One week ago, a documentary film literally from within the invasion of Gaza debuted at the 13th annual Newport Beach Film Festival in California. The Festival announced its award winners on Friday. The War Around Us proudly earned the Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary.
This is amazing news for two main reasons. First, aside from the fact that this is a major achievement, the film brought one of humanity’s greatest injustices to the big screen, a feat much greater than any award a documentary can ever earn. It brought war and its associated chaos to an American public that is so unaccustomed to experiencing the day to day realities of foreign invasion. Second, the fact that the film won such a prestigious award indicates that it was received well, that it was produced with quality, that it ultimately got its point across.
The film documents the experiences of the only two foreign journalists who were able to cover Israel’s twenty-two day assault on the Gaza Strip. It hasn’t yet been released to the public but I encourage you to visit the website and sign up for updates. I know I’ll be looking forward to the day when the film is distributed through DVD. A trailer is provided below.
Sami Kishawi
The right to self-defense is reserved for Israel only. After all, Obama’s administration, with a stamp of approval from Israel’s government, has gone to great lengths to avoid recognizing the Palestinian right to self-defense. It is a twisted world when the occupier is seen as the defenseless victim and the occupied is sanctioned for simply refusing to accept inequity.
Five silly StandWithUs tweets
Whoever is behind StandWithUs’s Twitter account made my evening. Thanks for the laughs. Here are five of some of StandWithUs’s expert tweeter’s latest tweets.
The funny thing about this tweet is its comma placement. It reads as if it were a message signed, sincerely of course, by Hamas. Clearly, StandWithUs’s expert tweeter is not a grammarian. But, who, am, I, to, judge?
Update: StandWithUs never responded to my tweet asking them to correct me if I was wrong in saying that Israel controls Gaza’s air space, two land borders, and one sea border, while also negotiating control with Egypt over its fourth border. Instead, its expert tweeter told me that I’m bad at English and then gave me the “professionalism” talk.
#fact#israelunderfire“Actually, that’s exactly what it is. Since the structure is apparently mostly made of fencing, common sense says that there are gaps and spaces wide enough to let air in. So, special thanks to StandWithUs for the air circulation. But if the group is really that much of a stickler for terminology, “fresh air prison” might work just as well. Also, as a side note, how did StandWithUs manage to throw in such a dramatic hashtag?
#Israel is the only country that entered the 21st century with a net gain in trees – in land that is primarily desert!“Well, allow me to give StandWithUs another special thanks for making the desert bloom. I wonder if StandWithUs knows that deserts are natural biomes, that they do not represent empty voids of wasted territory waiting patiently for someone to give it a tree or two. I also wonder if StandWithUs is ever going to publish statistics about the number of trees Israel has uprooted, particularly those belonging to Palestinian farmers and landowners. Maybe “do your research” isn’t part of the job description for StandWithUs’s expert tweeter. [Read more...]