Palestinian-American director Hind Shoufani tells MEMO about her new documentary


Artist, director and poet Hind Shoufani, 14 October 2017 [Ammar Abd Rabbo]

Naima Morelli
naimamorelli

December 16, 2020 

Artist, director and poet Hind Shoufani insists that her Palestinian-ness is a political act. "It is a choice to be on this side of history," she tells me, "whether we triumph or not, whether I carry some piece of identification paper with blue colours on it, or green colours on it, or rainbow glitter tie-dye on it."

Born in the Palestinian diaspora in Sidon in 1978 to Palestinian parents, both of whom were activists, Shoufani has for years explored her Palestinian identity through different expressions of her art: "In this life I have chosen to use my language and my camera, and my body performing on stage, and my angry throat dialectics, to commemorate our regional experience, to add to this arsenal of cultural memory, communal histories and personal perspectives."

A passionate storyteller, Shoufani has lived in a number of countries and cities: Damascus, Amman, Beirut, New York and Dubai. "When I was about 8 years old my dad, in his infinite lovely wisdom, told me it was a great thing to combine in me so much of the world. 'This is a gift and a good thing,' he told me. 'Embrace it', and so I have."

She started to work at eighteen, and for the past 24 years or so the red-haired powerhouse artist has moved around juggling freelance gigs. "I mixed my innate linguistic skills that are part DNA, part my mother and father's literary interests, and partly the fact that we read immense amounts of books growing up — there was little else to do in Damascus in the 80s — with my film studies to create a 'career' that straddles the worlds of language and video, in many capacities," she explains. "Some for clients, others for love. And some, for both."

With strong ties to Palestine, Shoufani was only able to go back in 2017, after 20 years of absence. "I am not someone attached to the idea of home," she says. "Home is wherever my contact lens solution, walking shoes, glitter eyeshadow and laptop are. But I wanted to experience the Galilee. I wanted something exquisite to ease my spirit. It was time to summon the witchcraft needed to cross those borders and ask some questions and tell some stories."

With an undefined idea for making a new movie, Shoufani, cameraman Nick Zajicek and producer Ossama Bawardi from Philistine Films began to do some research into Christian minorities, and found out that only a limited number of engaged and political communities were aware of the situation of Palestinians in the Christian Arab villages in Galilee. This research led to a visit to her large extended family in Nazareth and Miilya, without a precise plan in mind.


Trip Along Exodus (TAE)



"That first year we spent a month there in the gorgeous summer," she recalls. "Every day was a spell of exuberant overwhelmed senses and tears and laughter and drinking and smoking and eating plenty, and telling stories, and asking millions of questions, and touching a thousand succulents, and feeling a breeze to die for and dancing and dancing."

When filmmaking took over, the family introduced her to characters in the community, rituals, rites, locations, histories, events and experiences. Bit by bit, Hind and Nick visited eight different towns and cities over the course of the following three years, developing a relationship with a cast of characters who allowed them to gain an insight into their minds, homes and histories.

"My most profound takeaway from all this, before the film is edited and released, is gratitude that I was allowed such intimate access to these communities. I have a huge responsibility to do justice to the experiences I was invited to share and document."

The result of that experience is her new documentary, They Planted Strange Trees. It is focused on beauty as an act of will and resistance. "I wanted to make a film about the love I feel, and not the hate. I have perhaps given enough time for the hate, and it is a moment to remind myself of love, so that I, myself, can remain soft, open to the senses and ready to see beyond the anger."



She thinks that occupation is first and foremost a dulling of mind and will, and beauty counters this. "I cannot belittle the occupation's atrocious impact on the lives of millions, but we still move through the mountains and immerse ourselves in the sea, we still enjoy our coffees and touching the hair of our grandchildren. This is beautiful. The quotidian, the taken-for-granted is so heightened for me in Palestine."

She stresses that every time a Palestinian laughs, dances, makes love, gets wildly drunk and hugs a friend, performs a poem on stage, or gets a standing ovation at a concert, the occupation is a little less powerful in its sting. "We have in our skin, in our food, in our eyes and in our spirits enough beauty to see us through the harshness."

Palestine as a subject matter has been explored by the director before from different angles. In her debut film Trip Along Exodus, she looked at 70 years of Palestinian history through the experience of her father, activist Elias Shoufani. She believes that that film is the opposite of They Planted Strange Trees.

Trip Along Exodus was a film edited completely inorganically, combining different footage from over 20 sources shot over a period of 60 years. "Nothing was left as pure observation," Shoufani points out. "We made a film from a collage concept, like a child sticking random things into a sketchbook."

The new documentary, meanwhile, is almost pure observational work, with one camera and one camera person. "Everything was filmed by our star Nick Zajicek, who is essentially the person who made this film possible by offering his craft, time and dedication. No images from the past. No archive, no multimedia, no outside influences. The film is one unit, with one look, and through one central journey."


Trip Along Exodus (TAE)

The other difference is that Trip Along Exodus is about one man, and through him we see a lot of the regional dynamics. In They Planted Strange Trees, a dozen people all intertwine to speak of the central entity which is the land and the ecosystems that live within it: human, flora and fauna. "So it's from the outside heading inwards, whereas with my dad, I tried to work from within pointing outwards to the region and its history."

While the post-production of the new film was pushed back further and further because of Covid-19 — much to Shoufani's frustration – she has a plethora or projects to develop. There is a TV series about four female Arab poets; a short utopian, futuristic novella about Palestine in the year 2078; and a book about her mother's life and death in Amman and Damascus in the 1990s, to mention but a few.

Shoufani is also committed to nurture Arab art and poetry in the Middle East. Last month she launched the Barjeel Poetry Prize, inviting poets from around the world to respond to 20 works of 20th-century Arabic art from the UAE-based Barjeel Art Foundation collection. She was one of the three team members organising the competition. The idea was conceived by the founder of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, who is an avid collector of Arab art, and curator Suheyla Takesh.

She counts herself fortunate to be asked to take part. "And I am grateful to be partnered up with my dear friends Zeina Hashem Beck, the poet, and publisher Marcia Lynx Qualey. We have received over 500 submissions of dual language poems as they relate to 20 pieces of Arab art from the Barjeel collection. What an inspired way to get people all over the world to engage with Arab paintings, and to think about what their artists have been through over the past century, and to recreate that ethos in poetic language."

The results are due to come out later this month, and the judges are really pleased with the range and diversity of the winning poets. This was the inaugural year, and Shoufani doesn't know what future plans there are for the prize, but she sees it as a gift in the "apocalyptic year of despair known as 2020."

The artist, director and poet embraces all of her commitments with her usual energy and passion. "I am relaxed because at my age, after living in so many cities, not everything can overwhelm you, and because while being in Palestine is a privilege and a gift, it is also merely another piece of land where some people I love happen to live. It is a part of who I am, and not the entirety. No one place is."

Nevertheless, she is gratified that she was able to return to her homeland, which is something that her parents could not do. "And perhaps there is a way to be more present there in the future," she concludes. "Eventually, at the end, I would like to be swallowed up by a mountain in the Galilee."

Trip Along Exodus (TAE)

Israel: High Court is not expected to strike down Jewish Nation-State Law


Thousands of demonstrators from the Druze community stage a protest against the “Jewish Nation-State” law that was approved last month by the Israel’s parliament, at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, Israel on August 04, 2018 [Daniel Bar On / Anadolu Agency]

December 23, 2020 

After hearing a series of fifteen petitions on Tuesday against Israel's Jewish Nation-State Law, the High Court of Justice is not expected to strike down the "racist" legislation, Dr Hassan Jabareen, the founder and executive director of Adalah rights group, has said.

Eleven Supreme Court justices sat on the panel sitting as the High Court of Justice. The latter generally hears petitions and provides judicial review over the branches of the Israeli government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the hearing on his Facebook page: "The court receives its power to rule by virtue of a basic law, and therefore cannot judge the source of its own power. This hearing illustrates the need for a series of judicial reforms."

Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin MK, from the Likud, warned the High Court that if the justices do strike down the law, he would consider the decision to be illegitimate, the Times of Israel reported. "Any decision that would violate the Basic Laws that were passed in the Knesset is a decision made without authority, and is thus invalid," Levin said in his letter sent to Chief Justice Esther Hayut.

READ: Israel set for snap election as budget deadline nears

According to Jabareen, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of the judges are supporting the law so that they will vote for it. "They will give explanations for the controversial articles in a way that keeps up with previous rulings. It seems that the court does not have political, legal or constitutional understanding for the racist dangers of this law. The court does not have an idea about the comparative law, nor does it understand that no country could accept such a law, which says that the state is only for Jews and not for its non-Jewish citizens."

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said that the High Court of Justice should not even have heard the case. As far as Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz is concerned, "The threats of Yariv Lavin and Netanyahu against the courts are threats to democracy and seek to dismantle the separation of powers."

Israeli law Professor Aeyal Gross expects the judges to defer giving an opinion on the law. A decision could take several weeks.

Document reveals plan by founder of Zionism to declare southern Morocco 'state of the Jews'


A portrait of Theodor Herzl, the late founder of political Zionism, adorning the building of "The Independence Hall Museum", the house in Tel Aviv where David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, declared the creation of Israel 70 years ago on 3 May 2018.

[JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images]

December 22, 2020 
A secret document has been leaked which gives details of a plan by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, to declare southern Morocco as the "state of the Jews", Moroccan news website Hespress has revealed.

The document, said Hespress, brought "the historical relations between Jews and Morocco back to the fore after the resumption of official relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv." It noted that this idea appeared before "the idea of relocating the world's Jews to Palestine crystallised."

According to Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth, Herzl "promoted a secret and mysterious document of the [Morocco Plan], less well-known than the [Uganda Plan], which centred on settling Russian Jews in Wadi Al-Hisan, in the south-west of Morocco."

The plan to settle Jews in Uganda is part of Israeli schools' history curriculum, but much less is known about Herzl's alternative plan to settle Russian Jews in Morocco. He tackled this in an ambiguous letter he wrote in 1903. His sudden death a year later led to the plan being put on hold and archived.

READ: Netanyahu is a symptom, not the cause of Israel's political crisis

Yaakov Hagoel, the head of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), told Yedioth Ahronoth: "There was a very large concentration of Jews there, whether in Morocco or in North Africa in general. It must be understood that Herzl was a very pragmatic man. He saw a problem with persecuted Jews suffering from violence mainly in Eastern Europe, and saw that Morocco had a thriving Jewish community with active Jewish centres."

Professor Joseph Chetrit, from the Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa, said that the Morocco plan was presented for the first time by two brothers who were well-known activists in the Zionist movement at the time, Baruch and Yaakov Moshe Toledano. "Baruch spoke with Herzl a few months before the latter's death, then appealed to French Rabbi Vidal of Fez, who was close to the Moroccan monarchy and government, to establish an independent region for the Jews in Wadi Al-Hisan."

Chetrit pointed out that Rabbi Vidal, who was well versed in Morocco's politics, knew that this was a bogus plan that did not take the domestic situation in the country into account. "It was his grandson in Israel, who bears his name, who found the document and published it for the first time.

This Sao Paulo building is like a Palestinian refugee camp

Ahmad Hwedi
December 2, 2020 

On 29 August 1969, TWA Flight 840 took off from Los Angeles for Tel Aviv via Rome. There were 116 passengers on board, including a young Palestinian woman called  Laila Khaled. 

She and her accomplice, Salim Al-Issawi, hijacked the aircraft on the final leg of the journey, forcing it to land in Damascus. After releasing the passengers and crew unharmed, the pair blew the plane up.

Khaled said at the time that the intention was to get a number of Palestinian prisoners released and draw the world's attention to the justice of the Palestinian cause. A year later she tried to hijack an Israeli aircraft, but the plan failed and she was arrested in London.

That young woman became a national hero for the Palestinians, and her iconic image adorns walls all over the refugee camps within occupied Palestine and neighbouring countries. She remains a strong symbol of resistance to the Israeli occupation. Indeed, her picture greeted me above the entrance to a building in Sao Paulo, Brazil; not the first place that I would ever have expected to see it.

What's more, I was just as surprised to see Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali's signature cartoon figure "Handala" on the shutters of the shop on the ground floor of the same building. This was intriguing, so I asked around to find out who owns the building, and who lives or works there.


The iconic Handala cartoon on the building's ground floor shop [Middle East Monitor]

The block has more than 20 floors and is owned by a Brazilian bank. There are no offices inside, but there are plenty of people. In fact, a number of families have lived in it illegally for nearly six years, dividing the floors into rooms with wooden panels that are not entirely adequate but do provide at least some privacy. Apparently, they cannot be made to leave the building against their will. I was told about this by the three people who make up the administration team for the building. They are from Brazil's "People Without Land" movement, which defends homeless people in the courts.

There are families from Brazil, Bolivia, Syria, Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt in the building. Most of the residents, though, are Palestinians, at least 15 families. They came to Brazil from Sbeineh Refugee Camp in Syria when the conflict there started in 2011. Each family has an average of four or five members, and there is a single Palestinian man from Iraq. They all pay around $50 per month towards the building management, electricity, and water charges.

READ: Latin America launches week of solidarity with Palestine

The residents face a lot of difficulties, as the building is old and not intended for housing. Moreover, there are issues with the water supply, which isn't suitable for drinking and has caused a few health problems.

All of the Palestinian families live on floors 9, 10, and 11, and there is no lift in the building. Instead, everyone has to go down and climb up the 1,500 stairs every time they want to leave the building and come back again.




There are 1,500 stairs in the building [Middle East Monitor]

Like all places around the world where refugees are gathered, those in this building in Sao Paulo have harrowing tales to tell. Hassan, for example, lives on the 11th floor with his wife and new-born son. His arduous journey to Sao Paulo started in Sbeineh Camp from where he went to Ain Al-Hilweh Camp in Lebanon before heading for Brazil. In Ain Al-Hilweh, he stayed with his parents and five other families in a single room. This was not unusual for displaced Palestinians coming from Syria.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are prohibited from working in more than 70 occupations and are treated very badly by the "host" community, so Hassan looked for every opportunity to leave the country. After getting married to his cousin, he was helped by some friends to get to Brazil in 2015. His friends are in the same building, he told me.

"The Brazilian people welcomed us with open arms," he explained. "Their treatment of us was very respectful, and the government allows us to work. I rented a small stall on the street that I called "Palestina Casa" ("Palestine House") and bought and sold everything that I could." He found no racism from the people." "In fact, all of my customers were Brazilians, and my monthly income was around $300. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, I have been unable to work for more than 10 months."




The sign on Hassan's stall in the street [Middle East Monitor]

Life in the building in Sao Paulo is just like being in a refugee camp, said Hassan. "We live as if we are in Sbeineh, fulfilling each other's needs and watching for each other's comfort. If someone complains, you find everyone in the building trying to help to make things easier. In Syria, we were people of one camp; today we are people of one building, and we must stick together."

Hassan is actually staying outside the building temporarily until his wife recovers from the Caesarean birth of their son. She cannot cope with the stairs so he is renting a room nearby at a much higher cost than usual due to the pandemic. "My wife is my strength in this," he said with tears in his eyes. "I cannot continue without her, and I will not find support for me in this life like that which she gives me."

READ: Venezuela backs Palestinians' right to establish independent state, insists president




In front of the room that Hassan has rented temporarily [Middle East Monitor]

I also met a man who lives in a small room of less than 10 square metres. It is very basic, so it was a shock to find 63-year-old Professor Issam Issa there. From Palestine originally, he had been staying in Iraq, where he obtained a doctorate from the University of Baghdad. He also has a doctorate in genetics and animal breeding from Romania. He came to Brazil after he was displaced from Al-Ruwaished Refugee Camp in No Man's Land between Iraq and Jordan. The camp was closed after Brazil agreed to host its Palestinian residents.

The professor has lived in the building for more than two years and told me that he is lonely after separating from his wife and children due to the harsh conditions of exile. Covid-19 has also prevented him from finding a job.

The entrance to Prof. Issam's room. He didn't want us to photograph the room itself (Photo credit: MEMO)

How could a science professor not find a job? "When I came to Brazil, I studied Portuguese and passed the test to qualify me to teach in Brazilian universities," he explained. "I got a one-year contract at a university in the south of Brazil, but local graduates are given priority here. So I have been out of work for five years."

Intisar is a 60-year-old Palestinian woman who has lived in this building for five years. She was a successful interior and fashion designer in Syria before she left Sbeineh Camp with her brother to escape from the war. Crossing into Lebanon, she lived in Shatila Refugee Camp in Beirut, staying for a year before making the move to Brazil.

"My husband and children tried hard to leave Syria and join me in Lebanon," she told me, "but they couldn't because they have Egyptian nationality and needed an entry visa. This was not possible in the wartime circumstances, so they went to Egypt and I stayed in Lebanon."

In Egypt, her children were unable to continue their education because of her Palestinian nationality. The plan was that she would go to Europe via Brazil and meet them there, but it didn't work out that way.

"Here in Brazil, I worked by sewing clothes with a Brazilian woman who befriended me and secured my housing and work until I was able to save the cost of the tickets for my husband and children to come to Brazil as well. Now my husband works in another city for around $200 a month. I do not see him very often because of the distance and the pressure of his work."

She too finds the stairs in the building very difficult to negotiate. "Climbing them can take me up to two hours. And then I am sick for the whole day." Tragically, she now has cancer and is unable to work.

OPINION: Brazil commemorates International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

There are many similar stories among the refugees in this building, many of whom are very well qualified and experienced in their fields. All they desire is to live with dignity. Like many Palestinian refugees, the world over they are generous and hospitable. Their main concern is being unable to find work during the pandemic so that they can take care of their families and neighbours.

I understood from the residents that there used to be many more Arab and Palestinian families in the building but they have moved to French Guiana, an overseas department of France on the Atlantic coast to the north of Brazil. There, they are waiting until they can apply for citizenship and be eligible for state support.

After that, as French citizens, they will be able to move to Europe and possibly be reunited with family members who were separated during the war in Syria. When I asked those still in the building in Sao Paulo what they want, the answer was almost unanimous: "We want to go to French Guiana."

ISRAEL THE 51ST STATE
US provides $500m to Israel under national Covid relief bill 

UNCLE SAM DADDY WARBUCKS


US Congress in session [Lawrence Jackson/Wikipedia]

December 22, 2020 


The United States has passed a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill to support industries and workers affected by the ongoing pandemic, of which hundreds of millions of dollars have been granted to Israel and its defence.

In the bill passed by US Congress yesterday – part of an overall $2.3 trillion package – the act under the heading of "Procurement, Defense-Wide" detailed a total of $500 million for the "Israeli Cooperative Programs".

Of that amount, "$73,000,000 shall be for the Secretary of Defense to provide to the Government of Israel for the procurement of the Iron Dome defense system to counter short-range rocket threats."

In addition to that, a further "$177,000,000 shall be for the Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense (SRBMD) program, including cruise missile defense research and development under the SRBMD program, of which $50,000,000 shall be for co-production activities of SRBMD systems in the United States and in Israel to meet Israel's defense requirements consistent with each nation's laws, regulations, and procedures."

Meanwhile, the rest of the relief package deals with matters such as tax breaks, the selection of the next Dalai Lama, and providing businesses and the unemployed with benefits to ease their ordeal during the coronavirus pandemic.

READ: A return to collaboration over Israel's security narrative

In the announcement of the agreement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that the bill is "another major rescue package for the American people," referring to the first relief package made in March this year. He promised that the 5,593-page-long bill "is packed with targeted policies to help struggling Americans who have already waited too long."

Even those policies which help the citizens and unemployed are severely limited, however, with the agreed $300 per week bonus jobless benefit reportedly being half of the federal unemployment benefit given in the previous package. That payment runs for 11 weeks in comparison to the 16 in the last package. To add to that, the direct stimulus payment of $600 to many people is also half of that given in March.

The disparity in relief payments leads to questions relating to the prioritisation of the US defence industry, its affiliated companies, and the Pentagon – which reportedly received $696 billion in the package – as well as the defence industry of a foreign nation such as Israel.

Congress' justification for the limit in spending on the unemployed and businesses is that billions were allegedly also needed for other essential resources and unfinished business such as water provision and flood control in the country. The defence companies and military sectors which are provided money in the bill were also said to be heavily hit by the pandemic.

Lebanon criminalises sexual harassment
The law punishes perpetrators with up to two years imprisonment and a fine of up to 20 times the value of the minimum wage, which would currently amount to nearly $450 at the official exchange rate.



December 23, 2020 


The Lebanese parliament on Monday passed a landmark bill that criminalises sexual harassment, especially in the workplace.

The law punishes perpetrators with up to two years imprisonment and a fine of up to 20 times the value of the minimum wage, which would currently amount to nearly $450 at the official exchange rate.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jan Kubis, welcomed the passage of the law and described it as a step towards empowering women's and human rights, adding that "implementation is the key".

The National Commission for Lebanese Women also hailed the passage of the law, saying for the first time Lebanon has a law that punishes the perpetrators of this crime and provides protection and support for its victims.

However, the Legal Agenda, a non-governmental human rights organisation said the law contains several flaws; mainly that it approaches the subject from a "moral point of view aimed at protecting society and not the victim".

Aya Majzoub of Human Rights Watch (HRW) described the passage of the law as a positive step, even if it was late and insufficient.

The Lebanese parliament has also approved amendments to a controversial 2014 domestic violence law, broadening its scope to include violence related to – but not necessarily committed during – marriage.

The amended law allows women who leave their husbands as a result of domestic violence to retain custody of children until the age of 13.

Israel forces Jerusalemite woman to demolish her home

The Israeli municipality in occupied Jerusalem forced a Palestinian woman from the village of Silwan to demolish her house over claims that it lacked building licenses

December 23, 2020 




The Israeli municipality in occupied Jerusalem yesterday forced a Palestinian woman from the village of Silwan to demolish her house over claims that it lacked building licenses, Safa news agency reported.

Shahira Gheith said that she had been able to put off the demolition order but she was surprised when Israeli occupation police surrounded her house and told her that the court rejected the postponement.

She said that the Israeli police told her she must demolish her house by herself; otherwise, she would have to pay high for the municipality's bulldozers to carry out the demolition at a cost of 70,000 ($21,704).

Shahira and her children have now become homeless.

"I will set up a tent and live in it with my children," she said. "I had worked hard to build my house and I lost it just three months after living in it," she continued.

Israel settlers launch systematic attacks on Palestinian properties


Israeli flags can be seen around a Palestinian house which was illegally occupied by settlers under the protection of occupation forces in the West bank city of Hebron on 26 July 2017. [Mamoun Wazwaz /Anadolu Agency]

December 23, 2020 

Ongoing attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians are part of a large campaign aimed at seizing more Palestinian lands and imposing new realities on the ground, B'Tselem warned yesterday.

"These attacks are being carried out with full support from the Israeli army and government," Kareem Jubran, director of the field research department at B'Tselem, said, stressing that the Israeli army and government support the extremist stances of the Israeli Jewish settlers.

Speaking to Palestine Voice Radio, Jubran said that the Israeli settlers have recently increased their attacks in many Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank. The settlers' attacks, he said, are protected by the occupation army and police.

Meanwhile, Director of Anti-Wall and Settlements Committee, Murad Ishtiwi, said: "There is another campaign carried out by the Israeli occupation army and police targeting Palestinian shops, homes and vehicles."

He said that this campaign is being carried out in parallel with the one carried out by the extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinian properties.

Do normalisers know or even care about Israel's crimes against the Palestinians?


Palestinian gather to protest a deal between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel to normalize ties, in Gaza City, Gaza on 19 August 2020. [Mustafa Hassona - Anadolu Agency]


Motasem A Dalloul
abujomaaGaza
December 21, 2020 

Some journalists from the UAE and Bahrain have visited Israel and praised the occupation state and its people. Expressing their admiration, they claimed that the Israelis are peaceful and teach peace to their children from an early age.

They visited Tel Aviv with their Foreign Ministry minder, Lorena Khateeb, and apparently enjoyed the "beautiful" beaches. They also went to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights with the Spokesman of the Israel Defence Forces, Avichai Adree, and said how proud they are that Lebanon's Hezbollah, which they said is their enemy, is being attacked by Israel.

The head of the delegation was Amjad Taha, who has recently obtained Bahraini citizenship. He claimed that there is a great deal of "coexistence" among Israeli Jews, Arabs and others. The UAE's Majed Al-Sarrah looked at Israelis in a Tel Aviv park and said: "This is a live example for coexistence." Israeli children, he said, had received them with "love, smiles and peace."

"When we are talking about peace, it's people to people…" explained President Reuven Rivlin when they went to his home. "Let's look forward that you will be the bridge to bring a lot of understanding between all the people in the region. It's a real pleasure."

Masha'el Al-Shammari, a young Bahraini who defined herself as a cultural activist, said that she was surprised by "the cultural variety" in Israel and the "massive amount of peace" among its people. "They plant peace in their children," she gushed. "We were misinformed about Israel," she told Makan TV. "We had been taught that [the Israelis] hated us, however, when they knew that we were from Arab Islamic countries of Bahrain and UAE, they welcomed us."

In an online workshop with Israeli journalists two months ago, the head of the Society of UAE Journalists, Mohammad Al-Hammadi said: "We need to change the stereotypical image in the minds of Arabs that Israel kills Palestinians. This image was reflected specifically by Al Jazeera." The recent delegation seems to be part of that change. It was no coincidence, of course, that Qatar's Al Jazeera was named specifically, given that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been besieging their neighbouring state since 2017.

READ: The strategic downfall of Morocco's normalisation

Amidst this normalisation and the whitewashing by Arab media of Israel's violence human rights abuses the reality is being ignored. I am a Palestinian, of course, so to avoid accusations of bias, let us look at what others say about Israel's treatment of the people of Palestine.

Avi Shlaim is an Israeli-British Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. On Britain's Channel 4 News last week, he said very clearly that Israel was responsible for the displacement and deportation of the Palestinians in 1948. He is not alone. Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappé's 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine details the crimes committed against the Palestinians when Israel was created in their land. Indeed, the ethnic cleansing has been ongoing ever since. Ignorant normalisers like these journalists from the UAE and Bahrain are lying.

They claim that Israel is all about "coexistence", whereas on Friday Lee Yaron wrote about the children of foreigners and workers being segregated from other children in Israeli schools. "A Haaretz investigation has found that the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality is sending hundreds of children of asylum seekers and migrant workers to schools designated just for them, in which there are no Israeli children," she said.

The issue is not only about segregation, but also lower education standards. "The educational standards there are often different too," she noted. Indeed, a child of an asylum seeker, "Nahum", was accepted to enter a school for Israeli children but was then denied and is "now in third grade [and] still doesn't know how to read and write." While Israeli officials deny such segregation, Yaron found that, "Official figures from the municipality [of Tel Aviv], reported here for the first time, paint a clear picture: 2,228 out of 2,433 children of asylum seekers and migrants (91.5 per cent) in elementary school attend schools that are for foreigners only."


The flags of US, Israel, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain are projected on the ramparts of Jerusalem's Old City on September 15, 2020 in a show of support for Israeli normalisation deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain [MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images]

In its editorial on the same issue, Haaretz asked, "Why Is Pluralist, Liberal Tel Aviv Segregating Foreign Children at School?" This reflected the shock that the kind of segregation seen in other Israeli cities like Petah Tikva, Eilat and Netanya, is happening in the "enlightened, pluralist and liberal" Tel Aviv. Discrimination is widespread across Israeli society and enshrined in law. It is especially noticeable in education, healthcare, the judiciary and housing.

According to America's Human Rights Watch, the Jewish Nation-State Law adopted by Israel in 2018 i "makes it a national priority to build homes for Jews but not others, and revokes the status of Arabic as an official language of Israel." In the same report, it stated that Israeli occupation "approved [in 2019] plans for 5,995 housing units in West Bank settlements, excluding East Jerusalem, as compared to 5,618 in all of 2018." Meanwhile, it "destroyed 504 Palestinian homes and other structures in 2019 as of November 11… The demolitions displaced 642 people as of September 16, more than the total number of people displaced in 2018 (472)."

READ: Israel, between the cold of Egyptian peace and the warmth of Emirati normalisation

The same report pointed out that the Israeli government "continued to enforce severe and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians' human rights; restrict the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip; and facilitate the transfer of Israeli citizens to settlements in the occupied West Bank, an illegal practice under international humanitarian law."

Moreover, "Israeli forces stationed on the Israeli side of fences separating Gaza and Israel continued to fire live ammunition at demonstrators inside Gaza who posed no imminent threat to life, pursuant to open-fire orders from senior officials that contravene international human rights standards. HRW cited informed sources that Israeli forces killed 34 Palestinians and injured 1,883 with live ammunition during the protests in 2019. To this must be added the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel between 2008 and 2014 during the occupation state's military offensives. Thousands more have received life-changing injuries and tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed.

Other organisations such as Amnesty International and Israel's own B'Tselem have documented Israeli violations against the Palestinians. And yet these fools from the UAE and Bahrain believe that the Israeli occupation is a blessing and the Palestinians are beasts. Are they blind as well as stupid?

Of course, telling lies in order to whitewash Israel's violations of international law and human rights is now official government policy in the UAE, Bahrain and, presumably, the other recent normalisers Sudan and Morocco. Their claims that normalisation has stopped Israeli violations are entirely false. Such "journalists" and "activists" do neither themselves nor their people any favours by peddling their lies. Do these unprincipled liars know or even care about Israel's crimes?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Biden DHS nominee has ‘refreshing’ meeting with faith groups about immigration, refugees
One attendee described the meeting as 'a 180 degree change from what we've been enduring for the last four years.'
President-elect Joe Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at The Queen theater, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
December 18, 2020
By Jack Jenkins, Emily McFarlan Miller


WASHINGTON (RNS) — President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security held a roundtable meeting with an array of faith groups on Friday (Dec. 18), a gathering participants described as “refreshing” and a shift away from the Trump administration’s combative relationship with religious organizations regarding immigration and refugee policy.

The long list of attendees huddled virtually with Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American Sephardic Jew and former refugee Biden has tapped as his DHS nominee.

A Biden transition official noted there was significant energy at the meeting created by Biden’s promise to overturn President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which advocates characterize as a “Muslim ban.” They also discussed laws and regulations governing asylum claims.

Biden recently announced at a gathering of the Jesuit Refugee Service that he would raise the refugee ceiling to 125,000, above even the 110,000 cap former President Barack Obama set in his final year in office.

“The door just has not been open for discussion for the last four years for many of us in the human rights community,” Mark Hetfield of HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, told Religion News Service after the meeting. “It was nice to actually have a meeting where you can discuss issues — that’s a 180 degree change from what we’ve been enduring for the last four years.”

Many faith groups that work with the federal government on immigration have had antagonistic relationships with the Trump administration as the White House repeatedly reduced the refugee ceiling to historic lows, most recently to just 15,000.

Last year, three faith-based groups, including HIAS, sued the Trump administration over an executive order granting state and local officials the authority to block refugee resettlement.

“I honestly feel there is no better person in the country to serve in this role than Alejandro,” Hetfield said of Mayorkas, who has served on HIAS’ board. “I think there’s a genuine commitment to solving problems, and to working together, and to gathering different opinions to make the government function better.”

Hetfield and other attendees noted that Mayorkas himself was a political refugee from Cuba.

“He’s been through it,” said Hetfield, who characterized the overall meeting as “refreshing.”

Nathan Bult, director of governmental affairs at Bethany Christian Services, told RNS that Mayorkas took “detailed notes” at the 90-minute meeting.

Bult, whose organization cared for a number of children who were separated from their families under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, urged Mayorkas to continue protections for unaccompanied children. Also discussed was Biden’s promise to create a task force charged with reuniting children with their families.

Another attendee, the Rev. Gabriel Salguero, the founder of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said he was also encouraged by the discussion of “bipartisan humane, and common-sense immigration reform.”

He and others said they were grateful to have Mayorkas’ ear but insisted on action.

“I felt like it was a genuine listening session, and many of us who’ve been around, we know when we’re being filibustered,” Salguero told RNS. “Now I hope that we’re able to move from listening to implementation.”

According to a Biden transition official, the meeting also included representatives from Catholic Charities USA, Emgage, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Code Legal Aid, Christian Churches Together, Jesuit Refugee Services USA, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Arab American Institute, Bridging Cultures Group, Esperanza, the Ismaili Council for the USA, the Secure Community Network, the Islamic Society of North America and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Attendees said they were hopeful more meetings would occur in the future, as it was at least the second meeting between the Biden transition team and faith leaders this week. On Thursday, a group of transition team members also met with the Poor People’s Campaign, a faith-based advocacy group dedicated to eradicating poverty.

 The former Hollywood art studio of a Roman Catholic religious sister who was known for her pop art saved from wrecking ball....for now

Artist Corita Kent’s former Hollywood art studio on Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Corita Art Center/Immaculate Heart Community

December 17, 2020

By 

Alejandra Molin

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — The former Hollywood art studio of a Roman Catholic religious sister who was known for her pop art covering racism, poverty and misogyny appears to have been spared from the wrecking ball after all.

The art studio of the late Corita Kent, known as LA’s “pop art nun,” is now a dry cleaner and had been slated for demolition to make way for additional parking. 

To prevent this, the nonprofit Corita Art Center and the Los Angeles Conservancy have urged the city of Los Angeles to designate the building as a historic cultural monument.

The city recommended the Cultural Heritage Commission vote against the historical designation at its Thursday (Dec. 17) meeting, but the agency wound up voting in favor of it after hours of public testimony from Kent’s family, former students, artists and LA residents who urged the agency to see the historical value of the structure. The application for the historic monument designation was filed by the Corita Art Center.

The cultural monument nomination will now be forwarded to the City Council Planning and Land Use Management committee for review.

City officials said in a staff report that they were against the proposal because the building had been extensively altered, to the point where it’s “unrecognizable from its period of significance.” The main entrance, for example, was once a wall of storefront windows that has since been removed, and extra square footage has been added to the building.

Corita Kent, known as Sister Mary Corita, in front of some of her artwork. Photo courtesy of Corita Art Center/Immaculate Heart Community

In essence, they contended the building must resemble the art studio, where Kent produced some of her most recognizable works, in order to be eligible for historical designation.

But advocates of Kent and her legacy maintained the building must be preserved.

During the Dec. 17 meeting, Blake Megdal, the property owner and developer of the proposed development, said he would no longer pursue demolition. However, he was against the proposed cultural designation.

The application argues that the building, a humble storefront on Franklin Avenue, is the only remaining property in Los Angeles primarily associated with Kent’s artistic production. It’s where she produced notable artwork such as the 1965 piece “power up,” which addresses social justice and equity based on a sermon by American Jesuit priest Dan Berrigan.

“It’s in the art studio where art happened,” said Adrian Fine, director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy. “When you don’t have that connection you’re missing a piece of the story.”

Currently, it’s unclear whether Kent proponents and advocates would aim to use the building as a tourist destination or a space that showcases her legacy. 

Corita Kent, circa 1967. Photo courtesy of the Corita Art Center/Immaculate Heart Community

Fine said that in order to make future plans for the building, they had to first  win their case to preserve the space as a cultural monument. 

With only 3% of the city’s historic cultural monuments associated with women’s heritage, preservationists say it’s even more urgent to hold on to the building that many, including her former students, still associate with Kent.

Kathryn Wollan, an architectural historian who is volunteering in the effort to save the building,  said it’s up to a new generation of preservationists to identify more spaces linked to accomplishments of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

“Everyone we want to include in the full spectrum of the American experience, we’re not meeting it,” Wollan said. “It’s not for a lack of history. It’s not for lack of historical scholarship. It’s for a lack of identification.”

Kent grew up in LA after her family moved from Iowa to Hollywood in 1923. The family belonged to the Jesuit-led Blessed Sacrament Parish on Sunset Boulevard, where Kent and her siblings attended school, according to the Corita Art Center. After graduating from Los Angeles Catholic Girls’ High School, she entered the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and took “Sister Mary Corita” as her religious name. She graduated, later joined as faculty at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Art Department and began screenprinting as she completed her master’s degree at the University of Southern California.

While working at Immaculate Heart College, Kent used the building as her primary studio space while living at the Immaculate Heart Motherhouse across the street, according to a Los Angeles Conservancy report.

Kent’s work embodied the spirit of the 1960s and was prevalent in church basements, dorm rooms and communes of people involved in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

Corita Kent, center, teaches an art class. Photo courtesy of Corita Art Center/Immaculate Heart Community

During this period, the Immaculate Heart College sisters “took to heart” the words of the Second Vatican Council that sought to modernize the Catholic Church by renewing and adapting “to the sign of the times,” the Corita Art Center recounted in the application to preserve the building, adding that “they looked to meet the citizens of Los Angeles where they were at, physically and spiritually in their life.” 

The sisters entwined “contemporary philosophies, modern psychology and women’s liberation movement into their work,” the Los Angeles Conservancy said.

Within the pop art realm, Rebecca Morrill, in her book “Great Women Artists,” said Kent’s screen prints throughout the ’60s “reconfigured slogans from advertising and vernacular culture into ardent spiritual messages.”

Kent’s fame and popularity rose as she was named one of the Los Angeles Times’ Women of the Year in 1966. A year later, Harper’s Bazaar profiled her as one of “100 American Women of Accomplishment.” By 1968, her work was being displayed alongside that of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

For Wollan, saving the building “is an opportunity to preserve a tangible association with Corita’s history.”

 

In ‘Can Robots Be Jewish?’ rabbis weigh in on a Jewish pastime: disagreement

The questions in this collection, part of Moment Magazine’s long-running feature ‘Ask the Rabbis,’ offer a model for what is fundamental to Judaism.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons

December 16, 2020

By 

Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — It is an axiom of Jewish life that Jews love to disagree.

There’s the famous Jewish joke about a shipwrecked Jewish sailor on a desert island who builds two synagogues — the one where he prays and the one he won’t set foot in.

Or take Hanukkah, the eight-day holiday, which ends Friday (Dec. 18). Some Jews view it as theologically breezy, a “holiday of lights,” full of spinning dreidels and jelly doughnuts. Others view it more seriously, as a ponderous morality tale about the triumph of religious fundamentalism over assimilation.

Just in time for the holiday, a new book now showcases this range of Jewish disagreement on a variety of contemporary issues.

“Can Robots Be Jewish And Other Pressing Questions of Modern Life” is a collection of 30 provocative questions, each answered in 200 words or less by 10 different rabbis from different quarters of the Jewish world.

The book is a compendium of some of the previously published “Ask the Rabbis” columns that have appeared in the pages of the Jewish magazine Moment. The magazine, which bills itself as a Jewish take on news, ideas and culture, has been around since the 1970s and continues to publish six print issues a year in addition to its newer web presence.

The “Ask the Rabbis” column, begun in 2005, continues to be one of its popular features.

The questions in the new compendium include: Should we edit our children’s genes? What does the Torah teach us about addiction? What guidance, if any, does Judaism offer transgender people? Is democracy a Jewish idea?

“Can Robots Be Jewish? And Other Pressing Questions of Modern Life” Courtesy image

“As I was editing this collection I realized it was a model of civil disagreement for our time,” said Amy E. Schwartz, Moment Magazine’s book and opinion editor who edited the volume. “There’s more and more distance between views and less and less willingness to argue in an open-hearted way. We like to model that that is fundamental to Judaism. It’s a great value and it’s still possible. “

In the title question, “Can robots be Jewish?” several rabbis begin by delving into Jewish arcana. They point out that the predecessor to the modern robot was created by the 16th-century Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague to protect the Jewish community from blood libels. It was called a golem — a clay creature magically brought to life and later destroyed. One rabbi even posits the golem was the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein.”

But mostly the rabbis — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanist and others — argue about whether robots have souls. A Reconstructionist rabbi argues if the definition of a Jewish soul is someone who is loved and cared for by other Jews, then yes, robots attended to by Jews, may be called Jewish. Other rabbis disagree.

For the past 15 years, Schwartz said, the editorial team formulated the questions in staff meetings and then sent them off to a group of rabbis. A successful question, she said, is one that yields a variety of answers — or disagreements.

“I like to make the rabbis work a little bit,” she said.

Since many of the questions address modern-day issues, one might conclude the Hebrew Bible and subsequent rabbinic commentaries never considered some of the questions in this volume. Yet in many instances the contributing rabbis, steeped in Jewish texts, demonstrate that the ancient sages actually addressed some of them.

Take the question “What guidance, if any, does Judaism offer to transgender people?” Turns out, the Talmud, the extensive written body of interpretation and commentary by ancient rabbis, addressed “androgynos,” people who are both male and female, as well as those whose genitalia are indeterminate. They even allowed people could transition from one sex to the other.

Rabbi Haim Ovadia writes: “Religious leaders should rise to the task and find ways to welcome transgender or nonconforming people, and perhaps the first step will be to let them define themselves.”

And while the ancient Jewish texts preceded modern-day addiction treatment and recovery programs, the rabbis answering the question “What does the Torah teach us about addiction?” reach back to a host of biblical stories that can offer some lessons, including the story of the golden calf in the Book of Exodus, as well as Noah’s drunkenness in the Book of Genesis.

Conservative Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz writes that the entire Book of Exodus and the Israelite path from slavery to freedom can be viewed as a journey from addiction to recovery.

Reading through all the responses to particular questions won’t give anyone a definitive answer. But then, Judaism is not a top-down religion and there is no ultimate authority.

“If you read all 10 rabbis’ (responses) you come away with a starter-set of what the big arguments have been,” said Schwartz. “It’s a great way to get a casual familiarity with the tradition. You come away with entry-level literacy.”

For those curious about a particular issue, the volume offers “a way in.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “you need an entry book.”