Page 4-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, October 12, 1989
World-National
M-T
Palestinian uprising began here
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By
SHELDON KIRSHNER
Occupied by the Israeli army since the Six Day War. Jhe Gaza Strip is a human wasteland — a geographically constricted, highly congested, miserable, impoverished smudge of land lymglirtHe edge of a vast, mountainous desert, the Sinai Peninsula.
Ruled autocratically by Egypt for 19 years, Gaza was to have been part of a Palestinian state had the 1947 United Nations partition plan been fully implemented. But as fate would have it, Gaza became an Egyptian dependency, a United Nations welfare case, a prime centre of Palestinian hatred and resentment against Israel. To this day, the 650,000 Arabs of Gaza are stateless, and 70 per cent of them are refugees, nourished, if not actually supported, by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. —
And so. it Was not surprising that the Palestinian uprising, now almost into its second year, began in Gaza .
A launching pad of ""Egyptian-sponsored raids
into Israel in the mid-1950s, and always a hotbed of Palestinian har tionalism, Gaza is the Ultimate metaphor today of Palestinian frustration and fury.
This open wound oh the body politic of the Middle East was visited by British filmmaker Antonia Caccia just as the intifada got underway in 1987., ;
Her film, Voices From Gaza, which was broadcast on TVOntario laist week, is purportedly the first full-length documentary shot in Gaza since the outbreak of the intifada.
Naturally, the Palestinians who appear here are not Zionists, to put it very mildly. From a Palestinian point of view, the Palestinians have cause to be angi7 . and bitter. No occupation is pleasant iiLenlightened. Like Days of Rage. Jo Franklin Trout's Public Broadcasting System documentary on the Palestinians, Voices From Gaza is unwaveringly pro-Palestinian.
Acting on the assumption that Voices Froni Gaza might be unbalanced, B'nai Brith Canada took TVOntario to task for not having
. given its representatives an opportunity to view it in advance. B'nai Brith was also ticked off because a five minute segment tacked on at the end, featuring host Michael Ignatieff and Israeli scholar Itamar Rabinovich in discussiori, was^ apparently shot on Rosh Hashanah.
"Not only (was) this offensive," B'nai Brith notes, "but it resulted in suitable individuals declining the opportunity to provide appix)priate balance.'' Setting aside the question of whether or not he should have been interviewed on the Jewish New Year. Rabinovich more than meets B'nai Brith's criterion asa "suitable" interviewee. Rabinovich, of Tel Aviv University, is an in^ ternatipnally respected authority on the Middle East. TV Ontario was wise ,to choose him.
Asked for his opinion of Voices From Gaza, Rabinovich correctly described it as "partisan,''and added that he, as an Israeli, was "disturbed" by some of the comments he heard. He was, presumably.
referring to statements in which young Palestinians
expressed their longing for Palestine, their ancestral , home.
■'These statements are neither novel nor remarkable. In a reference to the intifada, a teenaged giri said,.'_'We'ligo pnjmtil we liberate our homeland." What homeland? The territories or Israel itself? The answer dangles dangerously. In another sequence, women and children chant, ''With bur heart and soul,. we'll redeem Palestine." Again, vagueness which triggers angst in the minds of Israelis and Diaspora Jewry. As the film ends, a woman.her eyes welling up, voices a yearning for "ah idenfity, a country, self-determination, an in-■ dependent state." What does it all mean? It's up to the viewer to decide.
Voices From Gaza, which inaugurated TVOntario's Human Edge series, begins with Ignatieff's first-hand impressions of Gaza.
Calling it "the vei^ end of the world," Ignatieflf describes it as flyblown, gritty and poor, a running sore in social and po-. litical terms.
The film then shifts to an old Palestinian woman
Israeli troops on patrol in the Gaza Strip, the subject of a TVOntario documentary.
JERUSALEM (JTA/JPFS)-
In an unprecedented move last weiek,' Israeli authorities declared an area of East Jenisalem a closed military zone in order to block a press conference on a tax revolt in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur.
The measure came as an underground leaflet announced an escalation of civil disobedience in the. territories.
The leaflet called for a five-day general strike: and mass gatherings in the streets to "create a new state of rebelh'onT''f ^
Residents of Beit Sahur : have witheld taxes during the intifada as a form of civil disbbediehce.. The town was placed under cur- , few and phone service disconnected.
Police set up barriers and ordered journalists to disperse when they gathered outside the barricades to interview Palestinian activist Faisal Husseini, an organizer of the press conference.
"What you are seeing now is the beginning of the end of the occupation," Husseini told reporters as police prodded them to disperse.
'■Beit Sahur has raised the flag of non-violence, and the occupation is trying to force it to abaridon this flag. It means that all the/ talk about a peace . process is false==3ye will continue the. struggle. "
The military closure in East Jerusalem was criticized by Mayor Teddy Kollek. Kolleksaidhehad not been consulted^iu--advance.
Earlier, in anothier move aimed lU the leadership of the intifada, Israd
outlawed Hamas, the Moslem fundamentalist group which has been at the forefront of the Palestinian uprising since it began nearly two years ago.
Hamas is the second strongest element of the intifada after the PLO. It is most popular in the Gaza Strip where it was established.
Outlawing the group will not end its activities, but making it illegal will allow the authorities to arrest anyone on grounds of membership alone, without having to prove involvement in any specific illegal
Also last week, a military court in southern Israel began hearings into charges that four reserve soldiers of the crack Givati Brigade caused ^iodily hannjo two ^es-tihian residents oTtKeEI-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, one of whom subsequently died.
His body was seized by
members of his family before an autopsy could be performed. As a corise-quenoe, the soldiers are not charged with responsibility for causing his death.
The hearing opened only a few days after die commanding officer of the southern region. Gen. Ma-tan Vilnai, pardoned three other Givati Brigade members serving prison sentences for their part in the fatal beating of a refugee cainp resident last year.
The prosecution's first: witness was Brig;-Gen? Yaacov Or, coniniandihg officerof the Gaza Strip at the tiiheof the incidbht. He _said^SQLdiers_had orders to iise""reasora force" only to disperse a violent crowd or to make arrests.
But Or conceded under
questioning by the defence' that in the early stages of the intifada, orders were not sufficiently precise as to what Constitued "reasonable force."
Reprisals by Arabs against Arabs suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities claimed two more victims last week.
A security prisoner ^as murdered at a detention camp in the Negev. and a residfent of Jericho was found dead of ax blows to his head. Family members told police that masked men entered the victim's home and forced him to go with them.
Meanwhile, security sources announced the arrest of members of an Al Fatah terrorist cell allegedly planning to kid-
nap Israeli soldiers and civilians in the Petach Tikva area on orders from abroad.
The cell operated out of _ DeirBalut village in the Samaria region of the West Bank, the sources said.
And the Israel Defence Force announced that two suspected terrorists were killed in an encounter with an IDF patrol in the southern Lebanon security zone^ three kilomietres west of Moshaiv Zarit across the Israeli border.
The slain men wore civilian clothing. They were armed with Kalach-nikoV assault rifles, LAW missiles and explosives. They carried Lebanese identification papers.
No Israeli soldiers were wounded in thiie clash.
who, recalling her foimer life in Palestine, waxes nostalgic of the land her family owned and the "bams full of grain."
The litany goes on: a young man claims he was expelled from college because he refused to spy for Israel; a man whose hou.se •was-blown up, because his son committed a security offence, is "left sitting in the sand;'' a farmer whose land was expropriated by Jewish settlers complains he needs an Israeli licence even to plant a tree; a fisherman feels like "a bird in a cage," given Israeli restrictions; a worker who. commutes to a job in Israel tells of the time he was mistreated and humiliated by a border guard. „ The worker, serving as a sort of Spokesman for the, Palestinians, says the intifada "didn't come out of nothing." :•. ;
Sometimes, Voices From Gaza, which is nothing more than ordinary insofar as its production valuesare concerned, takes unwarranted liberties. To wit: Palestinians complain that a school has been "invaded" 20 times. No reason is given. But a little later, a Palestinian man acknowledges that schools ' are considered "centres of
incitement."
More grist f6r the Palestinian mill: A Palestinian has been beaieji-^yiciou^ / ly.." But why? We're never
told. Such sequences are less than balanced.
Caccia's documentary mentions the common Israeli practices of collective punishment, such as curfews, and administrative detention, whereby someone can be held without charge or trial. She doesn't give Israeli representatives the opportunity to explain, never mind justify, these policies.
Throughout, Israel's military administration is seen but not heard. Voices From Gaza is replete with fleeting scenes of Israeli jeeps oh patrol. Not a single Israeli spokesman appears to ex-
plain Israel's policy in Gaza. In a sense, the Israelis are like all-intrusive ghosts.
As Voices From Gaza winds up, a Palestinian doctor speaks of the dramatic increase in miscarriages and of injuries "deliberately inflicted."
Voices from Gaza, flawed as it is by partisanship, highlights a problem of profound dimensions that will persist tragically until the Israelis and the Palestinians negotiate on an equitable basis. The malaise in Gaza calls desperately for a political solution —■ the sooner, the better.
The Name Game
There is a story in almost every Jewish surname and Toronto lawyer FRED M. CATZ-MAN has been researching their origins over the past few years. Mr. Catzman reports on his research in The CJN.
ZIMMERMAN - TISCHLER - SCHNIFZER
Mendel Schnitzer of Winnipeg enquires about the meaning of his name. : -
Out of the woodwork come a number of familiar surnames: ■ __[
Zimmerman - in German - carpenter ; Ciesla. Chester. Tessler — in Slavonic^ car-' penter ,; . , ■
Tischler. Stolarz — cabinet maker
Drechsler — turner in German
Tokar — turner in Slavonic
Schnitzer — wood-carver
...:y.
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