For three days in succession I have experienced separate films about the reality of religious fundamentalism, On Monday one aspect of the reality of the Catholic and Protestant situation in Ireland which was nothing to do about Christianity. And all to do about power, power of one group to have power over another, because of fear of what would happen if the other group gained power over them. Although the bombings, the knee capping and the executions have stopped, the hatreds and the divides for many will continue until the end of their days, with the hope that their children and more likely their children's children, will learn to treat and judge their neighbours for who they are, what they say and do, and not because they are their father's children. If I am correct, and I believe that I am, that the memory of all experience is transmitted from generation directly, modified only through the mingling of individuals and their backgrounds, then the need to ensure that future generations will not continue to recreate the sins of the past should remain one of our priorities. In helping adults to overcome what they did to other children when a child themselves or what others did to them when they were children, it is important to remind that they were only children.
Similarly whether it is young men of the Brideshead Revisited Bullingdon Club, or the young woman attacking another in a drunken rage over a boy, we need to continually remember what it is like to be an teenager, when your world usually revolves around personal appearance and personal relationships, and a time when these take precedence over study work or paid employment and politics at home and elsewhere, or the plight of others becomes second and third consideration. On Tuesday, the second film of the trio was just about that self obsessed teenagers anxious about personal relationships and having the time and the money to enjoy consumerism, except these young women were conscripts in the Israeli army and their task was make the lives of Arab women in their native homeland intolerable.
In Israel and Palestine attempts at peaceful coexistence have not worked so far, but the same sensitivity is required when discussing or creating cultural and other work about the conflict and is origins.
Because of the development of Catholicism and Christianity from Judaism there has always been something mysterious and forbidden for me about practicing Jews, especially during my childhood when I was forbidden on pain of committing mortal sin to participate in the services of other faiths, and where those who were not baptised Catholics were regarded as potential lost souls. And yet despite the persecution of Jewish people throughout the ages, it was not until reading the reports of the War Crimes Tribunals into what happened at two concentration camps that my outlook changed and affected the rest of my life in significant ways.
I am also haunted by having expressed my lack of understanding of aspects of what happened, the lack of resistance, in particular however passive, which so angered a concentration camp survivor as we prepared copies of Peace News for postal distribution in 1959. During that time young Jewish people were very active in the Young Communist League who were active members of the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and in the more proactive campaigns of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and the Committee of 100, and some who I came to know were often children of influential political and cultural figures in British Society of the day.. One talked of going to a Kibbutz in Israel which had come to be regarded as the Promised Land. This was still in the idealistic days about the future of Israel before the Six day War but after the 1956 Suez crisis when Colonel Nasser Nationalised the Suez Canal and thee United Nations attempted to police the Sinai Peninsular.
Over that subsequent decade Egypt amassed 1000 tanks and 1000000 soldier on its borders and closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying the Israeli flag and expelled the United Nations Peace Keeping Force.. It become evident that Colonel Nasser was set in leading the Arab world in the extermination of Israel and its people But this time the Israeli nation was ready, helped by being armed with the support of the Britain and the USA.
Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt and Jordan who had a defence treaty and within hours, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria sent troops and arms, suggesting they had already been preparing for the assault by Muslim Arabs against Judaism. Of course the pressure for what has become known as the six day war had built up over time but the cause of the war was quite clear, the majority Arab Muslim world could not accept the existence of the Jewish state, as some do not today and never will. No one expected the speed and extent of success or that Israel would take control of the Sinai Peninsular, the Gaza strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
Since then the waters have become muddied. The Jewish sense of being under daily threat is recognised and understood and the regular bombing of buses and shopping centres means that every Arab may have to be regarded as a potential terrorist. It is will also be a mistake if the West adopts a policy of believing that Muslim Arab terrorism is the action of a few extreme clerics and misguided young men, backed only by ruthless and ambitious wealthy Arabs and without significant public support among Arabs and Muslims in general. In the same was it was a mistake to believe that Hitler, the Brown and Black shirts were a small minority and did not have significant support from the German people especially as visitors were reporting that people stood and clapped in the German streets as Jews were fire bombed, premises smashed, men and women of all ages beaten up and humiliated for years throughout the thirties before the invasions of European nations commenced and the policy of ethnic extermination was put into full operation.
However the use of acquired territories for settlement, the use of assassination squads, the counter bombings of civilians in order to locate individual terrorists, the use of torture to obtain information and acting as an occupying military power and disregarding the view of the international community through the United Nations makes the country appear no different from its enemies, and at times the behaviour is in reality no different. Of course this is an over simplification but the ingredients are about right
I now jump several decades to the time of the Israeli film Close to Home, a film released in 2006 which presents a female view of being conscripted into the army and homeland security at the age of eighteen years and assigned to monitor the streets and buses of West Jerusalem and every Arab female entering the sector. The film begins at a checkpoint where every Arab woman wishing to enter West Jerusalem is stripped to their underclothes and has all their belongings examined. It is a humiliating experience for the women which some of the conscripts find it difficult to undertake, with one individual rebelling and letting as many women through without search until the senior officer catches her and sends her to prison. On a bus it is a passenger who draws attention to the two security officers that there is a package unattended and the understandable anger and hatred with ordinary Jewish people feel against Arabs for the atrocities committed on their streets is understandable.
The film follows the lives of two of the conscripts. One is a deviant who with her boyfriend steals from shops for the excitement and does only what she has to without finding herself on a charge. She has befriended local shop keepers who warn if her superiors are out checking what the conscripts are doing, or are not. The second conscript is just starting to work on the tour and she and her family who live in the city believe in the need for security, but she would prefer to have been assigned elsewhere. She strongly disapproves of the behaviour of her duty partner. However it is she who ends up charged with misbehaviour and going to prison for a week after taking a break while on duty at the entrance of a hotel to have a drink and going dancing with a guest. A few days before she was close to a bomb let off in the street and is blown flat but shaken rather than hurt, although spots of blood indicate that others were not so lucky. One would think that given this experience both conscripts would be zealous in their work, but not so as the preoccupation is with relationships, and behaving as contemporary teenagers the world over.
Towards the end of the film there is brief party as one the detachment ends her military service and is off to Russia to meet her future husband with whom she has only communicated by post or internet and the two recruits who disliked each other and wanted other partners are seen wearing the same outfits sharing a motor bike or scooter.
It the brief extras included in the DVD, the Director script writer, underlines that this is film about young women who do not want to be oppressors of other women and who want to be ordinary teenager consumers as most are throughout the capitalist world and her viewpoint presumes that this is a good thing. I was left with the feeling that if I was an Arab woman in the occupied territories I would feel like a Jewish woman in Berlin in the late 1930s. Too often the abused becomes the abuser, and this applies to people as well as to individuals. A dilemma of our time.
It has been a very cold day but I decided to wrap up well putting on my Russian style hat to walk in the evening air to the post box. If the cold gets to my chest I tend to develop chills. Colds and worse. As I left the house I looked down the road in one direction towards the Tyne river where night was comparatively light, whereas towards the North Sea it was black but I had to focus as immediately ahead rising above the grassland of the hill was a bank of lights as a North Sea Ferry set off for the overnight trip. O never tire of its sight and lit up in the dark it is spectacular. Then there was the sound of one large bang and the siren of a police car or ambulance. The two were not connected as this was a firework explosion followed by several more. Ever since the Millennium fireworks are readily sold to the public and let off in the week leading to November 5th despite the annual reports of lost or damaged limbs and sight. As the properties face the park land and walkers in the dark are few, residents in these imposing three story villas do not close their curtains giving those like me passing by views of the lighting, the plastered ceilings and walls full of paintings and photographs.
It was not the kind of day for salad so lunch was a cup of soup and a portion of filled pasta followed by the remaining half of a carton of grapes. In the late afternoon before going out I had a glass of red wine and a small dish of garlic filled olives with a whisky and water immediately on return. Later there was a medium quantity stir fry and the some mince pies and coffee. I will have another cuppa soup at the conclusion of England's 20 20 games against Trinidad and Tobago which they are in danger of losing. Earlier I was able to watch Newcastle live on TV for the second time in four days as they were hosts this time to West Bromwich Albion, a team which started well in their return to the Premiership. I was most impressed with the vigour of Newcastle during the first twenty minutes and there were worthy leaders by two goals to none at half time. Whether it was the unusual nature of this situation, the effort put in on Saturday and the knowledge of having to play against this coming weekend, they sat back as the second half commenced and allowed West Bromwich to go on the offensive and to score a goal caused by defensive failure. This however triggered a nervy final twenty minutes in which West Brom should have equalised. However the win takes Newcastle out of the relegation area at least for the time being as all the other teams will play tomorrow evening. England win by one run. Now for the soup.
I had been tempted to go to bed but I knew this was not so as I had slept a little earlier in the evening and recovered so switched on the TV to see if anything was wrong and saw that a free view film was listed as starting at 1.35 am and although it had an unusually title I did not twig it was another film about the Irish troubles until a few minutes after it commenced and then as I watch I realised it was a film about something else, crime and punishment, guilt, and that what we do and who we do it with lives with us for eternity.
Similarly whether it is young men of the Brideshead Revisited Bullingdon Club, or the young woman attacking another in a drunken rage over a boy, we need to continually remember what it is like to be an teenager, when your world usually revolves around personal appearance and personal relationships, and a time when these take precedence over study work or paid employment and politics at home and elsewhere, or the plight of others becomes second and third consideration. On Tuesday, the second film of the trio was just about that self obsessed teenagers anxious about personal relationships and having the time and the money to enjoy consumerism, except these young women were conscripts in the Israeli army and their task was make the lives of Arab women in their native homeland intolerable.
In Israel and Palestine attempts at peaceful coexistence have not worked so far, but the same sensitivity is required when discussing or creating cultural and other work about the conflict and is origins.
Because of the development of Catholicism and Christianity from Judaism there has always been something mysterious and forbidden for me about practicing Jews, especially during my childhood when I was forbidden on pain of committing mortal sin to participate in the services of other faiths, and where those who were not baptised Catholics were regarded as potential lost souls. And yet despite the persecution of Jewish people throughout the ages, it was not until reading the reports of the War Crimes Tribunals into what happened at two concentration camps that my outlook changed and affected the rest of my life in significant ways.
I am also haunted by having expressed my lack of understanding of aspects of what happened, the lack of resistance, in particular however passive, which so angered a concentration camp survivor as we prepared copies of Peace News for postal distribution in 1959. During that time young Jewish people were very active in the Young Communist League who were active members of the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and in the more proactive campaigns of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and the Committee of 100, and some who I came to know were often children of influential political and cultural figures in British Society of the day.. One talked of going to a Kibbutz in Israel which had come to be regarded as the Promised Land. This was still in the idealistic days about the future of Israel before the Six day War but after the 1956 Suez crisis when Colonel Nasser Nationalised the Suez Canal and thee United Nations attempted to police the Sinai Peninsular.
Over that subsequent decade Egypt amassed 1000 tanks and 1000000 soldier on its borders and closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying the Israeli flag and expelled the United Nations Peace Keeping Force.. It become evident that Colonel Nasser was set in leading the Arab world in the extermination of Israel and its people But this time the Israeli nation was ready, helped by being armed with the support of the Britain and the USA.
Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt and Jordan who had a defence treaty and within hours, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria sent troops and arms, suggesting they had already been preparing for the assault by Muslim Arabs against Judaism. Of course the pressure for what has become known as the six day war had built up over time but the cause of the war was quite clear, the majority Arab Muslim world could not accept the existence of the Jewish state, as some do not today and never will. No one expected the speed and extent of success or that Israel would take control of the Sinai Peninsular, the Gaza strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
Since then the waters have become muddied. The Jewish sense of being under daily threat is recognised and understood and the regular bombing of buses and shopping centres means that every Arab may have to be regarded as a potential terrorist. It is will also be a mistake if the West adopts a policy of believing that Muslim Arab terrorism is the action of a few extreme clerics and misguided young men, backed only by ruthless and ambitious wealthy Arabs and without significant public support among Arabs and Muslims in general. In the same was it was a mistake to believe that Hitler, the Brown and Black shirts were a small minority and did not have significant support from the German people especially as visitors were reporting that people stood and clapped in the German streets as Jews were fire bombed, premises smashed, men and women of all ages beaten up and humiliated for years throughout the thirties before the invasions of European nations commenced and the policy of ethnic extermination was put into full operation.
However the use of acquired territories for settlement, the use of assassination squads, the counter bombings of civilians in order to locate individual terrorists, the use of torture to obtain information and acting as an occupying military power and disregarding the view of the international community through the United Nations makes the country appear no different from its enemies, and at times the behaviour is in reality no different. Of course this is an over simplification but the ingredients are about right
I now jump several decades to the time of the Israeli film Close to Home, a film released in 2006 which presents a female view of being conscripted into the army and homeland security at the age of eighteen years and assigned to monitor the streets and buses of West Jerusalem and every Arab female entering the sector. The film begins at a checkpoint where every Arab woman wishing to enter West Jerusalem is stripped to their underclothes and has all their belongings examined. It is a humiliating experience for the women which some of the conscripts find it difficult to undertake, with one individual rebelling and letting as many women through without search until the senior officer catches her and sends her to prison. On a bus it is a passenger who draws attention to the two security officers that there is a package unattended and the understandable anger and hatred with ordinary Jewish people feel against Arabs for the atrocities committed on their streets is understandable.
The film follows the lives of two of the conscripts. One is a deviant who with her boyfriend steals from shops for the excitement and does only what she has to without finding herself on a charge. She has befriended local shop keepers who warn if her superiors are out checking what the conscripts are doing, or are not. The second conscript is just starting to work on the tour and she and her family who live in the city believe in the need for security, but she would prefer to have been assigned elsewhere. She strongly disapproves of the behaviour of her duty partner. However it is she who ends up charged with misbehaviour and going to prison for a week after taking a break while on duty at the entrance of a hotel to have a drink and going dancing with a guest. A few days before she was close to a bomb let off in the street and is blown flat but shaken rather than hurt, although spots of blood indicate that others were not so lucky. One would think that given this experience both conscripts would be zealous in their work, but not so as the preoccupation is with relationships, and behaving as contemporary teenagers the world over.
Towards the end of the film there is brief party as one the detachment ends her military service and is off to Russia to meet her future husband with whom she has only communicated by post or internet and the two recruits who disliked each other and wanted other partners are seen wearing the same outfits sharing a motor bike or scooter.
It the brief extras included in the DVD, the Director script writer, underlines that this is film about young women who do not want to be oppressors of other women and who want to be ordinary teenager consumers as most are throughout the capitalist world and her viewpoint presumes that this is a good thing. I was left with the feeling that if I was an Arab woman in the occupied territories I would feel like a Jewish woman in Berlin in the late 1930s. Too often the abused becomes the abuser, and this applies to people as well as to individuals. A dilemma of our time.
It has been a very cold day but I decided to wrap up well putting on my Russian style hat to walk in the evening air to the post box. If the cold gets to my chest I tend to develop chills. Colds and worse. As I left the house I looked down the road in one direction towards the Tyne river where night was comparatively light, whereas towards the North Sea it was black but I had to focus as immediately ahead rising above the grassland of the hill was a bank of lights as a North Sea Ferry set off for the overnight trip. O never tire of its sight and lit up in the dark it is spectacular. Then there was the sound of one large bang and the siren of a police car or ambulance. The two were not connected as this was a firework explosion followed by several more. Ever since the Millennium fireworks are readily sold to the public and let off in the week leading to November 5th despite the annual reports of lost or damaged limbs and sight. As the properties face the park land and walkers in the dark are few, residents in these imposing three story villas do not close their curtains giving those like me passing by views of the lighting, the plastered ceilings and walls full of paintings and photographs.
It was not the kind of day for salad so lunch was a cup of soup and a portion of filled pasta followed by the remaining half of a carton of grapes. In the late afternoon before going out I had a glass of red wine and a small dish of garlic filled olives with a whisky and water immediately on return. Later there was a medium quantity stir fry and the some mince pies and coffee. I will have another cuppa soup at the conclusion of England's 20 20 games against Trinidad and Tobago which they are in danger of losing. Earlier I was able to watch Newcastle live on TV for the second time in four days as they were hosts this time to West Bromwich Albion, a team which started well in their return to the Premiership. I was most impressed with the vigour of Newcastle during the first twenty minutes and there were worthy leaders by two goals to none at half time. Whether it was the unusual nature of this situation, the effort put in on Saturday and the knowledge of having to play against this coming weekend, they sat back as the second half commenced and allowed West Bromwich to go on the offensive and to score a goal caused by defensive failure. This however triggered a nervy final twenty minutes in which West Brom should have equalised. However the win takes Newcastle out of the relegation area at least for the time being as all the other teams will play tomorrow evening. England win by one run. Now for the soup.
I had been tempted to go to bed but I knew this was not so as I had slept a little earlier in the evening and recovered so switched on the TV to see if anything was wrong and saw that a free view film was listed as starting at 1.35 am and although it had an unusually title I did not twig it was another film about the Irish troubles until a few minutes after it commenced and then as I watch I realised it was a film about something else, crime and punishment, guilt, and that what we do and who we do it with lives with us for eternity.
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