John Pilger: Palestine Is
Still the Issue
Watch
"This
film is about the Palestinians and a group
of courageous Israelis united in the oldest
human struggle, to be free."
John Pilger first made the film 'Palestine
Is Still The Issue' in 1977. It told how
almost a million Palestinians had been
forced off their land in 1948, and again in
1967. Twenty five years later, John Pilger
returned to the West Bank of Jordan and
Gaza, and to Israel, to ask why the
Palestinians, whose right of return was
affirmed by the United Nations more than
half a century ago, are still caught in a
terrible limbo - refugees in their own land,
controlled by Israel in the longest military
occupation in modern times.
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"If we
are to speak of the great injustice here,
nothing has changed," says Pilger at the
start of the film, "What has changed is that
the Palestinians have fought back. Stateless
and humiliated for so long, they have risen
up against Israel’s huge military regime,
although they themselves have no army, no
tanks, no American planes and gunships or
missiles. Some have committed desperate acts
of terror, like suicide bombing. But, for
Palestinians, the overriding, routine
terror, day after day, has been the ruthless
control of almost every aspect of their
lives, as if they live in an open prison.
This film is about the Palestinians and a
group of courageous Israelis united in the
oldest human struggle, to be free."
Pilger distills the history of Palestine
during the twentieth century into an easily
comprehensible struggle for land - the loss
of seventy-eight per cent of that belonging
to Palestinians when the state of Israel was
founded in 1948 and their claim to only the
remaining twenty-two per cent, which had for
thirty-five years been occupied by Israel.
In a series of extraordinary interviews with
both Israelis and Palestinians, he speaks to
the families of suicide bombers and their
victims. He witnesses the humiliation of
Palestinians at myriad checkpoints with a
permit system not dissimilar to apartheid
South Africa's infamous pass laws. One
Palestinian woman tells of how she was
stopped from passing through a checkpoint
when she went into labour and had to return
home to give birth with her mother-in-law
using a razor to cut the umbilical cord. The
baby later died. He goes into the refugee
camps and meets children who, he says, "no
longer dream like other children, or if they
do, it is about death." He is shown round
the Palestinian Ministry of Culture in
Ramallah after a recent Israeli attack where
he discovers faeces smeared on walls and
floors and a room of children’s paintings
vandalised.
Archive footage shows pledges by successive
American presidents in support of Israel.
Pilger describes the Israeli administration
as "America’s deputy sheriff" in the
oil-rich Middle East, receiving billions of
dollars and the latest weapons: F16
aircraft, bombs, missiles and Apache
helicopters. He reveals that Britain also
fuels the conflict even though it condemns
Israel for its illegal occupation. "During
the first fourteen months of the Palestinian
uprising, the Blair government approved 230
export licences for weapons and military
equipment to Israel... Tony Blair has said,
and I quote him, "We are doing everything we
can to bring peace and stability to the
Middle East.'" As a result, Israel is now
the fourth-largest military power in the
world.
On a hillside overlooking Jerusalem, Pilger
concludes. "The truth is that Israelis will
never have peace until they recognise that
Palestinians have the same right to the same
peace and the same independence that they
enjoy,’ he said. ‘Recently, that great voice
of freedom, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, asked
this: “Have the Jewish people of Israel
forgotten their collective punishment, their
home demolitions, their humiliations so
soon?” Israel’s own dissenting voices have
not forgotten and those who speak out in
this film honour the best traditions of
Jewish humanity... The occupation of
Palestine should end now. Then, the solution
is clear: two countries, Israel and
Palestine, neither dominating nor menacing
the other. Is that impossible or is history
to witness the consequences of yet another
silence?’"
Palestine Is Still The Issue was a Carlton
Television production for ITV first
broadcast on ITV1, 16 September 2002.
Director: Tony Stark. Producer: Chris
Martin.
Awards: The Chris Statuette in the War &
Peace division, Chris Awards, Columbus
International Film & Video Festival, Ohio,
2003; Winner, War & Peace category, Vermont
International Film Festival, 2003;
Certificate of Merit, Chicago International
Television Awards.
The majority of John Pilger's 58 documentaries and films are available to watch in their entirety at his website
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