Thursday, April 26, 2007
Coming soon to a Junior High near you, courtesy of Harvard University and Center for Middle Eastern Studies Outreach Coordinator, Barbara Petzen:
PictureBalata is an Arab propaganda web site that takes "refugee camp" kids and puts them up as props in the campaign against Israel. We'll take a look around the site in a moment. For now, the Harvard announcement for an event that took place this past April 11 (emphasis is mine):
We have a very special opportunity for educators and young students who have studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to ask questions of young Palestinians who have come to the US to share their pictures and stories.
Next Wednesday, April 11th, several young Palestinians from Balata Refugee Camp outside of Nablus, West Bank will be at Harvard University for a presentation of their pictures and to answer questions. High school and junior high students are especially encouraged to attend!
[snip]
PICTURE BALATA YOUTH SPECIAL BOSTON EVENT: Wednesday April 11, 2007 7pm-9pm
7pm Slideshow presentation by Picture Balata youth
[snip room info, etc...]
LOCATION:
Harvard University Center for Government and International Studies
Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street
*Photography exhibit will run 9 April - 21 April at Fisher Commons, Center for Government and International Studies Building North
****PRESS RELEASE****
Picture Balata coming to six US cities in April
Four teenage participants from the Picture Balata workshop are coming to the US the first two weeks of April 2007. Showing their work and speaking about their lives, the photographers will travel to New York City; Washington, DC; Pittsburgh; Boston; Chicago and San Francisco.
These young people, leaving the West Bank for the first time, will be able to educate Americans regarding the reality of the situation in Balata Refugee Camp and occupied Palestine. The tour will also give them the chance to see that people outside Palestine support their work and the Palestinian struggle for justice.
The tour also aims to raise funds to purchase cameras, computers and Internet access so that after further training the workshop participants, nine in total, will be able to do everything from taking the picture, editing it on their own computer and then publishing it on a website for the entire world to see. This self- sustainable project will give these young people the opportunity to further pursue photography and other media as a form of self-expression and resistance.
Background:
Outside the West Bank City of Nablus lies the Balata Refugee Camp. Established in 1951, Balata and the dozens other camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were supposed to be a temporary solution for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were driven
from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
"Driven?!" OK, 1951...let's see...that's 16 years prior to the "occupation." Would it be unfair to ask what was being done there in the mean-time?
Picture Balata puts the camera into the hands of the children born and raised inside the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Participants ranging from ages 11 to 18 photograph their situation as they live it in Balata Refugee Camp.
Put a camera in their hands and set them up to do the job over here that their terrorist older siblings would like to do. And the funny thing is if you were to show to OUR Junior High students what these kids watch on THEIR TV to inform their view of the world, you'd probably be hauled off to jail.
Let's have a look at some of the "testimonials" from kids on the web site to see what message Harvard thinks is a message appropriate for your kids.
Ala', age 14: "...While we play football and hide and go seek in streets the Army will come into the camp. Then all the children will go homes or stay in the street and throw stones at the Jeeps..."
Fadi, age 18: "...Thousands of people have been arrested from the camp in recent years. They are arrested because of resisting the occupation..."
Mohamed (aka Butch), age 15: "...Our lands were taken, most don't own businesses, and we are dependant on Israel for work. After 2000 when Israel stopped allowing in Palestinians to work over half the camp became unemployed..."
Sabreen, age 17: "...Life in Balata is hard. Many people from the camp have been injured or imprisoned, and those who resist Israeli occupation by military means are forced to sleep on the street so they don't endanger the lives of their families. [Poor dears!]..."
Tahreer, age 15: "There are many martyrs from the camp...How come these men who fight against the occupation are called terrorists, and the Israelis are not?...I photograph martyrs and their families in the camp, because they are our heroes and people should know what they have sacrificed."
On an on. The informed will recognize the script, and the images in the kids' galleries. They are open in their purposes.
An editorial in the Harvard paper says much:
...Hadil [one of the participants] said that one day she will return to the land that her grandmother was forced to leave in 1948, and that “the Zionists will be chased out of our land.â€...
A reliable informant who was there writes that:
This is politics, not education, and they know it.
About The Outreach Center at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies:
As a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center, the Center is charged with serving and educating the wider New England community about the Middle East...
That's right, this is what Harvard thinks of as "educational" for kids, and worse yet, you're paying for it.
I don't understand this.
Why is a serious university promoting propaganda that will surely lead to further conflict and inescapable tragedy?
Why, in sixty years, hasn't there been a serious attempt to reconcile the two sides?
What is supposed to happen to the seven million plus residents of Israel when it is "liberated"?
Are people totally oblivious to the events that resulted in the creation of Israel, of Arab refusal to accept the UN partition, and of the serial wars and acts of terror launched against Israel and also, Jews worldwide since the Holocaust? What about Munich, Buenos Aires, the Achille Lauro, the increasing threats and attacks against Jews in Europe, the US? The brutal antisemitism in the Middle East?
Are people completely without knowledge of the fact that ancient Middle Eastern Jewish communities - for example in Baghdad, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, are now gone - and that those people now live primarily in Israel? That generations have been born there, that forests have grown to maturity there, cities built on desert and dune?
What will happen to them when Israel is "liberated"? What will happen to the Palestinian people during this "liberation" process? Will this occur by magic?
I don't know what to say here. This looks like a deliberate provocation to create another sea of blood, rather than an attempt to educate people to the complexities of a situation that requires some serious answers and a great deal of regional cooperation to help create a good outcome.
Those camps have been in existence, in many countries, for nearly 60 years. In the fifties people were already calling them open wounds and deploring the situation - as far as the West Bank goes it was annexed by Jordan and ethnically cleansed of Jews - another ancient Jewish community torn from its roots. Yesterday I read in Naharnet, of violence in one of the camps there - described in the paper as "lawless". Palestinians have few rights in Lebanon, the camps are heavily armed and magnets for extremists, the Lebanese have no authority within them. Why is this situation allowed to persist? Today I saw pictures of people attending a speech in Gaza. There were men all masked, completely in black - and women wearing suicide belts.
I fail to see even a shred of balance here. I have no doubt that times are hard in the camps but wouldn't it better to focus on ways to improve them rather than on beating a horse that died in 1948? As it is the Israelis did build, they created schools and hospitals and the two economies were linked and growing until intractable violence erupted as soon as the Oslo peace process was inked.
For starters, dealing with reality would be refreshing. No more camps. Let them be modernized, turned into modern towns. Let people stop terrorizing Israel. Let the weapons be put away and the books and computers be picked up.
Stop inciting these dark dreams that can only end in tragedy.
This is plain ordinary treason by the leftards at Harvard.
It is pretty much analogous to the Bund having the Hitler youth over for a "cultural exchange" after the countries of Europe had been attacked but a bit before Pearl Harbor.
Not an exact analogy though. We're already in this war. The only difference is that Israel has taken more caualties from these animals than the US. They've only killed a few of us so far.
We've lost more blood to their cousins and buddies.
But then, I believe the idiots at Yale brought over a Taliban criminal last year. The treason isn't limited to Harvard.
Fact is that Gramschi was right, and the enemies of America and of freedom have taken academia.
Not that we could never get it back if we put up a serious fight. But it's in enemy hands now.
Think about the mass movements of the 60's and 70's and all the time since then. Yeah! It would take that much effort to take academia back.
Are you up for it?
Or would you rather wait till these savages are murdering your children right in your own front yard?
Things are getting bad in the US, but not as bad as it is in the UK.
Creeps like ken livingstone, mayor of London and the in your face threats by followers of "peaceful islam" and the acquiescence by the British public is disturbing.
The "left/progressives" are the Eloi and the Islamofascists are the Morlocks.