AFF Update IV - Occupation 101 (Palestine)

Last night's screening of Occupation 101 was the 1st sold out show that I attended. I was surprised to be quite honest. I arrived at the Roxie on the early side, early enough for Schwarma and a casual stroll through the stacks at Adobe books where I found a copy of Words from Ends to Ez by Jackson Mac Low. The guy behind the counter thought that it might have some to do with the writings of John Cage. No, this book comes out of a reductive program that was fed Pound's Cantos and then Mac Low carefully culled the poems from the output of the comptuerized processor/randomizer. I don't know that I'm crazy about this book, but its unlike anything else out there. If you want to explore Mac Low then you should get a copy of Bloomsday, I found this book infinitely more digestable than Words from Ends. Now, onto the film...



Occupation 101

Of the three documentaries thus far, this has been the most visually gripping. The Omeish brothers knew their demographic well and present it in such a way that they're sure of keeping the attention of the 18-30 crowd that can be clocked, attention span-wise, by the time it takes for a web page to load on the fastest broadband line. There are plenty of insightful interviews interspersed with footage culled from various sources including Al Jazeera and other news outlets. There are talking heads, there are scenes of gruesom deaths, injured children, poverty, depravity, archival footage from pre 1948 and lots of flash animations and statistics. These are all the elemtns that should be included of a documentary that takes the position of "you don't know whats going on there." In this capacity it can't be faulted, it has a definite agenda and frankly, I think it tells the story well, but not perfectly.

I'm going to try and avoid a complete synopsis of the film, there's just too much information packed into it. The fast MTV-like pace of the movie makes it the equivalent of a page turner, but it operates from the position that everything the western news media tells you is wrong wrong wrong, and or misleading. Is it? The historical background of how the state of Israel was formed, the relative peace that palestine experienced during the 1st half of the 20th century, and even in the 19th, is intersting in terms of the archival footage presented. There is this conception that Jews and Arabs have been fighting since the dawn of time. This isn't at all true. Jews and Arabs occupied the holy land for long periods of time far more peacefully than their Ashkenazi cousins in Europe who were subject to anti-semitic laws and persecutions from one ruler to the next. Still, parts of Europe weren't that bad and Jewdaism flourished in various epochs, from the 11th century mystics of Spain, Spinoza of Portugal in the 17th century and Marx in the 19th. I guess the point I'm trying to make is there are no absolutes. None whatsoever.

However, the film makers present compelling evidence to the absolutes of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. There are definite undeniables when you consider the past, in terms of Nazis occupation of Europe, the Geneva Convention, which when you think of the Occupied Territories as Occupied, then Geneva clearly states that you can't inhibit a person's freedom of movement, yet that's preceisely what has been happening, from the security wall, which is twice as high as the Berlin wall and longer than its European predecessor, to the way that Settlements in the West Bank cut Palestiniant communities off from each other. The proponents of "seperate but equal" would say dthat its necessary to stem the tide of suicide bombings. The film's answer is two fold: 1)its the last and most desperate act of a people that have little to no other means to resist occupation 2) it doesn't help their cause. The latter sentiment is echoed by Jews, Palestinians and others that're interviewed.

There are other misconcenptions that are attacked direclty and indirectly in the film, from the fact that Palestinians are lazy, well there are no jobs and infrastructure in the territories & they can't leave and work inside of Israel, to how the 1st and 2nd Intifada's began and why. No one really comes out of this documentary clean and unblemished; Israel is made to look like a fascist state that is doing exactly what was done to them in Nazis Germany, America might as well be no different than Iran in its support for Hezbollah, with the way that America supports Israel, and congress has a major lobby in the form AIPAC. There are many parallels that can be drawn between all the players on this field. I don't know, I think the film does what it intended to do, but if its going to be critical of the media, then I would've liked to have sene some criticism of the Arab networks too. Lets face it people, every story has two sides, and in the case of these stories, there are MANY sides, yet the film makers never once mention how bad the media coverage is from the Arab side. Are we to think that they can do no wrong?

You should check out the film for yourself. There are things that can't be denied, there is a human toll that is discussed and shown that you normally don't see. Gaza is the most densly populated place on Earth. How is that not a prison camp? A study of 1000 children done in the Gaza strip showed that the majority of them had lost or were loosing their will to live. There isn't a building in Gaza that isn't riddled with bullet holes. When you examine the numbers of Palestinian dead to Israeli, its rather lopsided. The dollars that support Israel are staggering, as is the the history and unwaivering nature of that support. Lots of small details come out, and together they make a narrative, but its not perfect, and you're going to have to go see it and see fo yourself where the holes in it might or might not be.