Near the end her reaction while making their bed about his filming is the best part because she is telling the truth. Such time wasted, time he could have spent showing his kids something more than protests. What would I do to defend my own home and family? Sure I would protest and hate whoever committed this act but I wouldn't act in a way that could endanger me or them. It is blindness of the highest caliber to not see your own family for what they are worth.
shareYeah, but his wife, although making a very valid point which I agree with, was wrong at the end. The years of his filming led to the very unlikely conclusion that his work would lead him all the way to Hollywood and an Oscar Nomination. Because he persisted in his hobby with the best intentions of chronicling his village's experience, now the whole world knows. His way of fighting via a non-violent means ultimately worked in his favour and I am sure would benefit his family for a long time to come.
http://www.1971-reviewae.com One Nine Seven One
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I don't think the payoff is anything close to what he really wants...
shareTypical racist, anti-Arab Zionist response. Go back to the little cave you came from.
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What Golda Meir meant by that comment was "Peace will come when the Arabs surrender for fear of their children dying." She just spun it in a way that people outside the Middle East would be willing to hear. Don't believe everything a country's leader says about their own people or other nations' people. Judge a culture by the people you meet yourself.
I know Arab parents and Jewish parents and on balance I don't think either culture's family values are better or worse than the other.
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The London Olympics, 'Days of Thunder' style! http://tinyurl.com/bbbkfxf
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Most of the protests shown in the film were unarmed and (compared to most of the Intifada that we see on the news) relatively non-violent. The children would not have been in danger at the protest unless they were deliberately targeted by the soldiers, which would have been highly unlikely with video cameras and international sympathisers present.
I actually have a huge respect for the villagers in this documentary because they are not trying to change the entire conflict. They are not challenging Israel's right to exist or debating which Palestinian party (Fatah or Hamas) best represents their interests. They are just trying to change the one tiny part of the conflict that directly affects them. Many people around the world have become indifferent to politics because they feel they can't make an impact on the big picture, but everyone and anyone can make an impact on their day to day life, if they want it badly enough.
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The London Olympics, 'Days of Thunder' style! http://tinyurl.com/bbbkfxf
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Wow, where do I start...
1. The rocks that rained down on the vehicle were towards the end of the film and in the Arab's own village. The legal dispute had clearly turned sour by that point and the IDF were coming to where the children lived, rather than the adults bringing the children to them.
2. What Israeli casualties were there in the course of the Bilin protests? We see one Palestinian die. Did any IDF soldiers die whilst the legal dispute was running its course?
3. Israel was not vilified. Only its settlement policy and the settlers, who most secular Israelis consider an embarrassment to their country anyway. Its medical community are shown as compassionate whilst the Palestinian Authority are shown as unhelpful. Even the IDF come across as more restrained than they're usually portrayed in the news, with the exception of the guy who shoots an arrested protestor (that is no longer a threat) in the leg and, maybe, their detainment of the children. I've got no problem with young rioters being arrested but it would look better if their parents were brought along for the questioning as well (just saying).
4. At no point does the filmmaker not recognise the right of Israel to defend its citizens. His main beef seems to be that the wall is much close to the Arab village than the Israeli settlement, i.e. giving the latter a disproportionate amount of the land that exists between them.
I suggest you rewatch the movie with an open mind and give the Bilin villagers the respect that they deserve.
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The London Olympics, 'Days of Thunder' style! http://tinyurl.com/bbbkfxf
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Just googled that Meir quote to check when she made it and it turns out she said it in 1957. This was long before Palestinian teens picked up stones in the intifada and not long after pre-Israel guerilla groups were fighting the British Army from within a population of Jewish immigrant civilians.
But anyway, back to the movie. If the film mentioned the barrier being erected to prevent terrorists, then the Arab audience would ask why it didn't mention the provocations that created terrorism, and if it did that the Israeli audience would ask why it didn't mention the flaws in the Arab audience's argument, then the Arab audience would...you get the idea.
Basically the conflict is far too big and goes too far back to be covered in one documentary, which is why the film does the smart thing and brings it down to local level. Were IDF soldiers killed in protests at other villages? No doubt - but that is not Bilins' fault. Is the filmmaker's son being brought up to hate Israel? Only a certain side of Israel, but the help his village receives from left-wing Israeli lawyers and the hospital that treated his father is teaching him from a young age that Israel has other sides too. His father would argue that he is bringing his son up not to be naive: don't eat lamb if you can't accept it was once a living animal etc.
I already agreed that the children being arrested are not innocent, but still think it would be better if their parents or other guardians were taken into custody with them for their questioning.
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The London Olympics, 'Days of Thunder' style! http://tinyurl.com/bbbkfxf
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I know more about the British in Palestine than you think. The timing of Meir's quote coming so soon after the likes of the Irgun and incidents such as the Sergeants' Affair (which was as much of a crime against British Jewry as it was to the British Army) all prove that she was a little too quick to forget how her nation was formed. The British, Arabs and Israel's founders all made ethical mistakes prior to and including 1948. Meir was in no position to take the moral high ground as early as 1957.
But that is outside the scope of the film and judging by the last line of your post I'm guessing we're both done here.
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The London Olympics, 'Days of Thunder' style! http://tinyurl.com/bbbkfxf
Bump this up.
Honestly though, how can you defend a film where children are used in such ways? Again, the wife said it best. If someone has to make a change, let it be. Protests are a waste of life/lives. They are just arguments in the form of crowds and never bring out any positive results for either side.
Is this the same Golda Meir that threatened to drop a nuclear weapon on Israel in order to destroy it with the Samson Option?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
The great commonality to all politicians is their absolute insincerity and absolute lack of honesty or ethics.
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It wasn't so hypothetical in 1973.
Golda Meir threatened to do it. She was a lunatic. Israel uses it to blackmail the world now.
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