THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE  THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE World Vision charity presents anti-Israel propaganda
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World Vision charity presents anti-Israel propaganda |
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Written by Atara Beck
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Tuesday, 03 June 2008 |
TORONTO – Almost 200 people attended an event last Thursday evening at University of Toronto on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was purported to be non-political but, in fact, was a major political propaganda effort in its entirety.
Sponsored by World Vision, which calls itself a Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with the world’s most vulnerable people, the program began with the screening of Encounter Point, a film featuring Robi Damelin, an Israeli, and Palestinian Ali Abu Awwad, leaders of the Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF), a self-styled “grassroots peace organization.” Damelin lost a son, who was killed while guarding a settlement against his convictions, and Abu Awwad had lost a brother.
After the film, they addressed the audience. Abu Awwad said a soldier killed his brother “in cold blood. My mother was in prison. I was in prison for four years,” adding that as a teenager, he threw stones at Israelis and that he comes from a “very political family.”
Although the film focussed on the need for dialogue and for Israelis and Palestinians to see each other as human beings, it unmistakably pointed a finger at the “settlers” and the Israel Defence Forces for being the cause of all the intense suffering of both peoples.
“Some Jews want peace – not settlers or the army,” said a Palestinian in the film. “If we could establish a state within the 1967 borders....”
“What are we doing to push an entire nation to celebrate suicide bombings? It’s not so simple, when asked why we see Palestinian parents rejoicing when children become suicide bombers,” Abu Awwad declared in his defence of terrorists during the discussion period.
“Please, don’t take sides. Don’t be pro-Israel or pro-Palestine,” which would only create more “conflict,” Damelin said. Rather, we should build “understanding, empathy and trust.”
Asked why the film clearly blamed one side for all the pain, she replied, “We are not here to discuss politics,” and, in the same breath, “there are moral consequences of the Israeli occupation.”
“Jews evacuated Gaza, and the settlements increase in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Abu Awwad said, without mentioning the hopelessness faced by the Palestinians in Gaza as a result of their own fighting among factions. In fact, in a film scene before the disengagement, Damelin, a former South African, said, “it sounds like apartheid to me,” when one resident claimed life for the Palestinians in Israel is better than in many Arab countries.
Asked after the film whether she considers Israel an apartheid state, she said, “I hate the labels. Let’s talk about dialogue. That was [former US President Jimmy] Carter’s mistake. Now no one from the Jewish community will read the book – and everyone should read it.”
The film featured the tragic murder of a young Christian Palestinian girl, Christina, in “occupied” Bethlehem in a car that, according to the filmmakers, was mistaken for that belonging to a terrorist. At the funeral, she was eulogized as being among the “martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Palestinian soil,” with the message to Israeli mothers that there can be no security while Palestinian land is occupied.
When the Jewish Tribune respectfully asked, in order “to clarify the situation,” why Christina was described that way if she hadn’t participated in the conflict, Abu Awwad voiced his suspicions as to the motivation in asking such a question.
“Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in a bitter conflict for generations,” he said.
However, he couldn’t provide a reasonable explanation as to why the IDF and the settlers are responsible for the war, which had been going on for decades before the “occupation.”
According to the profoundly one-sided film, PCFF is “working for peace, but the Israeli government is denying the opportunity.”
When challenged, Abu Awwad refused to place any responsibility at all on the Palestinian side or on Yasser Arafat in particular, who had declined any compromise towards a Palestinian state and withheld from the Palestinian people billions of dollars donated for state infrastructure. “There’s corruption in every country,” he said, and Arafat actually “did a huge step for peace,” because before Oslo, “the PLO was considered [a] terrorist [organization].”
Both speakers stressed their commitment to achieving “justice” for Palestinians through non-violent means.
Damelin described her excruciatingly difficult decision to communicate with her son’s killer after he was found, and she spoke of the “rippling effect” that could result if a murderer of Jews – considered a hero among his own people for that reason alone – would come to know individual Jews as human beings.
The Holocaust came into play, as Damelin alluded to the Jews’ understanding of pain and discrimination and compared a Palestinian’s distaste for the Hebrew language because of the occupation to her own father’s aversion to the German language and to composer Richard Wagner’s music. Not missing a beat, Abu Awwad said, “I’m not from Hitler. Why should I pay the price of your [Jews’] pain?”
He added, “I would like a one-state solution. [But] Palestine and Israel are like a man and a woman and we need a divorce [two states]. Maybe after we heal we can marry again.
“The political solution is very clear to everyone and that’s what makes me angry. Everyone knows what the political solution is. Tell Israel they have to leave the occupied territories and tell the Palestinians there is no justice.”
Notwithstanding the anti-Israel slant presented during the question period, Tilly Shames, associate director of Hillel of Greater Toronto, told Damelin she was “thrilled” to meet her. “We’re looking at building dialogue on campus… as long as we can talk about food and not politics…. We want people from the moderate middle for dialogue.” Shames asked for “suggestions on how to move forward when you know you’re being criticized on the right and mocked on the left.”
Responding that we should “leave all the politics, leave all the anger,” Damelin said her organization would be working with Georgetown University. “We share the same pain. That’s where the trust starts.” |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 11 June 2008 )
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