Saturday, September 03, 2011

TED - Julia Bacha: Pay attention to nonviolence

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Give Peace a Chance Series

In 2003, the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive groves. Did you hear about it? Didn't think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict -- and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.


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Why you should listen to her:

Budrus is a Palestinian agricultural village in the West Bank that relies on its olive groves. And Budrus is a documentary about what happened in the village when Israeli authorities tried to uproot those olive groves to build a barrier. The villagers resisted, peacefully, for 10 months, with leader Ayed Morrar helping to unite Fatah, Hamas, the villagers, and Israeli supporters in nonviolent protest. Most vital, Palestinian women, including Morrar's daughter, took a leading role.

It's a story that Julia Bacha found tailor-made for Just Vision, an organization that uses film and storytelling to "Increase the power and legitimacy of Palestinians and Israelis working for nonviolent solutions to the conflict." A break in the endless stalemate, she believes, must come from the bottom up. And the way to help the process is to show the humanity of those working for change. Bacha was also the co-director of Encounter Point, featured during Pangea Day in 2008 -- a feature documentary film about four ordinary people, on both sides of the conflict, who lost nearly everything but who nevertheless work for an end to occupation in favor of peace.

She says: "We are providing alternative role models. I have seen people challenged, inspired and motivated to take action based on the stories we tell."
"'Budrus' [offers] an intimate, cinéma vérité glimpse of a world viewers would otherwise never see, not to mention cheering news from a region better known for cyclical tragedy."
Washington Post


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is determined that the Palestinian authority will declare a Palestinian state at the United Nations this month. Once they have that status which will give them strength to rout out the Jewish state all together.

The occupied so called Palestinian land actually belong and part of Israeli state. To solve the problem the Palestinian people should be ceded into the other Arab nations and not try to create their own statehood on someone else's property.

Israeli government would allow them to stay there if they cease their violent acts to the rightful owner of the property.

Because of their insistent to try to claim that all Israeli lands belong to them and that Jews has no right to exist in Palestine they are calling down their own judgment from the God of Israel. In the end they will lose big time. History already written before it even happen.

Khmer Israel