We were there last night, along with about 3000 Israelis and Palestinians who demonstrated against evictions of Palestinians in this East Jerusalem neighborhood. First photo is a wide shot of the crowd, second is a Palestinian hip hop group performing. This Jerusalem struggle is a microcosm of the bigger struggle for the future of Israel/Palestine.
Read about it here and here.

Another story we made for VJ Movement. Israeli and Palestinian software developers work together on an online operating system, but it’s almost impossible for them to have real world meetings because of the political situation (so they usually skype). The Palestinian crew is VERY happy their digital product can’t be controlled by Israeli checkpoints, and they get shares in the company besides.

Here’s a vid of a very unusual, provocative museum in Jerusalem – situated in a bullet-scarred building that before 1967 was on the border between Israel and Jordan. (Khaled and I did a lecture/screening there a few months ago – will post some clips from that soon). Check out the museum website.

This is another video we recently made for VJM, a cool Dutch indie news website. Check it out, especially for the commercials from Ale Yarok, the “Green Leaf” marijuana political party, and also for the way Israel plays the terrorist card against drug use, by connecting the dots to Hizbollah.

This question is heating up – Naomi Klein says yes, Yes Men say yes (cancelling their screening at Jerusalem Film Fest). But Uri Avnery, well known peace activist who actually LIVES here in Israel (since 1933…) gives reasons why it’s a bad idea here. One of his main arguments against “boycott logic” is the Holocaust. Just as Khaled Mahameed cautions against ignoring the Holocaust wound in the DNA of Israelis, Avnery does too. Stretegically, solely tough moves to influence Israel will always fail, because Israel responds to toughness with much more toughness back. Avnery also details the important differences between the South African situation and the Israeli one. Read him and maybe lose some righteous leftist naivete, Naomi….

Another short vid we made for VJMovement in Holland. Uri Avnery is the brightest light on the Israeli left, and he speaks from a lot of experience. He came to Israel in 1933, a 10-yr old fleeing Nazi Germany. He has endured not only endless criticism, but beatings and assassination attempts, to get his message out that peace with the Palestinians is the only way. Read Avnery’s weekly column (in English) here.

Once in awhile we’ll post videos we have made about other peace activists. Rabbi Menachem Froman does not avoid paradoxes – he lives in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, but he has spent many hours meeting with influential Palestinians, including Yassar Arafat and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (the spiritual head of Hamas, assassinated by an Israeli missile in 2004).

When I asked Rabbi Froman if he were willing to live under a Palestinian government after a 2-state solution is reached, he smiled and said, “I am a citizen of the state of God”. Full of humor and hope, he said, with another big grin, that “Allahu Akbar” – “God is great” in Arabic – is translated into English as “Yes, we can.”

We made this video for the VJMovement in Holland. Please consider subscribing to this great site – we will be making more videos for them in the future. For more info and writings by Rabbi Froman, see here.