"Holiday:" Film by Dan Chyutin, a good friend of mine

Check it out:

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/3708/Holiday

Holiday :

Director: Dan Chyutin | Producer: Maayan Meir
Genre: Drama | Produced In: 2004 | Country: United States
Tags: Relationships, World

Synopsis: Silence is 12-year-old Michael's way of coping with the troubles in his life. Living with a mentally disturbed mother, Michael has to cope on a day-to-day basis with alternating outbursts of affection and disdain. In order to appease his unstable mother and help her preserve her fragile sanity, the boy often gives in to her different whims. At night Michael often spends his time alone in the woods near his home, far from his mother. It is in these woods where Michael one night finds the body of a missing woman. This unsettling encounter undermines the fragile foundations upon which the silent and troubled boy has built his life.

U.S + Nazis + Arab-Muslim leader Haj Amin al-Husseini

Declassified Papers Show U.S. Recruited Ex-Nazis

New York Times:

In chilling detail, the report also elaborates on the close working relationship between Nazi leaders and the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later claimed that he sought refuge in wartime Germany only to avoid arrest by the British.

In fact, the report says, the Muslim leader was paid “an absolute fortune” of 50,000 marks a month (when a German field marshal was making 25,000 marks a year). It also said he energetically recruited Muslims for the SS, the Nazi Party’s elite military command, and was promised that he would be installed as the leader of Palestine after German troops drove out the British and exterminated more than 350,000 Jews there.

On Nov. 28, 1941, the authors say, Hitler told Mr. Husseini that the Afrika Corps and German troops deployed from the Caucasus region would liberate Arabs in the Middle East and that “Germany’s only objective there would be the destruction of the Jews.”

The report details how Mr. Husseini himself was allowed to flee after the war to Syria — he was in the custody of the French, who did not want to alienate Middle East regimes — and how high-ranking Nazis escaped from Germany to become advisers to anti-Israeli Arab leaders and “were able to carry on and transmit to others Nazi racial-ideological anti-Semitism.”

“You have an actual contract between officials of the Nazi Foreign Ministry with Arab leaders, including Husseini, extending after the war because they saw a cause they believed in,” Dr. Breitman said. “And after the war, you have real Nazi war criminals — Wilhelm Beisner, Franz Rademacher and Alois Brunner — who were quite influential in Arab countries.”

In October 1945, the report says, the British head of Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Division told the assistant American military attaché in Cairo that the mufti might be the only force able to unite the Palestine Arabs and “cool off the Zionists. Of course, we can’t do it, but it might not be such a damn bad idea at that.”

“We have more detailed scholarly accounts today of Husseini’s wartime activities, but Husseini’s C.I.A. file indicates that wartime Allied intelligence organizations gathered a healthy portion of this incriminating evidence,” the report says. “This evidence is significant in light of Husseini’s lenient postwar treatment.” He died in Beirut in 1974.

Dharma Friends of Israel: List of Links to Israeli Buddhist Groups

List of Links to Israeli Buddhist Groups

Friends of the Dharma- English site is more limited than the Hebrew one.

"Other Israel" Film Festival: "Coffee, between reality and imagination"

Last night I saw this series of 11 films by different young Arab and Jewish, Israeli, filmmakers from Tel Aviv University.
I will share my notes, impressions, questions and opinions soon.


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Film description by the Festival:

COFFEE: BETWEEN REALITY AND IMAGINATION
Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers embarked on a journey to create short films, fiction or documentary, inspired by Coffee, which takes part in Middle East cultural identity and social reality. Coffee creates a connection between different people, no matter who they are. Each film gives a personal and courageous point of view on the reality in which we live in.

Other Israel Film Festival: World Class Kids

Last night I saw the film 'World Class Kids'. I will write here about it, and would love to hear your comments and have a discussion!

Yael

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From the Festival's description:

WORLD CLASS KIDS
An Arab, a Jew, a Chinese, and a Philippine walk to school one morning…”—sounds like the beginning of an old joke, but that’s not the case. These are some of the second-grade pupils attending the Tel Nordau Elementary School, in the heart of Tel Aviv. The film follows the pupils’ interactions among themselves and with Meirav, their teacher. Meirav has to adapt the ill-suited educational materials, which are in contradiction with the needs of her classroom’s post-modern melting pot. The film follows the class throughout one school year, which becomes volatile as the Gaza War upsets the social dynamics in the classroom.

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Other Israel Film Festival

Check out the Other Israel Film Festival Website

The 4th Annual Other Israel Film Festival, (www.OtherIsrael.org) will take place from November 11th – November 21st. Since its establishment, The Other Israel Film Festival showcases the diversity of Israeli life with award-winning films and open discussions on the margins of Israeli society that is rarely seen by the mainstream, let alone presented to American audiences. Among those are the country’s Arab population (Christian, Muslim, Bedouin and Druze) that makes up 20% of Israel’s population, as well as migrant workers, immigrants and more.






Films descriptions and schedule

Selected Films

WORLD CLASS KIDS
An Arab, a Jew, a Chinese, and a Philippine walk to school one morning…”—sounds like the beginning of an old joke, but that’s not the case. These are some of the second-grade pupils attending the Tel Nordau Elementary School, in the heart of Tel Aviv. The film follows the pupils’ interactions among themselves and with Meirav, their teacher. Meirav has to adapt the ill-suited educational materials, which are in contradiction with the needs of her classroom’s post-modern melting pot. The film follows the class throughout one school year, which becomes volatile as the Gaza War upsets the social dynamics in the classroom.

COFFEE: BETWEEN REALITY AND IMAGINATION
Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers embarked on a journey to create short films, fiction or documentary, inspired by Coffee, which takes part in Middle East cultural identity and social reality. Coffee creates a connection between different people, no matter who they are. Each film gives a personal and courageous point of view on the reality in which we live in.

Voices of Tolerance in Israel

Beautiful!