Watch the trailer below, click here to read the City Pages Review, and most importantly, go see:

BudrusThe Lagoon Theatre1320 Lagoon Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55408
(612) 825-6006

Playing November 26th – December 2nd @ 2:40,  4:50, 7:10

[youtube]YQQ8F2W5eB0[/youtube]

From the official Budrus website: Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines. Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today. In an action-filled documentary chronicling this movement from its infancy, Budrus shines a light on people who choose nonviolence to confront a threat.  The movie is directed by award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha (co-writer and editor of Control Room and co-director Encounter Point), and produced by Bacha, Palestinian journalist Rula Salameh, and filmmaker and human rights advocate Ronit Avni (formerly of WITNESS, Director of Encounter Point).

While this film is about one Palestinian village, it tells a much bigger story about what is possible in the Middle East. Ayed succeeded in doing what many people believe to be impossible: he united feuding Palestinian political groups, including Fatah and Hamas; he brought women to the heart of the struggle by encouraging his daughter Iltezam’s leadership; and welcoming hundreds of Israelis to cross into Palestinian territory for the first time and join this nonviolent effort. Many of the activists who joined the villagers of Budrus are now continuing to support nonviolence efforts in villages from Bil’in to Nabi Saleh to Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem.

Budrus includes diverse voices– from the Palestinian leaders of the movement and their Israeli allies to an Israeli military spokesman, Doron Spielman, and Yasmine Levy, the Israeli border police captain stationed in the village at that time. While many documentaries about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict either romanticize the notion of peace, or dwell entirely on the suffering of victims to the conflict, this film focuses on the success of a Palestinian-led nonviolent movement.

In a keynote address immediately following the world premiere of Budrus at a Gala screening at the Dubai International Film Festival in December 2009, Her Majesty Queen Noor Al Hussein of Jordan praised the film, stating that Budrus: “Gives an enormous amount of hope… It’s a story which will have an impact and can help bring [about] change.”

Budrus received the Panorama Audience Award, Second Prize, at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2010.

DVDs of Lectures and Presentations on the Palestine-Israel Issue recommended for showing on Duluth PACTV (Cable Channel 20) by Twin Ports Break the Bonds, local affiliate of Minnesota Break the bonds.

All showings are at 2 p.m. and 11 p.m.  on the dates listed below. Each one is an hour in length.

Contact Person: Bob Kosuth, 1224 E. 11th Street, 218-724-4800, rkosuth@hotmail.com

Twin Ports BBC:  http://twinportsbbc.blogspot.com/

Title                                                                               Producer                             Length                  Date

Life in Occupied Palestine                                            Anna Baltzer                      59 minutes              11/11

Jennifer Lowenstein                                                      Our World in Depth           58 min. 57 sec.       11/18

Gaza One Year Later, Part I

Jennifer  Lowenstein                                                     Our World in Depth            59 minutes              11/25

Gaza One Year Later, Part 2

(Also Q & A and David Rovics mini-concert)

Omar Barghouti                                                            Our World in Depth            58 min. 15 sec.         12/2

The Need To Boycott Israel, Part I

Omar Barghouti                                                            Our World in Depth            58 min. 15 sec.          12/9

The Need To Boycott Israel, Part 2

From One West Bank to Another:                                 Our World in Depth         58 min. 45 sec.             12/16

Two Locals’ Stories from Palestine

You’re invited to hear Daoud Nasar!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 from 3:30-5:00

Carlson L-110, University of Minnesota

321 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN

Daoud Nassar is a Palestinian Christian farmer whose family works its 100-acre farm and olive grove just outside the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Daoud will discuss his activities at Tent of Nations (TON), a dynamic peace and local education center where Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals join together in solidarity in the pursuit of peace through non-violent activities.

Faculty for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace (FFIPP) is an international network of faculty and students working for a just peace in the Middle East. FFIPP sponsors annual semester-long and summer Israel/Palestine internship programs for University students interested in gaining first-hand experience in the region. Past interns have worked at UN agencies, local human rights organizations, political think tanks, and cultural associations in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Please learn more at: (www.tentofnations.org) (www.fotonna.org) (ffipp.org)

From left to right: Nail Albarghouthi, Sylvia Schwarz, Susie Gad, and Susanne Waldorf. Photo by Amber Michel

150 students recently attended a panel discussion coordinated by the group, Students for a Free Palestine, at Saint Cloud State University. The four panelists were all members of MN BBC, but each came with a different perspective. The following article by Anazthasya Anthony published in the the University Chronicle of St Cloud State on October 24, 2010 relays more of the story:

On Tuesday, Atwood Little Theatre came to life when students, faculty, and the public engaged with a panel about Israeli-Palestinian issues. Students for a Free Palestine hosted a discussion containing history, personal stories, resistance, and legal violations in Palestine. The panel consisted of speakers, Sylvia Schwartz, Nail Albarghouthi, Susie Gad, and Susanne Waldorf.

Schwarz, a Jewish American, spoke about her childhood memory and what brought her Palestinian solidarity. “We learned in my Sunday school that Israel had the most moral army in the world,” Schwarz said. In 1982, she said she began having doubts, “Suddenly I was aware that I had been lied to.”

Albarghouthi, SCSU student and president of Students for a Free Palestine, shared his view.

“As a child, I had a lot of questions why was I born in Kuwait, raised in Jordan and living in the U.S.,” Albarghouthi said. He also said he was curious why he could not return to his home country, Palestine.

Zionism, Albarghouthi said, is a European colonial movement formed to relocate European Jews in Palestine. “The real problem is the Zionists and the Zionists’ ideology,” Albarghouhi said.

Gad, the third panel speaker, related how the Israel-Palestine conflict was a blur to her until 2006. “Everything was background noise,” Gad, an Egyptian American said. In 2006, while on her study abroad program in Egypt, she and her friends decided to visit Jerusalem.

“My fiancée and I were of Arab descent and we realized right away how drastically different we were treated,” Gad said. The guards at the checkpoint held them for more than seven hours because they were assumed to be Palestinians. She enlightened the crowd on Israel’s legal violations despite stipulations in International Law. “I learned that international law was to ensure that Palestinians received equal civil rights, human rights, political rights, cultural rights, social rights,” Gad said.

The audience learned about various organizations combating oppression of the Palestinians, including Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign through Waldorf. “For some reason, we are invested in Israeli bonds and we are asking the State to divest,” Waldorf said.

One question raised was the position of the U.S. in the conflict. “Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and a lot of aids are given in forms of grants for Israel to purchase U.S. weapons,” Waldorf said.

When asked about a resolution idea, Albarghouthi stressed the importance of education. “The more educated the general public is, the more they can pressure their government to act upon it,” he said.

Albarghouthi told the crowd about proposed the two-state solution where Palestinians and Israel will be given rights to their own land. “To me, no matter how many states we want to slice it into, giving people their rights, their bite to eat, will reduce the conflict at least by 80 percent,” Albarghouthi said.

Farzona Dzhabbarova, an SCSU student at the event said,“This event taught me even more than I expected.”

Students for a Free Palestine is a relatively new student organization established last March. “The panel is at times much more effective than showing a film, where the conflict is distant, the people involved are distant, and therefore doesn’t hit home,” Albarghouthi added.

Posted by: http://www.universitychronicle.net/index.php/2010/10/24/students-free-palestine-discuss-misconceptions-surrounding-conflict/

Join us for an afternoon of fun,

getting to know MN Break the Bonds Campaign

(MN BBC), and pitching in funds to help the campaign continue.

Pitching in on a donation basis – No one turned away for lack of funds

(perhaps for lack of FUN though!)

MN Break the Bonds Community

Informational and Fundraiser!

Saturday August 28

4-7pm

3104 45th Ave. S. Minneapolis

We are working together to bring fair and honest Palestine-centric education to Minnesota, to support justice and human rights and to take responsibility for our culpability as Minnesotans in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

We say,

Minnesota Divest from Israel Bonds, Divest for Justice in Palestine

To make a donation or to get involved, email us at:

mn@breakthebonds.org

If you would like to print out the event flier to give to friends and neighbors, click here: community flier

Photo from: http://glbonafont.com

Richard Broderick, TC Daily Planet, July 15, 2010.

Stefanie Fox picked a good week to visit the Twin Cities to launch a local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org).

While Fox, JVP’s national organizer, was making a presentation in Saint Paul, across the river in Minneapolis, the Presbyterian Church USA gave overwhelming approval to a proposal calling upon the U.S. government to cut off aid to Israel unless it ceases its settlement expansions in the Occupied Territories.
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Coming hard on the heels of the Goldstone Report and the uproar over the recent terrorist assault on the Gaza flotilla, the proposal is further evidence that the self-censorship that has stifled any kind of open debate in this country over our “special relationship” with Israel is beginning to fray.

But there’s still lots of work to be done, which is why Fox came to spend a couple of days in Minnesota.

JVP is building local chapters and one of its top targets is Minneapolis-St. Paul, for reasons Fox explained to me during a conversation at Gingko’s coffee shop the day after her presentation.

“In the Twin Cities, there is a long history of progressive activism and it would be foolish for us not to be involved here,” she said. She also pointed out that some 800 people on JVP’s nationwide email list of 100,000 activists live in the Twin Cities.

Jewish Voice for Peace got its start about 20 years ago in the Bay area and went national in 2003. Its most public face is on the Internet; the group is currently spearheading an online petition campaign to convince pension-fund giant, TIAA-CREF, to divest from corporations that profit directly from the Occupation; to date, the petition has gathered some 6,000 signatures.

This tactic reflects the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) strategy now being pursued by Middle East peace organizations around the world.

BDS  seeks to replicate the pressure that brought down apartheid in South Africa, only this time against Israel. BDS is also the goal of the Minnesota Break the Bonds campaign and is supported by other local peace groups like the Coalition for Palestinian Rights. It is being taken seriously enough by the Israeli government and its U.S. backers that, in a twisted chain of logic, it is being equated with denial of Israel’s right-to-existence – and therefore with “terrorism.”

It’s a linkage that worries Fox – but that isn’t going to stop her and her fellow Jewish activists from speaking truth to power.

“We know that when something is framed as a threat to Israel’s security, all bets are off,” she observed. “It is alarming to think that non-violent protestors might be targeted in this way.

“But that’s not stopping folks as far as I can tell. The power of BDS in response to the daily violence of the occupation speaks much more loudly than any attempts at muzzling us.”

At the same time, she and other activists know that the “daily violence of the occupation” can only continue so long as the United States goes on lavishing political, military, and, above all, financial support on Israel.

We hear about the $3-plus billion in direct aid Israel receives from us each year, but the true value of our aid goes far beyond even that overweening sum.

In 1980, the State Department commissioned a study of the total value of all direct and indirect U.S. aid  to Israel. The study was spiked by the Reagan administration and only later released in a highly redacted form. Even so, the document revealed that the combined amount of U.S. assistance to Israel in the form of direct aid, forgiven loans, special trade deals, tax deductions claimed by Americans donating to Israeli organizations, and other subventions actually added up to some $20 billion a year. And that was in 1980. We can safely assume that the total is much higher now.

At a time when we are closing schools and libraries, forcing American students to pay higher and higher tuitions, and telling our long-term unemployed to take a hike, the continuation of this kind of assistance to any foreign nation would be insupportable – no matter what the circumstances. That it should be ladled out to a nation that spies on us, defies our arms export control laws, ignores UN resolutions and is guilty of wholesale humans rights violations and war crimes, is beyond insupportable. It is unconscionable – and inconceivable if the recipient were any other nation in the world.

It is has long been clear that the only way this insanity can be stopped is if enough American Jews – people of conscience, acting in the best tradition of Jewish teaching and history – resist attempts to silence dissent by national Jewish organizations and step forward to say “No more. Not in my name.” The appearance of groups like JVP – and the work of activists like Stefanie Fox – give reason to hope that, however slowly and painfully, we will perhaps one day be able to reach that goal.

Rich Broderick (email richb@lakecast.com) lives in St. Paul and teaches journalism at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. Rich is a writer, poet, and social activist.

First Posted at: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net

Photo: http://www.antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/photo-gallery/2009_09_21_no/