Report on return of British members of Gaza aid flotilla attacked in international waters by Israeli commandos on 31 May 2010. Osama Qashoo recounts his experience.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqHz-Twu8hs]
June 3rd
Dear All
Your love and energy kept us strong all the way through to face the ugly face of hate, death and injustice
I am back again and tonight I saw the story for the first time on TV. I was not aware that you could see us as we did not know that people were watching us live and we are sooooooooo glad that our media strategy worked to reveal the true ugly face of Israel Continue reading
The figure in this grab from C4 news on Monday evening of the scene aboard the Mavi Marmara at the moment of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, is Osama Qashoo, an award-winning documentary film-maker, a Palestinian peace activist from the West Bank, and a member of the Free Gaza Movement. He arrived in England in 2003 as a political refugee, gained a place at the National Film School, and now holds British nationality. Continue reading
These are not the best of times for people completing their doctorates and looking for academic posts, especially in fields like film studies, and when we recently advertised two jobs in the area at the university where I teach, we knew we’d have plenty of applicants. Even so, we were taken by surprise when the number totalled 190. Continue reading
Aix-en-Provence, 1995
It’s the first time that a General Election in the UK has seen a televised leaders’ debate, and the unforeseen result has unsettled the political establishment by providing Nick Clegg with a visibility which previously evaded him. The resulting boost for the Liberal Democrats in the opinion polls seems to have sustained itself, and everyone is preparing for a hung parliament. The two big parties are running scared, the hidden establishment are laying in plans to maintain the stability of the pound. The media pundits are enjoying their own bewilderment, outdoing themselves with speculation on what a hung parliament would mean. Continue reading
The interesting thing about this election is of course the prospect of a hung parliament, because there is probably nothing else that could possibly shake up the political system to the same degree — although there’s no guarantee that it would, even so, because the establishment which works behind the scenes will be doing everything possible to ensure that it doesn’t. Continue reading
A few days ago, a concert at the Wigmore Hall by the Jerusalem Quartet was interrupted by what the radio announcer (I happened to be listening to the live broadcast) called a disturbance. Turned out it was a protest by a group of anti-Zionist activists, one of whom, Tony Greenstein, subsequently explained on his blog that
we wanted to make a clear statement that those who aid and abet the murderous activities of the Israeli Occupation Forces cannot then claim some form of musical diplomatic immunity
— because the Quartet are not only ‘cultural ambassadors’ for Israel but they regularly perform for the troops of the Israeli army. [*]
Well, I’m all in favour of such protests, even once participated in one myself, and if I’d been there I would have applauded them. But I find that I now have to disagree strongly with Greenstein’s subsequent blog on the subject, which purports to give us the lowdown on the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Continue reading
Cuba 2, Venezuela 1
Three DVDs have turned up, two about Cuba and one about Venezuela, which portray different perspectives on revolutionary politics in Latin America at different stages. Mike Wayne & Deirdre O’Neill’s Listen to Venezuela is a lengthy report on the Venezuelan process by a pair of leftist intellectuals on an academic research scholarship, dense with information about what is really going on there. With our memory on the future (Con la memoria en el futuro) presents the veteran Cuban documentarist Octavio Cortázar looking back shortly before his death in 2008, revisiting the territory of his 1974 documentary, With Cuban Women (Con la mujeres cubanas), asking if women’s lot has genuinely improved and machismo is on the decline. Filmically the most satisfying, Andrew Lang’s Sons of Cuba is the work of a young British film-maker, an agile portrait of a boxing academy for youngsters in Havana. Continue reading
