Cartoons About Gaza

Is Peace Out Of Reach?

Has peace in the Middle East become nothing more than a pipe dream?


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Rime Allaf on Media's Coverage of Gaza

BBC Refuse to Broadcast Gaza Emergency Fund Appeal

BBC director general Mark Thompson said he feared that broadcasting the appeal might compromise the BBC's impartiality.

The BBC's infamous more-balanced-than-thou stance strikes again.

When the ceasefire was announced and everyone started talking about humanitiarian crisis this and aid that, I agreed completely with all those who pointed out that it was as if Gaza had been hit by a natural disaster. All mention of the actual crisis, the offensive, the invasion, the attack, was obliterated, and all that was left was the aftermath of the real crisis, and its long lasting effects. It's as though half an equation has been erased. Forget about cause and effect, here there is only the effect.

Obama obviously, and expectedly, spoke of Israels sacrosanct need to defend herself, and spoke of the three dead Israelis before the over a thousand dead Palestinians, rounding off his meaningless speech with a brief one sentence postscript on the "suffering" in Gaza, in the by now familiar anonymous natural disaster style.

But I was mistaken. It is not as if Gaza had been hit by a natural disaster at all. Because if the over 1300 dead, over 5000 injured and over 20 000 displaced had been killed, injured or displaced as the result of an earthquake or a tsunami, I don't think the BBC would have quibbled over whether to broadcast an appeal for humanitarian aid for those still alive to receive it. I don't think they would then have refused to broadcast that appeal, providing the word "impartiality" as a reason, and slapping on a bandaid on the situation with the wildly ironic excuse that the aid might not get to the desperate people in Gaza anyway.

Had Gaza been hit by an earthquake, I think the BBC would have broadcast that appeal. But maybe I'm giving them too much credit here. Its a mistake I have made before.

Waltz with Bashir

Ari Folman's animated documentary Waltz with Bashir , which just won the won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, has been praised both for its aesthetic impact and for its message. The film revolves around a series of conversations between the director and veterans of the Lebanon 1982 war, focusing on the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

The words animated documentary almost seem like an oxymoron. With Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a film which has been compared to Waltz with Bashir, the animated style was carried over from the books, and was a visually effective, gripping way of narrating a memoir from a child’s point of view. Persepolis was however, more often referred to as an animated coming-of-age film, or an animated memoir, than a documentary about Iran.

Ari Folman’s film deals not with his memories but with his attempt to remember, and it is a documentary in the sense that it documents the testimonials of those who are “unable to forget”. Folman explained that his decision to use animation in this film allowed him to depict the dreams, memories, and hallucinations of traumatized soldiers with total freedom and without the limitations imposed by a budget.

The freedom afforded by animation — a realm where the prosaic standards of verisimilitude and the inconvenient laws of physics can be flouted at will — allows Folman to blend grimly literal images with surreal flights of fantasy, humor and horror.

But there is another, rather ironic aspect of the use of animation, as the film deals with the dilemma of representing atrocity in an age which audiences have become desensitized to “shocking images” and “disturbing footage”. Since reality can no longer be adequately conveyed through real images, Waltz with Bashir paradoxically inspires receptivity in viewers through the fictional medium of animation, using cartoons to jar viewers out of their comfort zone.

Animation has become more real than the real.

The documentary’s message is clearly anti-war, but Folman himself has pointed out that this is not a political documentary. For one thing, if it had dealt with this on the political level, it would have had to go beyond the borders of fragmented traumatic memories. It would have had to actually deal with the events of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, rather than portray it as flashes of horror in the minds of witnessing victimized soldiers.

I understand that the focus of this film was on the stories of the soldiers, on the trauma of war, on underlining the message that war is not a videogame, and that the film was scarcely intended to be a journalistic, objective account of war. But there are several points that nevertheless jump out at me, even just from the opening credits and the trailer. The broad condemnation of the horror of war in general is certainly praise-worthy and important but it seems to me it can be problematic when it strips specificity away from specific events. “The Lebanon Israel War” for example is a rather nice way of putting Israel’s invasion of and subsequent occupation of Lebanon. More importantly however, the film seems to echo the Israeli narrative: the Phalangists are represented as the murderers, while the Israeli soldiers take on the role of victims and witnesses – in fact, they are victims because they are witnesses.

Like the Kahan Commission, the director eventually seems to have reached the difficult conclusion that the Israeli military was “indirectly responsible”.

It is certainly true that the Phalangists were responsible for the actual killing. They were the murderers. But I have always found it difficult to understand how an ambivalent word like “indirect” can be applied to a situation where an army trains a militia, provides them with uniforms, army rations, and medical equipment, then unleashes them on a refugee camp and stands back to watch, providing military assistance as required.

The film ends with real footage of the massacre, perhaps Folman's way of acknowledging that imagination has its limits, and that even the most ambitious and serious work of art will come up short against the brutal facts of life.

Veolia Lost Stockholm Metro Contract

Yesterday morning, bleary-eyed passengers reading Stockholm City read this on the front page: The Promise - Trains Will Be On Time. The train I was waiting for was actually ten minutes late, but right then I could have cared less about the 3.8 million passengers daily in Hong Kong being on time 99% of the time, a statistic presented as evidence for MTR's reputation for punctuality.

All I care about is that the Hong Kong-based company will start operating Stockholm Metro on the 2nd of November - that they won, and that Veolia lost. I would hazard a guess that Veolia losing has more to do with MTR apparently being both "the cheaper choice", and fulfilling SL's "quality demands" better, whatever that means.

Whatever the reasons though, its the outcome that is important. In the City, Veolia's involvement in the railway to the illegal settlements was mentioned in one brief rather cryptic sentence: Veolia has in the past couple of weeks been criticised for building a railway on occupied land in Jerusalem.

But it was mentioned.

http://www.diakonia.se/sa/node.asp?node=2807

The Gaza Story on Obama Day

Now that there's a ceasefire, it appears the story from Gaza is as dead as...well, as dead as everyone who died there. On the day that Obama becomes President Obama, one thing western channels aren't talking about is a load of dead brown people.

But kudos to Al Jazeera English. Because while most of the world turns hastily away from the bloodbath in Gaza to the cheering crowds in Washington, and from destruction to celebration, Al Jazeera English's coverage of Obama's Inaugration has not hindered the continuation of their coverage of the war, and the aftermath of the three weeks of Israel's bombarment of Gaza.

Hamas Killed Palestinian Children To Make Israel Look Bad

Is this BBC? Maybe there's hope for them yet.

Like so many others before him, Mark Regev is very comfortable with saying that the deaths of 400 children will have been "worthwhile" if the state of Israel acheives its goals. That is, its worth it, this buisness of killing non-combatants for political gain otherwise known as state terrorism.

Reminds me of Albright's infamous words: The Price is Worth It.

Veolia: Railway to Settlements

The French company Veolia Transportation is building a railway across Jerusalem, spanning 8 lines and connecting the center of the city to the illegal settlements built on occupied Palestinian land, the same settlements that have continued to grow even as the meaningless, placating phrase "the dismantling of settlements" is thrown around like rice at a wedding.

Veolia has road and rail operations across the globe, and especially in Europe. In Sweden:

1. Veolia runs the Stockholm Metro contracted by the Stockholm County Council and three tram (Lidingöbanan, Nockebybanan and Tvärbanan) or local rail networks (Saltsjöbanan) in the city on behalf of SL.

2. It also runs the long distance trains from Gothenburg and Stockholm to northern Sweden, as well as several local city bus networks or interurban lines on contract to local authorities.

3. It also operates the Norrköping tramway.

Decision day on Veolia's bid to keep running the Stockholm Metro is supposedly today. Call me the eternal cynist, but somehow I don't think an online petition is going to cut it.

More on Veolia:

http://www.veolia-transport.se/tmpl/XStartPage____26702.aspx?epslanguage=ML

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5723.shtml

http://www.ism-sweden.org/page.php?category=0&id=497

http://www.newsdesk.se/pressroom/diakonia/pressrelease/view/sl-riskerar-ge-veolia-osunda-konkurrensfoerdelar-249782



More on Säg Nej till Veolia:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46052117334#/group.php?gid=46342184676

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46052117334

http://gaza-peace-n-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/01/boycott-veolia.html

Tahyyes Sums Up Obama Day

من النهاردة مافيش بوش....انا بوش....انا بوش

17/1 Demonstration

Post-Massacre Press Conference

What exactly are these people? And when I use the word people, I’m attempting to keep a civil tongue in my head in referring to the self-satisfied, pathetic, sorry excuses for human beings currently sitting shoulder to shoulder on a press conference table, all action and fast-paced sound-bites delivered decisively and at speed, to-the-point speeches featuring ever so many pleasing verbs. "Responding" verbally to what’s happened, now that what has happened is said to be over.

With Israel announcing it has achieved all it ever wanted and more, it seems that those who call themselves the world's leaders have finally been given the green light to begin patting each other’s backs in Sharm El Sheik - congratulating one another on having successfully impersonated blind-folded, paralyzed, lobotomized beauty contestants, harping on about world peace while Israel slaughtered a mere 1300 human beings in 23 days.

Of course in Lebanon it was 33 days. But there’s been little difference in terms of the response from “world leaders” and the “international community” - the same nauseating speeches were repeated in this post-massacre conference, speeches where the key words are “humanitarian disaster”, “crisis” “relief”, “aid” and “reconstruction”.

As Mouin Rabbani of Middle East Report said, not a single one of them even came close to mentioning the word occupation. Summing this whole conference up in one sentence, he pointed out that Gaza might look like it was hit by an earthquake, but this was not the result of a natural disaster. Not that you’d know it by listening to Disaster Zone Brown, Don't Bank on Me Moon and Blue-Eyed Little Abdullah.

Kaffiyeh Corners

Candles for Gaza

A candlelight vigil in Sergels Torg. There were quite a few people there, although the crowd was nowhere near the thousands who attended last week's demonstration. But there were enough candles to write the word GAZA in the center of a heart, since Gaza In Our Hearts was the slogan under which the protests have been organised. The next big demonstration is tomorrow, and hopefully will draw even more people than last time. The number of dead is at 1144 now and still climbing by the hour. Yesterday there were over 70 killed in less than 24 hours. Almost a hundred lives obliterated in just one day. With a self-satisfaction and a smugness that is truly staggering, Mark Regev and all the other Israeli spokespeople, still casting themselves as the victims, brush aside the terrorism involved in the deaths of these half a thousand children, the deaths one thousand one hundred people who had no possibilty of escape, and talk instead about the supposed terrorist inclinations of the Red Crescent, or the rockets apparently hidden in sacks of flour in food distribution centers, or the militants in UN schools. And still, no one will point out the glaring contradition when Israel shrugs off the deaths of half a thousand children with the words "Teghogh" and "Teghoghism".