ihath

In Arabic we frequently say “take it easy ya azizi”, which means “take it easy my dear”

In Canada we just voted for a right wing government. In the US the people voted for George Bush twice and in Israel the people voted for a war criminal named Ariel Sharon. Yet the hysteria brigades are all up in arms over Hamas winning the last Palestinian Elections.

“Death of the peace process” I heard on the CBC radio
What peace process? What planet are these people from?

George Bush said something like “You can’t be a partner in peace if you are armed”
Oh yeah! And Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is no problem. Nobody is demanding that Israel disarms.

Our newly elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that Hamas must renounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.
O! but extra judicial killings by Israel’s army are just fine. Israel doesn’t talk about Palestine’s right to exist, they simply make sure that Palestine does not exist through a brutal apparatus of a military occupation. None of this is factor in Stephen Harper’s consideration.

“We just witnessed the formation of hamastan” declared Bejamin Natanyahu, former prime minister of Israel
I suppose I can respond with an equally racist statement but I won’t.

And Condoleezza Rice said something indicating that they will cut aid to the Palestinian people.


This one I am glad that Khalid Misha’al (Hamas leader and a survivor of Israeli mossad assassination attempt) responds very eloquently in a recent article on the Guardian.

Here a few quotes from the article

We will not sell our people or principles for foreign aid

Our message to the Palestinians is this: our people are not only those who live under siege in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but also the millions languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and the millions spread around the world unable to return home. We promise you that nothing in the world will deter us from pursuing our goal of liberation and return. We shall spare no effort to work with all factions and institutions in order to put our Palestinian house in order. Having won the parliamentary elections, our medium-term objective is to reform the PLO in order to revive its role as a true representative of all the Palestinian people, without exception or discrimination.
Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.

I suggest you read the full article though.

I also would recommend this article on the washington post by Mousa Abu Marzook titled What Hamas Is Seeking.

Let me make it clear, I do not support Hamas, nor do they reflect my values. Had I been able to participate in the elections I would have voted for the Independent Palestine list. Hamas is considered to be a terrorist organization by the Canadian federal government and there is no doubt that Hamas is behind the terrorist attacks inside Israel.

I myself consider Hamas to be a legitimate resistance movement. They have a long history of providing medical and educational services for free inside the occupied territories and are generally perceived as much less corrupt that the leaders of Fatah. While leaders of Fatah wear fancy suits, drive in fancy cars and live in fancy villas. Leaders of hamas wear plain clothes, live in houses among average people, there kids don’t get educated in the Sorbonne and their wife’s don’t wear Chanel. If you research the biography of various Hamas leaders you will discover that many of them grew up in refugee camps and are graduates of Israeli prisons, making them more in touch with the average person on the Palestinian street.

To all those hysterical over the Hamas win in the elections I say “take it easy, ya azizi”. If Canadians can toss out the liberals over a corruption scandal and vote in a right wing party then why can’t the Palestinians do the same. Now that they are in power they will have to moderate their views because they actually have to do what it takes to make things work instead of criticizing things from the side lines.

Consider how Israel and the US have contributed in discrediting the Fatah leadership in the eyes of the Palestinians. By refusing to budge and taking a completely hard-line stand, Fatah under Mahmood Abbas’s leadership looked like puppet of the US government unable to gain any wins. With all the assassination attempts on Hamas leadership, the Israeli government made Hamas seem to be more aligned with the Palestinian struggle and aspiration of independence and freedom.

I hope and pray that Hamas leadership will use this opportunity wisely, ignore other Islamic based movements in the Middle East and focus solely on doing what is right for the Palestinian people. I hope they will take a moderate stand especially with regards to the Christian Palestinian community ensuring that their rights are respected under their governance. I pray that they will not be corrupted by this recent acquisition of power. I urge them to continue the fight for the rights of the Palestinian people while showing willingness to negotiate for a peaceful resolution when an honest opportunity arises.

Still felling hysterical about it?

I suggest that you go eat some humus and pita. Contemplate how a humble dish that sustained poor Palestinina peasants for decades has become a fancy treat sold as health food in western fancy stores. Contemplate how the ANC was considered a terrorist organization by most western nations at one point and how today all world leaders are tripping over each other to get a photo opportunity with Nelson Mandela today.

Take a deep breath
Take it easy
I have a feeling that Hamas will rise to the occasion.


** The picture is of Kahlid Misha'al giving a speech with pictures of Arafat and Sheik Yassin in the background. The pic is from IslamOnline and I got it via Justice for Everybody

Update: Jimmy Carter on Hamas winning the elections

The above cartoon is by Steve Bell from the Guardian

In case you don't get it, that is an image of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the nearly blind, crippled quadriplegic, that the Israeli government killed in 2004 using a helicopter gunship. Two body guards and six other bystanders were killed in the same attack.

Sheik Ahmed Yassin was one of leaders and founders of Hammas.

We need to create our own means of entertainment.




My husband is pretend wrestling with the kids.

In an article titles "Eyes and Ears - The most famous blogs in the world", my arabic blog gets a mention.

I usually sigh
Every single morning
A deep sigh
As I hear the news.

Every single day, either Iraq or Palestine is in the news. One day I will write a post on the emotional toll of listing to the news when you are an Iraqi married to a Palestinian.

Bombing in Baghdad
Shooting in the westbank

on really difficult days both Iraq and Palestine are in the news. My husband and I take turns consoling each other.

"In the history of each nation there are ups and downs, this too shall pass" We take turns saying this speech to each other.

And then there the news that boils my blood and makes talk back to the radio.

"Saddam Hussein claims that he was beaten by American soldiers" The news anchor said a while back. You will hear me say back to the radio "Clearly the American soldiers that beat him didn't do a good job since he is still walking and talking".

"Ariel Sharon moved his left arm today"
"Ariel Sharon opened his right eye today"
I keep waiting for the news head line to state ....
"Ariel Sharon farted today" .... why not report his farts as well. A person who caused massacres and has a long history of human rights violations deserves to have his farts reported on the headline news on CNN

But yesterday was different, yesterday was a unique morning different from most. Yesterday, I heard the news and instead of sighing, instead of talking to the radio in curses, I felt happy.

The Palestinian Movie "Paradise Now" won a Golden Globe for best foreign language movie.

Wow!

One thousand and one congratulations to Hany Abu-Assad, who made the movie and even more congratulations to all the actors involved in it. This is truly a happy day.

A short quote from the article

In his acceptance speech, Abu-Assad made a plea for a Palestinian state, saying he saw the Golden Globe as "recognition" that the Palestinians deserve their liberty and equality unconditionally.

Amen

Towards the end of the movie, Avner goes to see his mother. He is troubled and torment is apparant on his face. "Do you want to know what I did for the mossad?" Avner asks his mother. She reponds with a no, and proceeds to tell him about her own agony, having survived the holocaust, lost her whole entire family and arrived in Jerusalem with a renewed hope for a better future. As a mother myself, I found this scene the most disturbing in the movie. I felt that Avner's mother has betrayed her son. Ignoring his pain because her pain was far greater. Yet her son is right there, right in front of her, clearly in pain, clearly in need of comforting. Yet she tells him to suck it up, be a man, be a hero.

But, the women of Munich the movie are not all Avner's mother. Thank god!

This is a picture of Hiam Abbas


I saw her first in the fantastic “Red Satin” movie. Where she plays a bored house wife and mother of a teenage daughter, living in repressive Tunisia. One day she discovers the world of belly dancing and her life is changed forever. A fantastic movie of women’s empowerment and self discovery. If you haven’t seen it yet, I would highly recommend it.





Then I saw her the second time in the epic “Bab el Shams” – gate to the Sun. The marvelous historical account that tells the story of the Palestinian people though the complex multi generational individual stories of ordinary individuals placed in extreme historical moment. In Bab el Shams, Hiam plays the tyrannical mother in law.


Then I saw her again in Paradise Now which I reviewed a while back






Where Hiam plays the role of Saeed’s mom and portrays with enormous dignity the quiet desperation of a Palestinian widow, living under occupation trying to the best of her abilities to keep her family going. Her performance in Paradise Now was so authentic you forget that she is an actress.

Finally, she plays a minor role in the movie Munich. A very minor role. She is the wife of a Palestinian official about to be assassinated. We see her on screen for maybe a few minutes.

This is Ayelet Zorer.


I remember her from the Israeli TV series “Florentine”, which I watched occasionally while living in Israel. The show was/ is (I have no idea if it’s still running or not) about a group of young Israeli people living in a poor neighborhood in Tel Aviv going through generational angst and alienation. The show caused a huge uproar in Israel because it featured the first gay character on Israeli TV. I remember the show not because of the gay character, but rather because of a single episode where Ayelet’s character falls in love with a dark and handsome Palestinian man. Social pressures mount on Ayelet to break off the relationship. In the ending scene, of that episode,Ayelet’s character is sitting in car alone and crying. A moment of crushing pain, it was inevitable that it would end like that. I am not a big fan of Ayelet, but her performance in that single episode is stuck in my mind till this day. She was so real and honest, I could almost swear she wasn’t acting.

Like Hiam, Ayelet has a minor role in the movie Munich. She plays the wife of the lead Israeli assassin. We see her with a baby. We see her making love to her husband and having wife like conversations with the main character in the movie. Not a big deal.

It is these two women that symbolize what I appreciated about Munich. I was surprised with how authentic every aspect of the movie was. Somebody must have done tons of research for that movie. Most of the arab characters in the movie are actual arab actors, many of the Israeli characters are actual Israeli actors. Each scene was meticulously constructed. For example, the scene from the Palestinian refugee camp, looks like a real Palestinian refugee camp and I have seen many. The scene shot in Israel, brings back memories of living there. Even the way the PLO officials dress, if you go look at old documentary footage you would see that is really how they dressed and talked. The different languages in the movie (English, Arabic, Hebrew, German, French). Then you have accents, like Arabic French, Arabic English, Hebrew English, French English and many many more. It sounds very complex but all those aspects of this movie where executed just right. While the main character is not played by an Israeli actor, I think that Eric Banna did an amazing job portraying the Israeli mossad agent. He was completely convincing, from his accent, body language, the way he carried himself, I almost forgot that he wasn’t Israeli. The only actor that I thought was not convincing was Daniel Craig, but he plays a minor role, but everybody else was 100%, even the French characters and the Russian KGB agents. Other than Daniel Craig there really wasn’t a week link in the movie.

In summary, I think the Munich is a worth while movie simply for the amount of detail that went into it. And any movie that manages to combine Arabic and Israeli actors, among others, is bound to be interesting.

However, I do have certain criticism of the movie and that is the fact that is hides some of grittier aspect of what happened in real life. In real life when the Israeli mossad launched an assassination campaign in Europe in the seventies against Palestinians to avenge the Munich massacre, they killed plenty of innocent bystanders in the process and in at least one case the assassinated the wrong person. A Moroccan author had the same name as a Palestinian on the “black list”. The poor Moroccan author was killed by mistake because of the similarity of names. The movie doesn’t deal with those aspects of the events however the movie is pretty grim even without it.

I left the movie with the impression that Steven Spielberg was trying to tell us the using violence, oppression and assassination to deal with terrorism doesn’t work. I also had the inkling like he is saying “We Jewish people of north America shouldn’t support Israel right or wrong, perhaps we should be a little critical and acknowledge that certain wrongs were committed”. In that regard I have to applaud Steven Spielberg and his courage to make such a critical movie. I am sure he knew he would be plenty criticized and he decided to make the movie anyway. Which required courage. While the movie deals with the events of assassination in Europe against Palestinian officials, it does not deal which the real injustice the average Palestinian has to deal with either living under occupation or living in a refugee camp. For that you would need to see the awesome movie

Bad el Shams
Which was based on a book of the same name



or read the humorous Sharon and My Mother in Law



I only have one question, how does Hiam manage to be in all these incredible movies, one Tunisian, one Egyptian, one Palestinian and One Hollywood? I think her achievement is a great one. I tip my hat to the women of Munich movie, they played minor roles,But they made the movie for me and they played the characters that give us hope for a better future.

O! and that assasin chick that kills after seduction was pretty cool as well, but not as cool as Hiam.