians,” Palestinians who remained in Lyd after the Nakba. Through education, she tries to maintain Palestinian identity and narrative — a task that, we learn through her character, is almost impossible. We see Manar in her daily life, socializing with her Palestinian friends from the city, with her family members, and in her work at an Israeli NGO that supports young school students who excel in various felds. The NGO has four branches in Lyd: three for Jewish Israelis, and one for Palestinians. Manar’s employer sometimes resists her messages or methods, but they are not the only ones questioning her work. Her family, who raised her to be afraid of the painful past, also pushes back against her pedagogy, as do the young children she works with, who are paralyzed by confusion. During a vérité scene of an identity workshop that Manar conducts with Palestinian children in Lyd, we see that these eight year-olds lack knowledge of their history, narrative and identity. One boy says, “My blood was Palestinian but now it is Israeli.” To which Manar teasingly replies, “What? Your blood has changed?” Another child asks, “Why did the Jews choose this country?” After the workshops is over, Manar breaks down with her co-workers, she exclaims, “What will happen in ten years, there will be no Palestinians here.” The intensity of this scene is broken by slow shots of the pre-1948 Palestinian buildings that remain in Lyd. The facades are crumbling and weeds grow through the windows. Slowly, through textured animation, the structures start to rebuild themselves. Stone by stone the landscape changes and modern buildings crop up and integrate themselves with the historic structures, in a way that speaks to both progress and historic preservation. In this fantastical scene, we witness a different Lyd come into being. The scene fades out and we are back in reality. We fade up on towering glass and concrete buildings. At twenty stories, these immense structures dwarf the surrounding neighborhoods. Their facade is pristine, with small suggestions of life dotting the surface –– fower pots, israeli fags and wind chimes. The clothing of the residents reveal that they are Orthodox Jews. Children take scooters into the gated playground and men and women stroll around the grounds. Benny Printz, a spokesperson for this group, explains to camera that the neighborhood is called Ramat Elyashiv and that they are the Garin Torani, a group of Orthodox Jewish people who came to Lod decades ago. As we see more images of daily life, he explains that Garin translates to “seed” in English and the Garin Torani is one of many “seed communities” that exist in Israel. Most of the Garin have chosen to live in the North or in the South, in majority Arab neighborhoods. He continues to say that the community was started in Lod “in an effort to “re-invigorate the zionist ethos the country was founded with.” Adjacent to the Ramat Elyashiv settlement is the old Palestinian burial ground. We learn from Maha Nakib, a former Palestinian city councilwoman in Lyd, that Ramat Elyashiv was built on top of the Palestinian neighborhood that surrounded their cemetery. She explains how the city sold the Garin Torani the land for a dollar and removed the Palestinians who were living there in order to make way for the construction of the new neighborhood. In the offce of the municipality, we meet Aharon Atias, the General Director of the Municipality of Lod, as he monitors various parts of the city through security cameras. He shares with us that there is anoth- er neighborhood in Lyd that is being earmarked for “Jewish only” housing for Ultra Orthodox religious groups. We visit the site and, through drone footage, see that it takes up multiple hectares of the city. Back in the municipal building we meet Yair Revivo, the current mayor. Throughout his interview, he talks positively about “coexistence” between Jews and Arabs in the city. He pushes a marketing campaign that calls Lod “mosaic city,” where Arabs and immigrants serve to add local color. However his true self is revealed when, two days later, we see him barge into Dahmash Mosque to interrupt the Muslim holiday prayer. He physically confronts Palestinian worshipers because their call to prayer and religious chanting are “too loud,” shouting at the congregants to “stop making so much noise.” Outside of the mosque, etched into its facade, three plaques read: “The mosque was closed as a result of the monstrous massacre perpetrated by the occupation forces in 1948, and was partially reopened in 1996.” The camera then focuses on a sign in Hebrew pro- claiming the area in front of the mosque “Palmach Square,” after the Israeli soldiers who committed the massacre.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Disappearing Palestine: Israels Experiments in Human Despair Free
    FREE DISAPPEARING PALESTINE: ISRAELS EXPERIMENTS IN HUMAN DESPAIR PDF Jonathan Cook | 304 pages | 11 Nov 2008 | ZED BOOKS LTD | 9781848130319 | English | London, United Kingdom Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair In Disappearing Palestine, Jonathan examines the enduring themes of Zionist colonisation of Palestine, arguing that Israel has developed and refined policies to disperse, imprison and impoverish the Palestinian people in a relentless effort to destroy them as a nation. The goal of these ever more sophisticated systems of curfews, checkpoints, walls, permits and land grabs is the disappearance of Palestine. This is an impressive and timely book written by one of the most knowledgeable writers on the Palestine-Israel conflict. Its insight into the devastating impact of Zionist settler colonialism and its account of the current reality on the ground are unique. A must read for those seeking peace and justice in the Middle East. The book provides an unusual depth of evidence and sharp analysis, and a devastating indictment of Zionism. It is a penetrating piece of scholarship and a gem of easy readability. For orders, email sutour link. To join discussions about my work, please visit my Facebook or Twitter page. Receive email notification of new website posts. Disappearing Palestine: Israels Experiments in Human Despair on the blog for blog notifications. Please check your inbox or spam folder now to confirm your subscription. Media Criticism. Published by: Zed Books, October Description In Disappearing Palestine, Jonathan examines the enduring themes of Zionist colonisation of Palestine, arguing that Israel has developed and refined policies to disperse, imprison and impoverish the Palestinian people in a relentless effort to destroy them as a nation.
    [Show full text]
  • A Threshold Crossed Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution WATCH
    HUMAN RIGHTS A Threshold Crossed Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution WATCH A Threshold Crossed Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution Copyright © 2021 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-62313-900-1 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people worldwide. We scrupulously investigate abuses, expose the facts widely, and pressure those with power to respect rights and secure justice. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. Human Rights Watch is an international organization with staff in more than 40 countries, and offices in Amsterdam, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Goma, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Tunis, Washington DC, and Zurich. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.hrw.org APRIL 2021 ISBN: 978-1-62313-900-1 A Threshold Crossed Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution Map .................................................................................................................................. i Summary ......................................................................................................................... 2 Definitions of Apartheid and Persecution .................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • There Is No “Status Quo” Drivers of Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
    THERE IS NO “STATUS QUO” DRIVERS OF VIOLENCE IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT NATHAN STOCK AUGUST 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher. Copyright © 2019 The Middle East Institute The Middle East Institute 1763 N Street NW Washington, D.C. 20036 Follow MEI: @MiddleEastInst /MiddleEastInstitute There is No “Status Quo” Drivers of Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Nathan Stock iv | About the author nathan stock Nathan Stock is a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute. Prior to joining MEI he spent nine years working for former President Carter’s organization, The Carter Center. He served in the Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, out of Atlanta, GA, before moving to Jerusalem to run the Center’s Israel-Palestine Field Office. Stock led Carter Center efforts to facilitate the reunification of the Palestinian political system and to assert Palestinian sovereignty via international fora. He designed and managed projects targeting the Fatah-Hamas conflict, and implemented programming to monitor and advance political solutions to the Syrian civil war. Prior to joining the Center, Stock worked in Afghanistan on a USAID-funded grant to strengthen local civil society organizations. During the Al-Aqsa Intifada, he lived in the Gaza Strip, working with a Palestinian NGO to design and fundraise for conflict resolution programs targeting the Palestinian community.
    [Show full text]
  • Kairos Palestine Evangelical Movement Article
    Kairos Palestine: 10th Anniversary Conference Developments within the evangelical movement in relation to Palestine during the last ten years Introduction Donald Trump has probably accomplished more for Israel in his short time in office than any other US President since Harry Truman unilaterally recognised the State of Israel in May 1948. President Truman did so, going against the advice of his State Department, US Mission to the United Nations and ambassadors in the Middle East. President Trump seems to have continued that unilateral, idiosyncratic tradition but with gusto. In December 2017, for example, reversing decades of US foreign policy, President Trump announced the United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. On 14 May 2018 - the 70th anniversary of Israel's founding - the US officially moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Also, in May 2018, President Trump announced that he was unilaterally withdrawing the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or Iran nuclear deal. In August 2018, the Trump administration announced it was going to cut all funding to UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, alleging its business model and fiscal practices were of an "irredeemably flawed operation". Then in February 2019, the US Senate passed a bill allowing state governments to refuse to do business with companies that boycott Israel. A month later, in March 2019, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, President Trump declared that the US unilaterally recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights.
    [Show full text]
  • Rise of the Jewish State Despite the Mythical Narrative Promoted Today, Israel’S Victory on the Battlefield Was Rarely in Doubt
    Disappearing Palestine well-publicized massacres of Palestinians, again under Britain’s watch, and most notoriously at the village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem, only added to the mass exodus.42 As the campaign of expul- sion intensified, Ben-Gurion saw the advantages of widening the war to the main area of the Galilee, where some 100,000 Palestinians, as well as tens of thousands of refugees from the fighting, were living on land that had been assigned to the Palestinian state under the Parti- tion Plan. ‘Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke,’ he announced.43 Rise of the Jewish State Despite the mythical narrative promoted today, Israel’s victory on the battlefield was rarely in doubt. During the first stage of the offensive, before Britain’s departure, Jewish forces were in effect fighting a civil war against disorganized Palestinian militias, which had not recovered from their crushing by the British army during the three-year Arab Revolt a decade earlier. In the next stage, after Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the Arab armies entered the war but were unprepared and lacked coordination, as the Israeli his- torian Shlomo Ben-Ami notes. The Arab leaders were less concerned about defending the Palestinians’ national rights than ‘establishing their own territorial claims or thwarting those of their rivals in the Arab coalition’.44 Neither the Palestinian militias nor the Arab armies were a match for the Israeli forces: in fact, they were outnumbered throughout the fighting.
    [Show full text]
  • The Last Stand of Julian Assange
    ExColdTypetraIssue 213 / September 2020 The last stand of Julian Assange By Jonathan Cook Art:Antoniowww.flickr.comSegoviaMarín / ColdType Extra September 2020 For years, journalists cheered the abuse of Julian Assange. Now they’ve paved his path to a US gulag By JONATHAN COOK of character assassination against Assange by west- ern governments and a compliant media, the sole ourt hearings in Britain over the justification for this relentless attack on press free- US administration’s extradition case dom is that a 49-year-old man published documents against Julian Assange begin in ear- exposing US war crimes. That is the reason – and the nest on September 7. The decade-long only reason – that the US is seeking his extradition saga that brought us to this point and why he has been languishing in what amounts should appall anyone who cares about to solitary confinement in Belmarsh high-security our increasingly fragile freedoms. prison during the Covid-19 pandemic. His lawyers’ A journalist and publisher has been deprived of his appeals for bail have been refused. Cliberty for 10 years. According to UN experts, he has While the press corps abandoned Assange a dec- been arbitrarily detained and tortured for much of ade ago, echoing official talking points that pilloried that time through intense physical confinement and him over toilet hygiene and his treatment of his cat, endless psychological pressure. He has been bugged Assange is today exactly where he originally pre- and spied on by the CIA during his time in political dicted he would be if western governments got their asylum, in Ecuador’s London embassy, in ways that way.
    [Show full text]
  • The Glass Wall
    Holy Land Studies Vol 5 No 2 November 2006 233 The Glass Wall Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (London: Pluto Press, 2006). Paperback. Pp. 222. Starting an MA course after spending a summer in a Galilee village with a family living under demolition order, I was eager to learn more about the situation for Palestinians living in Israel. However, I would soon discover that the preferred label was ‘Israeli-Arabs’, and that their predicament would be discussed not as a central part of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but boxed away in the ‘Minorities’ seminar at the end of the course. It is a pity that Jonathan Cook’s new book was not available to pass around the department. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State considers Israel’s attitude towards a million Palestinians living within 1948 borders, but rejects the traditional approach of merely detailing legal, social and educational discrimination. Instead, the author uses detailed analysis of ‘the conduct of the majority towards the minority’, to draw far broader conclusions about the direction of the Middle East conflict and the nature of the Jewish state itself. Far from being a side issue, Cook argues that a study of the situation for Palestinians inside Israel is integral to a wider understanding of the conflict. Far from being a ‘passing symptom’ of the conflict, Israel’s opposition to creating a truly democratic state, which would overcome discrimination against Arab citizens, is conceived as ‘part of the root cause’. The book opens by introducing the metaphor of a ‘glass wall’ to symbolise Israel’s success in separating its Palestinian citizens from the Jewish majority, while at the same time convincing the world, and Israeli citizens, that a ‘Jewish democratic’ state is open to everyone.
    [Show full text]
  • The Occupation of the American Mind
    THE OCCUPATION OF THE AMERICAN MIND ISRAEL’S PUBLIC RELATIONS WAR IN THE UNITED STATES A DOCUMENTARY NARRATED BY ROGER WATERS “It doesn’t matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.” —Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel Over the past few years, Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world—except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S. Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor. From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies. ISRAEL’S PUBLIC THE OCCUPATION OF RELATIONS WAR IN THE AMERICAN MIND THE UNITED STATES FILMMAKERS' STATEMENT Over the past 25 years, the Media Education Foundation has produced dozens of educational films that examine how mainstream media narratives shape our understanding of the world. A number of these films have focused explicitly on mainstream news coverage of crucial policy issues.
    [Show full text]
  • De Ning Israel As a “Jewish State”
    Dening Israel as a “Jewish State” By Edward C. Corrigan - May 6, 2018 There are many voices in Israel who are critical of Zionism and of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.[1] The below comments are from the President of Israel Reuven Rivlin on systemic racism in Israeli society and published in The Times of Israel.[2] Israel’s president fills a largely ceremonial role — meeting with foreign dignitaries, representing the government at state funerals and other official gatherings. But the office’s new occupant has embraced a challenge not inherent to the job: curbing what he sees as an epidemic of anti-Arab racism. “Israeli society is sick, and it is our duty to treat this disease,” Reuven Rivlin, 75, told a group of Israeli academics this week.[3] Here is another comment from the award winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Now Israel is discovering that it’s no longer the center of attention as it always was before, and that the fate of its kidnapping victims no longer stops the world in its tracks, not even in the United States. The world is sick of Israel and its insanities. Unfortunately, the world has also lost interest in what happens here. When Israel was a more just country, the world identified with its victims. It continued to do so even when Israel became less just. But now, when Israeli rejectionism is hitting new heights and its oppression of the Palestinians is returning to what it was during the very worst periods, the world has started getting tired of it all……[4] President Rivlin is not the only senior Israeli politician that has spoken out about racism against Arabs in Israel.
    [Show full text]
  • Religious Freedom in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory: Selected Issues a Report to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
    Religious Freedom in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory: Selected Issues A Report to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Palestine Works Editors Omar Yousef Shehabi Dr. Sara Husseini Hady Matar Emma Borden Contributors Jessica Boulet Dario D'Ambrosio Lojain al-Mouallimi John Pino Helena van Roosbroeck Andrew Udelsman Licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Copyright © 2016 Palestine Works All rights reserved. ISBN: 0692688242 ISBN-13: 978-0692688243 Published by Palestine Works Inc. 1875 Connecticut Avenue NW, 10th Floor Washington, District of Columbia 20009 United States of America PALESTINE WORKS Palestine Works is a U.S.-based §501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2012 to promote Palestinian human rights and human development. Our vision is a Palestinian society that can enjoy the improved prospects and economic, social and political benefits of a strong economy, one powered by the development and deployment of Palestinian human capital. Our mission is to help realize this vision by engaging, developing and harnessing the expertise of young professionals through the creation of high-impact knowledge exchange opportunities, including internships, legal advocacy projects, conferences, publications and networking. CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Part One: Extending Ethnoreligious Control over Mandatory Palestine 2 Ethnoreligious Citizenship in the Israeli Control System 15 3 Maximalist Jewish Claims to
    [Show full text]
  • The Link Catalog
    The Link Catalog For “Clickable” Access to All Archived Issues Updated with Each New Issue Americans for Middle East Understanding 475 Riverside Drive, Room 245, New York, NY 10115-0245 ■ Tele: 212-870-2053 ■ Email: [email protected] ■ www.ameu.org 2021, Volume 54 Issue 1: The Decolonizing of Palestine Towards a One-State Solution, Jeff Halper Author Jeff Halper immigrated to Israel in 1973, where he taught anthropology at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities. In 1997, he co-founded the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. This is his fifth feature article for The Link. His third, in 2012, concluded that the Two-State Solution was dead; his fourth, last year, documented the influence of the Israeli military on U.S. police training. This present article is based on his forthcoming book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. To order his book, please go to the publisher’s website: www.plutobooks.com. While Jeff Halper is a founding member of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), he wants to make it clear that this article is his analysis, and that it reflects in good faith the views and intentions of his comrades. In 2006, Jeff Halper was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Issue 2: How Long Will Israel Get Away With It?, Haim Bresheeth-Zabner A former officer in the Israeli army takes a critical look at the Israel Defense Forces and asks how long will this colonial state get away with it? Issue 3: On A RANT, Sam Bahour The dictionary describes rant as a noisy jollification. If you've never been on one, now's a good time to start.
    [Show full text]
  • Jonathan Cook. 2008. Disappearing Palestine: Israel’S Experiments in Human Despair
    REVIEWS 161 Jonathan Cook. 2008. Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair. London & New York: Zed Books. 294 pp. What will become of the millions of Palestinians without Palestine? Dispossessed of their land in 1948, subjected to continuing illegal occupation since 1967, and sold into accepting the lies of a ludicrous unilateral disengagement since 2005, the Palestinians are losing—or had lost—their homeland in a combination of deceit, bad faith, and outright policy to have them evicted, expelled, or even erased from the face of the earth to secure a land for the Jews and Jews only. Jonathan Cook, in this persuasive book, provides the proper context on how to view the current impasse between Palestinians and Israelis. Cook is also able to demonstrate how the Israeli party, instead of bringing the conflict into its resolution, actually instigated what had been misleadingly perceived as “terrorism” by Hamas to deflect the attention of the international community from the real reasons they are resisting the bogus offer of peace and sovereignty by Israel. Cook, a British journalist living in Nazareth, had written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a number of international publications, Arab newspapers and magazines, and is the author of two other books on the same topic. Awarded the 2010 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize in Journalism, Cook is noted for his ability to sift the lies in official propaganda and reveal the truth in his analysis of the Middle East conflict. This book is a firm testimony that journalism, for it to be a liberating tool in the quest for what is right and good, must not sacrifice the truth for the sake of mere reporting and keeping one’s career.
    [Show full text]