[lbo-talk] Savior of Color: Juliano Merr

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>[lbo-talk] Re: Savior of Color
>Brian Charles Dauth magcomm at ix.netcom.com, Sat Feb 28 09:48:40 PST 2004
<snip>
>The Bible describes Christ as having features such as "hair of wool 
>and skin of bronze."  That is not a description of a Caucasian.  In 
>this film Christ is portrayed as having silky brown hair and blue 
>eyes.  In George Steven's The Greatest Story Ever Told, Christ is 
>played by a Swede -- Max Von Sydow.
>
>This type of racial erasure is insulting and promotes racism.

It would be interesting if a film set in Israel today whose plot was 
allegorically modeled on the life of Jesus starred Juliano Merr 
(Juliano Merr Filmography 
<http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&id=1800026613&cf=gen&intl=us> & 
<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0580083/>; "Juliano Merr Nude!" 
<http://www.euronet.nl/users/ilm/celeb/MERR-J00.HTM>):

*****   BLOCKING HUMANITARIAN AID

12 April 2002 | Jonathan Cook | al-Ahram - Egypt

Israel's Palestinian citizens, enraged by the military assault on 
their ethnic kin in the occupied territories, risked the first mass 
confrontations last week with Israeli security forces since the 
police killed 13 of them at the start of the Intifada, in October 
2000.

The clashes occurred at several locations as the Arab minority tried 
to bring food and medical aid to the "closed military zones" declared 
around besieged West Bank cities by the Israeli army.

Arab towns and villages in Israel have amassed huge stockpiles of 
supplies over the last few weeks but have struggled to secure 
permission to get the aid through.

During protests in support of a convoy of trucks hoping to reach 
Jenin on Tuesday, two Arabs were wounded when a soldier passing in a 
civilian car fired live bullets at a small group of demonstrators.

Some 30 Jews from the nearby Magen Sha'ul settlement had set up an 
informal roadblock several kilometres before the Jalame checkpoint, 
the entrance to the army's military zone. Watched by Israeli police, 
the settlers waved Israeli flags and burned tyres and, when the 
demonstrators tried to pass them, threw stones.

According to eyewitnesses, as the protesters threw stones back, a 
passing soldier drove over to the settlers and then fired at the 
crowd. A young woman, Valentina Abu Oksa, and an unidentified young 
man were injured.

A police spokesman said the soldier had been arrested.

Another group of Jews from the same settlement advanced on the larger 
group of demonstrators being held with the aid trucks at a police 
roadblock close to Jalame.

When the settlers grabbed an Arab youth and started to beat him, 
armed border police on horseback drove the settlers back. They then 
confronted the demonstrators, who eventually agreed to leave after 
the army agreed to allow the supplies through.

However, yesterday it was unclear how close the supplies were to Jenin.

A similar confrontation at the normally quiet A-Ram checkpoint, north 
of Jerusalem, turned ugly when peace activists demanded that an aid 
convoy be allowed to reach Ramallah. They were met by a wall of 
heavily armed soldiers supported by armoured vehicles.

As the demonstrators, drawn from the Palestinian minority and radical 
leftwing Jewish groups, massed at the barriers, organisers tried to 
negotiate with the army over allowing four supply trucks through to 
Qalandiya, the checkpoint marking the entrance to the temporary 
Palestinian capital.

After a standoff lasting two hours, army commanders agreed to let one 
truck approach. But as the vehicle remained stuck at the barriers, 
and other demonstrators formed a human chain to pass bags of rice 
from another truck towards the checkpoint, troops fired a volley of 
tear gas canisters and stun grenades.

As clouds of gas exploded from all directions, sending the crowd 
scattering in confusion, soldiers ran at the demonstrators, hitting 
the nearest with batons.

The injured included women who had been at the front of the 
demonstration to highlight its peaceful nature. Iris Bar, from Haifa, 
was one of those who had a cut to the head from the falling 
canisters. "There were tear gas canisters raining down on us," she 
said.

A photograph published in the Israeli press confirmed her story that 
she had also been hit with a baton from behind by a soldier as she 
tried to run away.

Juliano Merr, 45, an Israeli film star who is half Arab and half 
Jewish, had a bloody gash over his left eye which he and other 
witnesses said had been caused when police kicked him as he was held 
on the ground. He was also one of several protesters saying they had 
been hit by rubber bullets.

"Five or six policemen were on top of me at once," he said. "There 
seemed to be no reason for the attack on us. It happened just as 
everyone thought the truck was going to be let through and was 
cheering."

Auni Khalil, an Israeli Arab doctor representing Physicians for Human 
Rights, who had cuts to his arm and leg, said he had been set on by 
police even though he was wearing a doctor's coat bearing the group's 
insignia.

About 30 people needed medical treatment.

There were other worrying signs of a backlash against the Arab 
minority asserting its rights to free speech.

Three demonstrators were arrested at a protest outside the American 
Embassy in Tel Aviv last Thursday after Palestinian flags were raised 
in front of the building. Police charged into the crowd with batons, 
injuring some 25 people, including six who needed treatment at the 
scene.

Police officials told Israeli television afterwards that officers had 
acted to prevent the waving of the flags, which they called an 
illegal act.

It was a worrying development for the Arab minority. The legality of 
Palestinian flag-waving has been unclear since April 2000 when 13 
students were arrested at a demonstration at Jerusalem's Hebrew 
University. Afterwards the attorney- general ruled that local police 
commanders had discretion to detain demonstrators who raised the flag 
if it was likely to promote hostility to Israel.

The decision has yet to be tested in the courts, largely because 
police have kept away from Arab areas since the clashes of October 
2000. But if Arab protesters continue to take their campaigns into 
Jewish areas, there are likely to be more violent clashes and arrests.

At the weekend, large demonstrations were staged in many Arab towns. 
In Nazareth 10,000 demonstrators chanted "Sharon is a murderer" as 
they marched down the main street.

At Umm Al-Fahm, in the central Triangle region, the main Wadi Ara 
road was closed for an hour by youths throwing stones at cars before 
police moved in to arrest seven of them. It was an event heavy with 
symbolism for both sides: the last time the road was shut, at the 
start of the Intifada, police shot dead three protesters after they 
were ordered to reopen it.

Police have been taking a particularly harsh line against the Bedouin 
in the Negev.

Leaders at the town of Rahat were not allowed to deliver to the 
Palestinians $3,500 in cash and 100 tons of rice, sugar and flour 
they had collected.

And this week there was a spate of belated arrests following 30 March 
Land Day demonstration. Five days after a rally near Beersheva, two 
community leaders, Youssef Al-Atawneh and Abdel-Karim Atika, were 
detained, accused of expressing support for a terror organisation.

By Tuesday five more demonstrators, including Ibrahim Baransi, the 
leader of the Arab student union at Ben Gurion University in 
Beersheva, had been taken into custody. It was unclear whether the 
organisation referred to in the police indictments was Hizbullah or 
the Palestinian Authority.

Morad Al-Sana, a Beersheva lawyer for the Adalah Legal Centre for 
Arab minority rights, said: "We have been warned to expect many more 
arrests in the next few days."

According to the Web site of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, the 
police used undercover agents at the Land Day demonstration and 
filmed the demonstrators. It is the first time the event had been 
held in the Negev.

Dr Rawda Atallah, head of the Arab Cultural Centre in Nazareth, the 
parent organisation of the Arab Youth Centre in Rahat run by Atika, 
said: "A political decision has been taken to victimise the community 
leaders among the Bedouin to nip their protests in the bud. The Negev 
has traditionally been quiet and I suspect the authorities have been 
unnerved by the strength of feeling shown on Land Day and the fact 
that they can no longer rely on the support of the Bedouin."

12 April 2002 | Jonathan Cook | al-Ahram - Egypt

<http://www.palestinecampaign.org/archives.asp?xid=729>   *****
-- 
Yoshie

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