Teen flick tackles Israel’s cultural divide

If politicians were replaced by filmmakers, the hostility between Arabs and Israelis would soon evaporate. That’s the impression you get after watching any number of imported flicks that treat people on both sides of the issue with respect and understanding.

Often the stories focus on a friendship or romance between a Jew and a Muslim. Sometimes, as in the case of A Borrowed Identity, they focus on both.

Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom) is the proud son of Salah (Ali Suliman), a Palestinian Israeli who was forced to drop out of college after being implicated in a long-ago bombing. Salah wants his brainy son to have the opportunity he lost and is elated when Eyad is accepted into a prestigious school in Jerusalem.

As one of the school’s few Arabs, Eyad at first feels isolated. It’s not long, however, before he’s made his first two Jewish friends: Naomi (Danielle Kitzis), a flirtatious young woman, and Yonatan (Michael Moshonov), a fellow student who has muscular dystrophy.

Three years after Ecuador’s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small ground-floor London embassy, the founder of WikiLeaks is still there -- beyond the reach of the government whose vice president, Joe Biden, has labeled him “a digital terrorist." The Obama administration wants Assange in a U.S. prison, so that the only mouse he might ever see would be scurrying across the floor of a solitary-confinement cell.

Above and beyond Assange’s personal freedom, what’s at stake includes the impunity of the United States and its allies to relegate transparency to a mythical concept, with democracy more rhetoric than reality. From the Vietnam War era to today -- from aerial bombing and torture to ecological disasters and financial scams moving billions of dollars into private pockets -- the high-up secrecy hiding key realities from the public has done vast damage. No wonder economic and political elites despise WikiLeaks for its disclosures.

   The Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, declared that the citizens of Medina, Fulton, and Athens Counties may not vote on their own county charter initiatives, despite meeting requirements to place those initiatives on the November ballot.
   In a statement released yesterday, Mr. Husted – elected by the citizens of Ohio – made clear that his interests lie with the oil and gas industry, rather than We the People. Despite the people’s constitutional right to alter or reform their own government, Mr. Husted claims “unfettered authority and being empowered by the Ohio Revised Code” to deny the people their constitutional right.
   This summer, Medina, Fulton, and Athens County residents secured the necessary signatures to place county charter initiatives on the November ballot. Each of these counties faces fracking wastewater injection wells, LNG pipelines, and other infrastructure projects that threaten to pollute clean air and pure water, regardless of community wishes.

Strange how  intellectual discussion concerning the so-called “Arab Spring” has almost entirely shifted in recent years - from one concerning freedom, justice, democracy and rights in general, into a political wrangle between various antagonist camps.

The people, who revolted across various Arab countries are now marginalized in this discussion, and are only used as fodders – killers and victims – in a war seemingly without end.

But how did it all go so wrong?

There was once a time when things were so simple, so easy to understand and explain: People, who were long oppressed, revolted against their oppressors (Arab regimes) and benefactors (western powers).

Unable to effect change using peaceful channels - for Arab civil societies either did not exist or were tightly controlled - Arab masses took to the streets, each nation with a unique struggle of its own yet united around a set of basic demands. 

There are now articles about the predictable fluff BS horserace personality lifestyle crap coverage by the corporate media of the Bernie Sanders for president campaign (and articlesabout the predictable non-coverage of the Jill Stein for president campaign).

I wish it would all go away, as I think having no election would be preferable to holding such a broken one, and I'd limit even an open, free, credible, functioning, publicly-funded, fairly reported election to something under 6 months in duration.