Nice reply, nice post.
I don't know how I should have phrased my question ... any way that it is expressed it is still going to get clueless replies.
The fact that the movie only became video at the end when the people were dying seems to make the point that only life and death is worth thinking about. The every life is precious, one life is too many, a whole lot of guilt trips like this.
Or, is it really so important for Israelis to remember that Palestinians are people too?
This question is asked from the Israelis side, dramatized and put out in public space to refer to itself, to force the questions, to provoke reality.
Where is this on the Palestinian, Arab, Islamic. or the world's side.
When someone involved in a war dwells on the value of life like this it is cognitively dissonant - and what is the audience to make of it?
It is war.
This is not, or is it, a popularity contest?
If it is not a popularity contest, then the law of fairness, logic, objectivity should apply. But looked at objectively, there is not a single leg for the Palestinians to stand on.
They were innocent until they let the event of Jews having their own land that displaced some of them.
I mean there is a whole chain or logic reason that no one can really make because the slightest utterance gets unreasonable protest from the Islamic side who do not intend to treat non-islamic people as human beings. This is not simple the prejudice of an american while southerner who might not like black people but has learned to tolerate them within the laws, the very laws themselves in Islamic states are antithetical to what human rights is in the West and they want to bring these laws to the West.
So, this movie is very weird.
To even bring up the middle east in a movie is dwarfed by the conceptions of the problem, so anything about the middle east in reality has to try to be a documentary, any small thing in the movie can be interpreted as trying to make a statement about the situation or blame by idiosyncratic relation to the characters or situations in the movie.
People have been known to confuse movies with history.
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
This reinforces the view that the film will appear very biased if viewed by people who have no background knowledge of this complex Lebanese "civil" war, that was a mix of civil feud, regional rivalries and cold war influences. I hope it would at least encourage viewers to read more about it.
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bruce-129
15 years ago
But, what is background on the "Lebanese Civil War" and how are people supposed to know or agree on what the background is, and how deep do you go into it and whose version and reaction to accept as true?
You cannot make a movie about this subejct and not say something, and if you try to say something, doesn't it just become self-referential trash? because what can your say without facts. and what are the facts, from whose point of view. the movie is not going to take its own point of view?
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
Well I can try and summarise the background info in a few bullet-points:
1) The migration of the Palestinians into Lebanon in the 50's and 60's has been widely seen by the Lebanese collective thought as the main factor upsetting the delicate and "harmonious" co-existence of Muslims and Christians.
2) With the implicit support of the Soviet Union (and Egypt in the early days when it was an ally of the Soviet Union), the PLO has managed to create a strong base in Lebanon. It sensed the socialist aspirations of the Lebanese muslims which had an overall inferior share of the country's considerable wealth and political power and teamed up with them to overthrow the established political system.
3) Despite many attempts by the Lebanese government to integrate the Palestinians properly into Lebanese civil life, the PLO leaders have constantly resisted it so they would be able to show to the sufferings of the Palestinian people huddled into camps to the world media.
4) The Phalangists were a fringe extremist group that gained clout as the Maronite Christians decided they also needed an armed militia to counteract the first acts of violence by the leftist Muslim groups. The Phalangist were a clear proof of the existence of Christian armed radicalism, the last remaining Christian crusaders of the 20th century alongside the IRA. The Phalangist were then later integrated into a more "mainstream" coalition of Christian militia called "Forces Libanaises". It is important to note that as in any coalition, the extremist and moderate factions continued to co-exist inside the "Forces Libanaises" and that Bashir Gemayel was not seen as being part of the hardcore Phalangist factions. It was well documented that after Bashir's assassination, his close family members were opposed to revenge killings.
5) The Palestinians in Lebanon were not only victims to the Christians but also to fellow Muslims. As Syria started to reinforce its influence in Lebanon via the Lebanese shi-ite militias (early Hizbollah), the latter have also had their share of brutality to give a final blow to Palestinian influence in South Lebanon. Near the end of the war, the Christians also fought between themselves as General Aoun dissented from the "Forces Libanaises" which he considered bloodthirsty and corrupt.
6) In the scale of the long Lebanese civil war, the Isreali invasion was a relatively brief event and also a fiasco (just like the second recent invasion). The main reason being that it had a Lebanese ally that was losing the battle. The political battle was already a lost case and the moral battle reached its tipping point as the world media showed pictures of the Palestinian camp massacres. It is also possible that Isreal couldn't care less about Lebanon and just used the invasion as a pretext to deliver a serioius blow to PLO forces. Syria was then quick to step up its influence, fill the military void and establish what is commonly called the Pax Syriana.
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bruce-129
15 years ago
What is the Palestinian migration to Lebanon? There are a lot of different versions of this, this was not a migration, at least according to people like Brigitt Gabriel who lived in Lebanon as a girl. It was more of an invasion. What is this really, a terrorist backed Islamic takeover of Lebanon?
Hate to be blunt or seem insenstive, but it seems the Israelis did not kill enough of them because who else is making up the Hezbollah and some large proportion of the Lebanese population?
Didn't the Palestinians do the same thing in Jordan? Tried to kill the King there and take over the country.
Why are the Palestinians ... not seen for what they are and an appropriate reaction seems off the table?
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
Palestinians in Lebanon did get sufficiently hammered and from all directions (as said in my previous post). They are probably the biggest casualty of the Lebanese Civil War and the Lebanese Christians the biggest loosers politically. I am not sure you will find many Palestinians in Hizbollah because the latter is essentially Shi-ite in origin (not to be confused with Hamas which has very different origins).
As to your comment on the "Islamic takeover of Lebanon", I highly doubt this was religiously motivated because the PLO was pretty secular at the time and more apparent to the leftist pro-Russian "Baathist" type organisations in Syria and Iraq.
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bruce-129
15 years ago
> I am not sure you will find many Palestinians in Hizbollah because the latter is essentially Shi-ite in origin
> (not to be confused with Hamas which has very different origins).
So, Hezbollah wants to destroy Israel, but not for the Palestinians? Not in solidarity with the Palestinians?
I thought all of these groups all trace back to the PLO and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Powerful gangs is what they seem like to me.
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
The solidarity between Hamas and Hizbollah is pretty recent. Hizbollah was basically a Syrian outpost towards Israel that helped to regain the last strip of previously occupied territory in South Lebanon. After that was achieved, Syria continued to use Hizbollah as a scarecrow to Israel to be able to broker a fair peace agreement and gain back the Golan Heights.
It is interesting you mention the Muslim Brotherhood because in the cold war setting, the real religious extremist groups were covertly supported by the West (and at times Saudi Arabia too) to fight Marxist or Marxist-leaning regimes. Just like the initial support given to Mujahideens to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Again, the PLO was much more secular in nature and only had a political agenda. It is only much later, to gain support from the extremist Muslim crowds that Arafat started to play the Muslim chord (just like Sadam Hussein did at the end of his reign).
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bruce-129
15 years ago
So why is Iran so anti-Israel, or is it just the ruling elite in Iran?
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
Yes of course, I forgot to mention Iran which also supports Hizbollah and is the geographical centre of Shi-ite Muslim faith.
I'm being cynical here, but I think that no Arab state hates Israel because they have a real compassion for Palestinians, even if they like to act that way. Iran hates Israel as a way to hate the US indirectly. Iran is suspicious (and rightly so) that the US and its allies want to topple the regime in place.
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bruce-129
15 years ago
Are you local to the region?
It seems so ironic that whatever makes the Arabs ( and Iran ) hate Israel and the Jews so much, probably Islam and a long history of intolerance and abuse towards non-Muslims is what makes the state of Israel necessary and fair. It is also what makes the US want to topple the regime. Of course oil is probably a larger factor, but the oil part is shrinking I think, and the instability and contempt for human rights is starting to increase.
One can easily extrapolate why they do not want to see the Kurds get their own state as well, because then every oppressed minority the many Muslims countries would want out of that diabolical social order.
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
No, I live in Belgium.
I would argue that any religion in its extreme form will be hindering the advance of civil liberties, human rights and democracy - it's not just Islam.
The problem in the Middle East is that Islam and corrupt, dictatorial regimes go hand in hand - especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two big regional powers next to Israel. Religion is clearly used as an instrument of power and propaganda.
The West has always used double standards in its Middle East policy such as condemning Iran (which is a half-democracy) but continuing to support Saudi Arabia despite its ruthless dictatorial regime and its implicit support of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world. This is why despite Internet, satellite TV and all the info circulating about Western lifestyle, the Arabs continue to distrust the West.
This defiance of the West in the region really plays in the hands of the Gulf States that want to remain the financial and economic hub of the Middle East. You just have to make a little research on the development of sprawling cities like Dubai, Bahrain, Abu Dahbi and Doha.
The general comment is that the fundamental drive for the tensions and conflicts in the Middle East is geopolitics and economics, not religion, even if religion is often used as a political tool.
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bruce-129
15 years ago
Well, it's fine that any religion can turn nasty as any person has the same potential, but
at present it is Islam. But not only that, Islam is a pernicious low-tech and highly closed
and effective formor sensory and intellectual deprevation, and brainwashing that is
extremely difficult to affect.
You say it's about politics and economics, but does that explain the hatred of Israel, and
the insistance that it be destroyed? I think not.
This is totalitarianism. The US and other countries have corruption, but we do not have a
corruption that is focused towards a goal. I think it might be trying to work that way either
in reaction to or connection with a difficulty explaining the world in a democratic nation.
Democracy is going to be put to the test in this century, and there is an even chance it
will fail in my opinion.
The people of any of these societies are too stressed to be able to look at their situations
in an educated way, especially with all the brainwashing that takes place.
An interesting movie that came out I think about the same time as WWB, was "Where In The
World Is Osama bin Laden". It was more of a comedy, but it presented some chilling scenes,
especially ones that had to do with Saudi Arabia. That showed how closed and policed that
society is.
Does the US have the right to demand other cultures open up and develop tolerance and
human rights. I think that is where this is going to have to go, and it is a can or worms.
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matthias-locker
15 years ago
I totally agree that promoting democracy and human rights should be an essential goal of the Western nations. But it also means that Europe and US must work hand in hand (which is more probable now that Bush is gone) and that we should apply the same standards to all regimes. We cannot cuddle up to regimes like Saudi Arabia, Lybia and China and at the same time push for a change of regime in Sudan, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar etc...
I think if you go to Dubai or Singapore you won't feel anything low-tech about Islam. And concerning the brainwashing and intellectual deprevation: a lot of the European "liberals" as you would call them, would view the US bible belt in the same way - it's all just a point of view.
Thanks for the movie suggestion. I would also suggest seeing the movie "Syriana" which is quite vocal on the extremely ambiguous relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia.
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