2013 18th Seoul Human Rights Film Festival Screening times: 11am 2013/05/23 (Thu) to 9pm 2013/05/26 (Sun) Location: Cheonggye Plaza, Seoul (Gwanghwamun Stn. (Subway Line 5), Exit 5. Walk 20 meters.) Slogan: ‘I know what is really going on in this place’ Special opening event: 7pm, Thursday (May 23) Special closing event: 6pm, Sunday (May 26) Full schedule:http://hrffseoul.org/en/timetable
If you have time please come on out and say hi! and check out some of the great films on offer. Not all of the films are in English but you can see the full listing of more than 25 films by clicking on the link below.
2013 Seoul Human Rights Film Festival
A particular highlight for me is the film saved for the closing ceremony, ‘Shadows of Liberty’ (2012, 93 mins) by director Jean-Philippe Tremblay from England which looks how the mainstream media is controlled and censored by corporate interests and governments, even driving nations to war. But there are plenty of issues covered this year so check it our for yourself to see what you’d like to watch.
* Dr. Abuelaish will be speaking again tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 22) from 7 – 9 pm at his official book launch. The event is being supported by Peace Museum which may have seats remaining for those who book in time. If you’d like to join, send an email to peacemuseum@empal.com with your name and contact number. Details of the event are available on the Peace Museum website (in Korean only). A map to the location which is the Lecture Room on the 2nd Floor of the Franciscan Education Center can be viewed here. Take exit 5 of Seodaemun Station.
Born and raised in poverty in Jabalia Refugee Camp, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish became the first Palestinian medical doctor to work inside Israel and Gaza at the same time and the first Palestinian to complete a formal residency at an Israeli hospital. From an early age he has worked tirelessly to help others, waking at 3 or 4 am each morning when he was young to work before going to school to help support his family.
While he is now Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto and has been awarded the Order of Ontario before his personal tragedy he used to travel to and from Israel every week through the Eretz crossing to work inside an Israeli hospital. He recalled that when he first started working, Israeli’s didn’t think of Palestinians as human beings and so he wanted to meet people face to face and hold up his hard work and success as an example to fight this racism.
PPS activists at our stall outside the event
His own childen worked hard and were high achievers in all that they did. They also attended a number of peace camps and had taken on board their father’s message of peace. But just weeks after their losing their mother to cancer, tragedy struck the family during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009 which left over 1,400 Palestinians dead. Their house was shelled by the Israeli Defense Forces and three of Izzeldin’s daugthers and one niece were killed. One of his daughters was decapitated and he described the blood of his daughters on the walls of his home. As no medical support was provided despite his desperate story been broadcasted on live Israeli television, he was left to carry his own children through the streets of a warn torn Gaza.
After the loss of his daughters, he established a foundation in their memory named Daughters for Life and has campaigned tirelessly to spread his message of peace and justice. While his journey has been marked by deep personal pain and suffering, he spoke from the heart and appealed to the conscience. One of his key messages was that silence in the face of injustice equals complicity in that injustice. It is the responsibility of all to speak out against injustice wherever we see it in the world rather than wait until it is directed at us; otherwise how can we expect others to fight for us if we are silent in their oppression?
Most importantly from a health perspective, he sees healthcare as a model for social justice. As all patients are treated equally within the four walls of a hospital, humans too must strive for equality and break down the walls of discrimination. He described hate as a cancer that must be fought against with the weapons of peace and justice.
He is a courageous example of Palestinian resistance and hope. He reminds us not only with his words but with his deeds that Palestinians are not victims of hate and injustice, they are survivors. It is with this spirit that peace will be achieved.
A friend and members of Palestine Peace & Solidarity join hand in hand with Dr. Abuelaish
Today marks 65 years since the beginning of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in which over 750,000 of its Palestinian inhabitants were driven from their homes and land, Palestinians whose familes had lived there for generation after generation. The Nakba or Catastrophe continues with the ongoing Israeli military occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank and the illegal siege of Gaza that continues to strangle its people.
This graphic from Visualizing Palestine offers a visual representation of displacement, dislocation and loss of homeland through the forced exile of Palestinians.
As this Al Jazeera documentary shows, the plan to cleanse the land of its Arab inhabitants goes back at least to a conquering and war hungry Napolean but took shape through the Zionist project with British colonial support involving Jewish militias and terror groups.
The massacre at Deir Yassen is the most well known symptom of this violent history but the loss of Palestinian culture and heritage through the organized robbery of Palestinian books is violence of another form. As this excellent documentary from Al Jazeera shows, the fact that these books remain inside Israel in a library that most Palestinians cannot visit is symbolic of the ongoing Nakba.
A commemoration of a tragic event that is still unwinding in military occupation and apartheid must be fuled by tears, but there are many sources of strength and hope. It is to the struggle of some of the most oppressed people on the planet we share that we must turn our attention also. As sweat next to tears, the cries of resistance are as deep as the wounds. Here is a collection of poems read aloud in his own voice by Palestine’s late national poet Mahmoud Darwish to the music of Le Trio Joubran.
“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears.” – Marmoud Darwish
And, finally, here is a selection from Fatma Kassem’s 2011 book, Palestinian Women: Narrative histories and gendered memory (Zed Books) in which she tells the story of the ongoing Nakba through the lived herstories of Palestinian women now living inside the State of Israel on what was once Palestinian land. I shall let the author describe in her own words which are taken from the opening lines of her book:
“This book traces and documents the gendered memory and narrative histories of a group of ordinary urban Palestinian women who witnessed the events of 1948, when the State of Israel was founded. Importantly, these women have all remained on their homeland after it subsequently became Israel, the Jewish state. Told in their own words, these women’s experiences serve as a window for examining the complex intersections of gender, history, memory, nationalism and citizenship in a situation of ongoing colonization and violent conflict between Palestinians and the Zionist State of Israel. Known in the Palestinian discourse of nationalism as the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, this event and those that have followed since 1948 still exert a powerful influence on the present-day lives of these women – as women, as members of the broader Palestinian community to which they belong and as Israeli citizens. Examined from a sociological perspective, the unique experiences of these Palestinian women from the margins can shed more light on the multiple continuing effects of the Nakba.”
The Nakba must end. Palestinians will be free. Until then, those of us with the freedom to raise our voices against injustice must.
THE OLIVE TREE by Tawfiq Zayyad (translated by Sulafa Hijjawi)
Because I do not knit wool
Because I am always hunted
And my house is always raided.
Because I cannot own a piece of paper,
I shall carve my memoirs
On the home yard olive tree.
I shall carve bitter reflections,
Scenes of love and yearnings,
For my stolen orange grove
And the lost tombs of my dead.
I shall carve all my strivings
For the sake of remembrance
For the time when I’ll drown them
In the avalanche of triumph
I shall carve the serial number
Of every stolen piece of land
The place of my village on the map
And the blown up houses,
And the uprooted trees
And every bloom that was crushed
And all the names of the experts in torture
The names of the prisons…..
I shall carve dedications
To memories threading down to eternity
To the blooded soil of Deir Yasin
And Kufur Qassem.
I shall carve the sun’s beckoning
And the moon’s whisperings
And what a skylark recalls
At a love deserted well.
For the sake of remembrance,
I shall continue to carve
All the chapters of my tragedy
And all the stages of Al- Nakbah
On the home yard olive tree!
To commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Palestinian Catastrophe (al Nakba) in which over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948 in what amounted to an ethnic cleansing of their land by armed Israeli forces, Palestine Peace & Solidarity in South Korea held a screening of Paradise Now in our office in Hapjeong, Seoul on Monday, May 13 (two days ahead of Nakba Day).
Our event was held as part of a number of events organized by the Asian Peoples’ Solidarity for Palestine (APSP) which includes public conferences, rallies, exhibitions, seminars and other events in a number of locations across the region including 15 cities in Afghanistan, India, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and South Korea. This regional initiative is a part of the “Global Campaign to Return to Palestine” organized by members of the network to address the issue of the right of return for the millions of refugees who remain unable to return to their family homes.
The film depicts the story of two Palestinian friends living in the West Bank who volunteer to take part in a suicide attack inside Israel. The story addresses the issues of violence and nonviolence, hope and hopelessness in the ongoing Palestinian struggle under Israeli military occupation. The film screening was followed by a group discussion about different forms of resistance and the meaning of the ongoing daily Nakba for Palestinians and we shared some Arabic salad and hummus and flatbreads together. Thank you to all those who attended and for your patience and interesting input into our discussion.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the IDF arrested 32 Palestinians including 7 children in the West Bank and conducted 63 invasions into Palestinian communities in the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank in the week ending May 1.
There are signs that Israel may be gearing up for another assault on Gaza. A popular Israeli web portal has reported that Israel may be preparing a second Operation Pillar of Defense as it conducted last November in which 160 Palestinians were killed and countless more wounded. The article, as reported by Press TV, is claiming that the IDF may carry out another military operation in order to destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure.
War and Peace
The revised peace deal put forward by the Arab League for a settlement between Israel and Palestine has been rejected outright by Hamas. The Arab League’s proposal is a weaker version of that first suggested and rejected by Israel in 2002 and includes potential land swaps. Mondoweiss is reporting that Netanyahu’s backing of the proposal is in part fueled by his fear of an eventual one-state solution: “The purpose of the future agreement with the Palestinians is to prevent the eventuality of a binational state and to guarantee stability and security.”
Over the weekend Israel reportedly bombed a number of sites including a military research facility near the Syrian capital of Damascus, purportedly targeting advanced Iranian-made missiles that were earmarked for Hezbollah. One report suggests 100 soldiers were killed in the strikes. The U.S. has predictably defended Israel’s right to bomb a sovereign nation. You would be forgiven if the varying accounts had left you rather confused about the whole situation.
The last time Israel bombed Syria was January 31, but this time the bombings were reportedly on a much larger scale. Such a move could certainly provoke a response that could quickly escalate into a larger regional conflict. As Larry Derfner suggests that it is in part a show of strength, “The rules of this game are that Israel continually flies spy planes over Lebanon, bombs Syria now, and may bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities later, secure in its belief that the targets can’t do much in return… In other words, Israel’s air strikes in Syria were meant to maintain its ability to carry out continued acts of aggression against its enemies without fear of challenge. This is the game, and this is what Israel doesn’t want anyone to change.”
Resistance is Never Futile
Despite the threat of a future Israeli attack on Gaza and the ongoing occupation, Palestinans remain resiliant and defiant. Members of Jenin’s Freedom Theatre in the occupied West Bank recently performed a play depicting the resistance of the villagers of Nabi Saleh based on the testimonies of children from the village itself.
Check out more wonderful images from ActiveStills. You can also check out their latest online newsletter here.
Palestine Peace & Solidarity attended the main event for May Day in front of City Hall in downtown Seoul. We found ourselves a space amongst the other booths and were quickly absorbed into the crowd as many thousands of workers filled the plaza.
Organic bbopki or Korean traditional candy.
Before the event, our rockstar activists Nyaong and Sarah melted organic sugar in the morning at the fair trade café Tripti in Sinchon where Sarah works and cooked up a treat of some damn fine bbobki (traditional candy) to sell at our booth.
Goodies galore.
Many people visited our booth and supported our activism by purchasing some of our items, including keffiyeh’s from the last keffiyeh factory in Palestine and other items that were hand made by our members and supporters. Thank you to everyone who came out to support us!
Our Fashion Guru is currently setting up our official online merchandise store which will raise money to support our activism here in Korea and also to help us to get over to Palestine to show our support in kind. The online store’s not yet completely finished, but will be in the near future. You can take a sneak preview here.
The little shop of PPS – coming soon!
Hope to see everyone out at the Human Rights Film Festival that will be held from May 23 – 26 at Cheonggye Plaza near Gwanghwamun, Seoul. Admission is, as always, free for the public. We’ll be there and we hope that you’ll drop by to say hi!
Here’s the event info:
