January 17, 2010

Broadcast Date: 
Jan 17 2010

Muzzlewatch's Cecilie Surasky on the the suppression of dissent on the Israeli occupation; Ajami, a new film set in multiethnic Jaffa; plus Einstein on Israel and Zionism, a new history.

Episode segments
  • Muzzlewatch
    American Politics, Israeli Politics, Israel/Palestine, Occupation
    Cecilie Surasky is Deputy Director of Jewish Voice for Peace and founder of Muzzlewatch, JVP's blog that documents efforts to silence open debate about Israel-Palestine policy.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    According to Gidi Grinstein, founder and head of the the right wing Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute, "Operation Cast Lead may have ushered in a new era in Israeli national security," one that calls for a non-military offensive against global hubs of "international NGOs, media outlets, academia and multinational corporations" whose goal is to delegitimize Israel and turn it into a pariah state.

    We talk with Muzzlewatch's Cecilie Surasky about Israel's efforts to craft new strategies to confront the burgeoning BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement and growing signs of dissent from within the heart of American Jewish journalism (see, for example, Jewish Week's Jim Besser's blog post "Stifling Debate About Gaza," Letty Cottin Pogrebin's essay in Moment magazine, "Jewish McCarthyism Strikes Gold(Stone); and The Forward's editor, Jane Eisner, on "Stifling Our Artists.").  But there are also signs that Israel is cracking down on dissenting voices, most recently with the detention and attempted deportation of Jared Malsin, the Jewish American english language editor of the Palestinian news agency, Ma'an.

  • Ajami
    Film, Arts & Culture
    Israelis, Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shani, a Jew, are the writers and directors of Ajami.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Fresh from its screenings at the Jewish Film Festival,  the award-winning Israeli film, Ajami, opens on February 3rd at the Film Forum and at Lincoln Plaza in Manhattan. 

    Beneath its surface, this complexly crafted thriller about the repercussions of a revenge killing reveals the cultural, religious and class tensions that roil Ajami, a poor neighborhood cohabited by Bedouins, Palestinians, Christians, Muslims and Jews (many of them recent arrivals in the wave of gentrification sweeping Jaffa).  Beyond the Pale talks with the filmmakers about the seven year process of creating  Ajami, whose entire cast consists of non-professional actors, developed and nutured through the film's creators' workshops.

  • Einstein Israel and Zionism
    Israel/Palestine, Arts & Culture, Literature

    Fred Jerome is a senior consultant for Gene Media Forum, Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University.  In addition to Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East, he is the author of The Einstein File and Einstein on Race and Racism (with Rodger Taylor).

    http://us.macmillan.com/einsteinonisraelandzionism
    Alan Levine

    In Einstein Israel and Zionism Fred Jerome uses Albert Einstein's essays, interviews and letters to demonstrate that contrary to the prevailing story that has been told and retold primarily by the mainstream media, Einstein was not a Zionist.  Indeed, for Einstein the domination of Jew over Arab in Palestine, or the perpetuation of a state of mutual hostility between the two peoples would mean the failure of Zionism.