Documentary on HBO

[thetreble 19]

This weekend I watched an HBO documentary called "To Die in Jerusalem". A basic summary of the documentary is this:

-A Palestinian, 18 year old girl, walks into a shopping market in Jerusalem and carries out a suicide mission

-The only other victim besides the suicide bomber was a 17 year old Israeli, Rachel Levy

-The looked almost identical and it was hard to identify them

-The Israeli mother wanted to speak to the Palestinian mother for years about if she knew her daughter would do this, or if she thought what her daughter did was right.

-After 4 years they finally spoke via satillite and no answers were really achieved. The Palestinian mother and father both argued they were all victims of the Israeli occupation and until she experienced their living conditions, she could never understand why her daughter did what she did. There was never a time during the interview in which the parents of the bomber were somber over the death of the young Israeli girl. In fact, the father stated in a previous interview that his daughter died with the utmost dignity.

There was a lot of art work depicting Ayat Akhras, the Palestinian suicide bomber, as a martyr all over the area she lived in and in her school. While keeping in mind all things Islam, it was still mildly disturbing.

The Isreali mother also went to a prison which houses female Palestinian militants, mostly those who's suicide missions failed. Most of them were jailed for long sentences. Most of them are in the 20s and have children and most of them said if they got out, they would try to carry out their mission again. One prisoner said that if Israel would end the occupation and give them back what is theirs, then they wouldn't have to use resistance in this form.

Resistance and occupation are like a hot dog and ketchup. Over centuries we have seen many countries offer resistance to their occupiers in brutal ways. America is an example of one. But those wars had different styles of combat in comparison to what we are seeing today. I do not know if that makes it any different, worse or understandable.

Any ways, this documentary has been sitting heavily on my mind. What do you guys think of the Palestinian and Israeli battles? Do you think resistance can be justified under occupation? Do you think there is any way of finding out who owned what and where and by who's authority this was stated...is there references in religious texts to the sq by sq mile of land that a people has birth rights to? Etc.

[SpiritAlight 1]

Wow.

I have seen a few docs on this region of the world, and until I can personally go there and see for myself it just seems so messy.

The only thing the movies help me conclude is that the occupation by Israel is causing the violence.

And I would need to go and see, as I said, to be certain of anything.

[thetreble 19]

There have been some, though, that have promoted a two nation state where both people are free to live on all parts of the region but this is often not accepted by Palestinians as a solution. It seems as though they wish for the Israeli's to go to other countries where Jews have made roots in like Morocco and Russia, and to give them back "their" land.

How do we decide what belongs to whom?

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

There have been some, though, that have promoted a two nation state where both people are free to live on all parts of the region but this is often not accepted by Palestinians as a solution. It seems as though they wish for the Israeli's to go to other countries where Jews have made roots in like Morocco and Russia, and to give them back "their" land.

How do we decide what belongs to whom?

This is a very touchy subject for the Canada forum and I know a few folks in the Peace Now movement (ex-JDF mostly) and my fair share of Sepharic Jews, so I may be a bit biased. The legal question of who owns the land is simple, almost all Palestinians have legal documents issued at the time of the Ottoman Empire or even centuries before, that would seem to solve the problem. The religious argument doesn't hold water since the Patriarch is the ancestor of all three religions in question. Seeing how the Messiah isn't here yet, something else needs to be done. The current state of affairs is such that privately most people want a one-state solution with something along the lines of a reconciliation commission as in South Africa but the fear is that if the right of return of people displaced in 1948 will dilute the Jewish character of Israel. I think that it is really a fear of the Arabization of Israel that people fear, but it is already happening and as the Sephardim know, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Ashkenazi Jewish character might change but I think it will be for the better, might be a chance to reconnect with Maimonides, ha-Levi, Gaon and the Babylonian Talmud. The two-state solution will not work since many of the Ashkenazim are tuned into the Aboriginal model of assimilation used in Canada and the US (driven into them by centuries of oppression) and that model is predicated on creating small reservations or enclaves that are not contiguous. A Pagan concept imported into Zion, Heaven help us! The real problem is the military-industrial complex and the associated arms merchants, primarily in the US, that must maintain the status quo so they can keep selling their weapons. The average American has no idea. My favourite story is of American religious tourists visiting Nazareth, seeing a Palestinian waiter with a cross and asking him, "when did you convert."

[Emancipation 2]

A friend recently sent me this link.. said she had met this guy and he really challenged her http://jerusalempeacemakers.org/ibrahim/

[thetreble 19]

There have been some, though, that have promoted a two nation state where both people are free to live on all parts of the region but this is often not accepted by Palestinians as a solution. It seems as though they wish for the Israeli's to go to other countries where Jews have made roots in like Morocco and Russia, and to give them back "their" land.

How do we decide what belongs to whom?

This is a very touchy subject for the Canada forum and I know a few folks in the Peace Now movement (ex-JDF mostly) and my fair share of Sepharic Jews, so I may be a bit biased. The legal question of who owns the land is simple, almost all Palestinians have legal documents issued at the time of the Ottoman Empire or even centuries before, that would seem to solve the problem. The religious argument doesn't hold water since the Patriarch is the ancestor of all three religions in question. Seeing how the Messiah isn't here yet, something else needs to be done. The current state of affairs is such that privately most people want a one-state solution with something along the lines of a reconciliation commission as in South Africa but the fear is that if the right of return of people displaced in 1948 will dilute the Jewish character of Israel. I think that it is really a fear of the Arabization of Israel that people fear, but it is already happening and as the Sephardim know, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Ashkenazi Jewish character might change but I think it will be for the better, might be a chance to reconnect with Maimonides, ha-Levi, Gaon and the Babylonian Talmud. The two-state solution will not work since many of the Ashkenazim are tuned into the Aboriginal model of assimilation used in Canada and the US (driven into them by centuries of oppression) and that model is predicated on creating small reservations or enclaves that are not contiguous. A Pagan concept imported into Zion, Heaven help us! The real problem is the military-industrial complex and the associated arms merchants, primarily in the US, that must maintain the status quo so they can keep selling their weapons. The average American has no idea. My favourite story is of American religious tourists visiting Nazareth, seeing a Palestinian waiter with a cross and asking him, "when did you convert."

so..in Lehman's terms?