Film Review: A Steady Lens and a Dangerous Weapon

Briarpatch Magazine

By Ali Mustafa

5 Broken Cameras
Directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

As soon as residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank village of Bil’in learned of plans to build a wall on their land to make way for a Jewish-only settlement in 2005, non-violent demonstrations erupted. During the same year, Emad Burnat, a local villager, purchased his first video camera to record the birth of his youngest son, Gibreel. From the beginning of the film 5 Broken Cameras, co-directed by Burnat and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, these two events are inextricably entangled.

The 2012 Toronto Palestine Film Festival: A Preview

Toronto Media Co-op

By Ali Mustafa

The 2012 Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) is finally set to hit theatres this weekend. Launched in 2008 to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of al nakba, TPFF aims to showcase the vibrant cultural heritage, resilience, and collective identity of the Palestinian people through film, art, and other events. In five short years, against all the odds, TPFF has quickly emerged as one of the city's premier film festival experiences. In a city with no shortage of noteworthy film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the International Diaspora Film Festival (IDFF), and Hot Docs, it is TPFF's community-based, activist roots that help distinguish it from many of its larger and more established counterparts.

Rethinking Canada's Peacekeeping Myth

New Socialist

By Ali Mustafa

Yves Engler's latest book is an indispensable resource for students and activists alike, offering a sweeping indictment of Canadian foreign policy history in the Middle East that should not go unheeded.

Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid

by Yves Engler

168 pp, Fernwood/RED, $14.95 CAD

Countless books have been written to date on the Israel/Palestine question, exploring everything from the origins of the conflict and current obstacles to peace, to the role of the major world powers involved and vested interests at stake. But few books have yet to examine in any depth the nature of Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East, much less call into question the key political, economic, and ideological forces at play. Yves Engler's Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid not only succeeds on both counts but manages to do so with convincing authority, putting to rest the popular myth that Canada is, or has ever been, an 'honest broker' in the region.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla Attack: Arrogance of Power or Paranoia of Apartheid State on the Brink?

By Ali Mustafa

International outrage

Shock and outrage continues to grow worldwide over Israel's deadly attack on a humanitarian aid convoy bound for Gaza a week ago. Over 600 civilian activists from at least 40 different countries took part in the convoy, carrying 10,000 tons of vital aid, including food, medicine and medical equipment, reconstruction materials, as well as various other basic goods that are arbitrarily banned entry into Gaza by Israel. Israeli naval commandos raided all six ships of the convoy 70 nautical miles offshore in international waters, killing 9 people (8 of which were Turkish citizens) and seriously wounding others. Following the attack, hundreds of the activists were detained but have since been released and deported back home, along with the injured and the bodies of those killed.

Seeding Divestment: Carleton's Yafa Jarrar discusses BDS campaign

The Dominion

By Ali Mustafa

The divestment report urging Carleton University to divest from companies implicated in Israel's occupation and grave violations of human rights is a true gem for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The report's research, argumentation, corroboration and writing style are impeccable and deeply impressive. In making the case for divestment from Israel, the report from Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) combines the best of both worlds: the commitment to truth and justice of the most sincere and far-sighted human rights defenders and the piercing logic of the most able lawyers. SAIA's time-honoured commitment to just peace and international law, distinguished professionalism and creativity are truly inspiring. They build on the wonderful, pioneering divestment victory at Hampshire College last year to take divestment to the next level. This makes a superb model for the mushrooming divestment campaigns around the world.
—The Global BDS Movement

The Dominion: How did the recent divestment campaign by SAIA-Carleton get started?

Yafa Jarrar: In the summer of 2009, SAIA-Carleton members started researching companies that Carleton’s Pension Fund invested in. SAIA was able to obtain a list, with the help of a faculty member who put forward the request. Of about 550 companies that contribute to the Pension Plan, five were found to be complicit in the occupation of Palestine and in violation of Palestinian human rights. These companies are BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and Tesco. After rigorous research for seven months, SAIA found that each of these companies is actively involved in significant violations of international humanitarian law. SAIA-Carleton immediately decided to start a divestment campaign after learning of Carleton’s unethical investments in the illegal military occupation of Palestine.

The ROM Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit: Re/Mapping Identity, Culture, & Colonial Discourse

The Bullet

photo credit: Chelsey Lichtman

By Ali Mustafa

“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”
-George Orwell

Background summary

Even before the highly anticipated six-month, $3 million collaboration between the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) showcasing the Dead Sea Scrolls was officially launched in late June, the exhibit was already the subject of growing controversy. 'Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World', as the exhibit is entitled, first attracted international attention in April when Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and executives at the ROM were each sent letters of protest from senior officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – signed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khouloud Diabes, respectively – declaring that the scrolls were in fact illegally seized by Israel following its occupation and subsequent annexation of the West Bank in 1967. The PA not only called for the repatriation of the scrolls but further argued that they merely represent one example of possibly millions of other artifacts that have been systematically looted by Israel from occupied Palestinian territory over several decades, a message that has since been echoed by a chorus of supportive community groups who continue to organize weekly pickets outside of the ROM in protest.

"Boycotts work": An interview with Omar Barghouti

The Electronic Intifada

By Ali Mustafa

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator and human rights activist and a leader of the Palestinian campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights. Barghouti discussed the growing worldwide campaign with The Electronic Intifada contributor Ali Mustafa.

Ali Mustafa: Why do you characterize Israel as an apartheid state and how is it similar or different than apartheid South Africa?

Omar Barghouti: We don't have to prove that Israel is identical to apartheid South Africa in order to justify the label "apartheid." Apartheid is a generalized crime according to United Nations conventions and there are certain criteria that may or may not apply to any specific situation - so we judge a situation on its own merits and whether or not it fulfills those conditions of being called an apartheid state. According to the basic conventions of the UN defining the crime of apartheid, Israel satisfies almost all the conditions to be granted the label of apartheid. Other than the clear racial separation in the occupied West Bank between Jews and non-Jews (indigenous Palestinians) - separate roads, separate housing, separate everything - apartheid is also alive and well inside Israel despite appearances [to the contrary]. Unlike South Africa, Israel is more sophisticated; it's an evolved form of apartheid. South African apartheid was rudimentary, primitive, so to speak - black, white, clear separation, no rights ... The Palestinian citizens of Israel (the indigenous population) have the right to vote, which is a huge difference from South Africa. However, in every other vital domain, they are discriminated against by law, not only by policy. Therefore, it is legalized and institutionalized racism and that's what makes it apartheid - there is racism in Canada and other western democracies as well, but the difference is that it's not legalized and institutionalized, at least not any longer ...

Critical Letter + My Response

Upon the publication of my interview with Carlos Latuff in the March/April issue of the YU Free Press (accompanied with these two cartoons by him shown above), thousands of copies of the campus newspaper were systematically thrown in the garbage; its racks were vandalized, some even destroyed beyond repair; and several angry letters were sent via email denouncing Latuff, myself, and by extension the YUFP as 'anti-Semitic'. Below is one such letter that more or less encapsulates the general sentiment of the approximately dozen emails that were received, along with a personal response from myself - both of which I am sharing here in the interests of critical reflection and debate:

An Interview with Political Cartoonist Carlos Latuff

By Ali Mustafa

Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff is no stranger to controversy. His provocative and unapologetically graphic cartoons have been enjoyed, freely reproduced, and inviting debate internationally for years now. To those of us here in Canada, however, Latuff is probably better known over his recent poster design for 'Israeli Apartheid Week' (IAW) which was deemed 'hateful' and subsequently banned by the administrations at the University of Ottawa, Concordia, and numerous other campuses across the country. I had the extreme privilege of meeting and speaking with him, some time before the latest controversy surrounding him and his work, this past summer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We met inside a favela (Brazilian slum) called Nova Holanda on the city's outskirts where I was visiting a local NGO. Abandoning his scheduled plans and taking a bus from downtown Rio to meet with me just one day before I was set to leave back to Canada, the impromptu setting would prove a fitting backdrop to the discussion that followed.

Ali: When did you first become involved in cartoon drawing and when did you begin to see your interest in cartooning as a platform for political activism and commentary?

Carlos Latuff: I started my career in 1989 in a small advertising office in downtown Rio. At the time, I didn't see my art as a tool to bring awareness to people. I thought my art was just a way to make a living and I had dreams of becoming famous and working for the mainstream media. Over time, I realized that in order to reach the mainstream you had to have influential friends. I didn't, so I started to realize that the reality on the ground was different from what I originally had in mind. In 1999, for a lack of opportunity, not for a matter of ideology, I started to work for leftist trade union papers, but always having in my mind that this was only business – a way to get paid and make a living. At that time, I had some leftist leanings, but I could not call myself a leftist.