Another important moment brought about by the Oscar nomination of the great documentary, “5 Broken Cameras”: this morning Brian Lehrer of WNYC interviewed the filmmakers Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi for 20 minutes. Lehrer is generally a reflexive supporter of Israel; he rarely gives a platform to the Palestinian view. Today he confessed he was shocked by the movie and was all ears to a Palestinian.
Lehrer asked vital questions about the occupation that all Americans should be asking. He asked Burnat to describe Bil’in, he marveled that the settlement built atop Bil’in’s land and olive trees is highrises. And in his way, he eulogized the great Palestinian activist Bassem Abu Rahmah, whom the film celebrates, in this earnest question:
Emad– the film repeatedly shows you and other people from Bil’in being shot. Or otherwise roughed up by Israeli security forces. It’s extremely shocking to watch some of this. You even record the killing of one of your friends, because you happened to be shooting. What kind of historical document do you think you have here?
Then there’s this, a genuinely open moment:
Does your experience in Bil’in leave you with any kind of political solutions in mind? Is it still Oslo/Camp David style, two-state solution, and you just have to wait for it– or is it something else now, or don’t you even think about it at that level one way or another?
Burnat says in essence that the peace process is dead, and the dream of a Palestinian state has also died.
Beautiful. An empowered American Jewish media host gives a forum to a Palestinian to describe actual Palestinian conditions (as northern reporters once allowed blacks to narrate the experience of Jim Crow). It’s what we’ve always pushed for. And yes, safe in America but holding on to the belief in the need for a Jewish state, over there, Lehrer tries to derive hope from the Yair Lapid surge in the recent election, the Obama visit, and the fact that Israelis participate in the demonstrations in Bil’in; but in this case he is a journalist, and defers to the man on whose land this dream is being built.
RE: “Burnat says in essence that the peace process is dead, and the dream of a Palestinian state has also died.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Elliott Abrams convinced me several years ago* to give up on the “two-state solution”.
*FROM ELLIOTT ABRAMS, The Washington (Neocon) Post, 04/08/09:
SOURCE – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703379.html
P.S. Elliott Abrams has totally convinced me [by the sheer power of his (il)logic and his very impressive math skills] to wholeheartedly support the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank.
As I understand it, the ‘Abrams Principle’ stands for the proposition that more Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank will result in a larger area for the Palestinian state. That’s why I say: “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” with the settlement actvity; so as to result in the largest Palestinian state possible (from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River), no matter what that state is called. Fiat justitia! ( “Let Justice Be Done!” )
P.P.S. According to a recent EU Briefing Paper (EU Trade with Israeli Settlements, Version 2: Published August 2012), “[t]he total area controlled by settlements is around 43 per cent of the West Bank.” The Briefing Paper further explains that “[w]hile fenced or patrolled areas of settlements cover three per cent of the West Bank, 43 per cent of the West Bank is off-limits for Palestinian use because of its allocation to the settlements’ local and regional councils, according to UN OCHA OPT (January 2012) factsheet ‘The Humanitarian Impact of Israeli Settlement Policies’ .”
SOURCE [EU Trade with Israeli Settlements (PDF)] – http://www.qcea.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bp-eusettlementtrade-version2-en-aug-2012.pdf
And to think insider Brian Lehrer merely has to go online and google the situation…. shocking he’s shocked, if he actually was. Another bubble boy negatively impacting the rest of us who are outside the system, both here and abroad.
I found it incredible that he was shocked, just shocked by what the film makers had to say–can you get more inside the mainstream media than he is? And he’s a journalist with tons of connections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lehrer
So much for PBS.
Nobody in their right mind (ie unaffected by decades of zio brainwashing) could fail to be horrified by 5 Broken Cameras and the ugly attitudes and actions it documents. That is the simple reason why Israel and its foreign agents fight so hard and so relentlessly to stop the facts being presented fairly to the American and European public. No amount of blustering, lying propaganda can counter the simple demonstration of the truth, and they know it.
The 2 SS is dead. It died a long time ago for Israelis. They talked themselves into believing it doesn’t matter. They think the world shares their Weltanschauung. But we don’t speak Hebrew….Israel’s ambassadors work on the front linesof hasbara and they know the war is being lost.
This is evidence that documents like 5 Cameras do a wonderful job of penetrating minds. Something about the nature of this discourse needs to be understood and replicated. Really heartwarming to see Lehrer show this openness.