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Thursday, September 06, 2007
The Lion and the Rats, a Hamaswood Production
This video is causing much anger among Fateh supporters. But I don't think you need to be a Fateh supporter to be offended by this "narrative." My favorite touch is how the "Fateh rats" take the veil off the face of a munaqqaba! When did that happen? And when did Fateh burn books? Wasn't it the Hamas book lovers who banned and destroyed thousands of copies of Speak Bird, Speak Again?
When the lion squashed the rats and Gaza bloomed, a Palestinian flag was raised. Not the Hamas flag. I guess they learned how offensive it was to take down the Palestinian flag to raise their flag instead as they did when they took over Gaza. So this is a correction, it seems.
The most amazing touch was the characterization of the conflict with Fateh as the MAIN conflict: Israel is dealt with easily; it's no longer the issue (represented as a bone the lion flicks aside contemptuously). It's Fateh or the Dahlan who are the main trouble, the dangerous one.
Now that is a dangerous idea.
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4 comments:
Hi Amal,
The movie is outrageous, no doubt.
However, I just would like to make a small correction to your post about fateh not "burning" books.
here's a post from "Angry Arab", another blogger:
By the way, let us not allow Fath supporters, and the famously unprincipled Yasir `Abd Rabbuh, who has never met a Westerner without trying to impress him, to get too sanctimonious about Hamas' ban of a book (see below)--although we should maintain our criticisms of Hamas for this and for more. But we should remember that Fath mini-authority banned many books over the years. When the same `Abd Rabbuh was Minister of Culture (who is now huffing and puffing) an issue of the Arabic journal, Majallat Ad-Dirasat Al-Falastiniyyah, was banned because it contained criticisms of `Arafat (in a book review that I wrote). The `Arafat authority once banned books by Edward Said.
Moreover, isn't there stories that fateh supporters murderred naji el ali?
Hi Haytham,
Yes, they banned, or tried to ban some books, including at some point in the 1990s Edward Said's books, though they denied it and took it back.
However, as far as I know they didn't "burn" books. Hamas did. No?
I understand how burning a book can be more dramatic, however both have the same consequences on culture and society.
I dont think a book would mind less being burned than being banned :)
Whether banning a book is as harmful as burning it is not the issue we are debating. The clip shows Fateh militias burning books (and stamping on little dolls too :-( . As far as I know it was Hamas who burned books not Fateh. I was pointing out to the way the clip falsifies the resent past (less than a year ago). Imagine what they would do with the distant past!!
I'm not saying that Fateh is incapable of burning or banning books. I'm just saying, up till now, they haven't burned any. Again, as far as I know.
When they do it, we should call them on it the way we did with Hamas.
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