Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

This review does not do this film justice.  It is a brilliant portrait of despair.

9 Star Hotel, The New York Times, May 23, 2007

In “9 Star Hotel,” the Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar draws us into the precarious world of young Palestinian construction workers scrabbling to survive in and around the Israeli city of Modiin. Irregularly and illegally employed, the men hide in the wooded hills above the city, sleeping in shelters made from scraps of Sheetrock and constantly on the alert for Israeli security forces.

Accompanied by Mr. Haar and his hand-held camera, the workers sneak across hazardous highways at night, flee police raids and speculate on an uncertain future. The cheerful Ahmad, nicknamed the Merchant by his peers, was once a night watchman in an Israeli building. Now he scavenges for garbage and argues with his friend Muhammad, a thoughtful day laborer who worries about the Palestinians’ lack of progress.

“We think backward, we never think forward,” he says, exemplifying the film’s bipartisan tone. “9 Star Hotel” may strive to make the political personal, but it does so via subjects who seem just as willing to question their own culture as the one that excludes them.

Nevertheless, by ignoring Israeli voices and focusing only on the immigrants, Mr. Haar has produced a documentary filled with immediacy but free of analysis, a fascinating but ultimately unenlightening record of their plight.

9 STAR HOTEL

Bin Laden: All Muslims must help end Gaza siege - Haaretz, May 18, 2008

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden lashed out at Arab leaders for sacrificing the Palestinians in a new message released Sunday and he called on Muslim militants in Egypt to help break the blockade of Gaza.

“Those (Arab) kings and leaders sacrificed Palestine and Al-Aqsa to keep their crowns. … But we will not be relieved of this responsibility,” bin Laden said in the audio message posted on an Islamic militant Web site where al-Qaida leaders issue their statements.

Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City is one of the holiest sites for
Muslims.

 al-Jazeera, May 18, 2008
دعا زعيم تنظيم القاعدة أسامة بن لادن في رسالة صوتية جديدة إلى فك الحصار الذي تفرضه إسرائيل على قطاع غزة.

وقال بن لادن في رسالة “موجهة إلى الأمة الإسلامية” بثها موقع إسلامي على الإنترنت مساء الأحد إن “الواجب الديني يفرض على كل مسلم محاربة الحصار الإسرائيلي الظالم على غزة”.

وأضاف أنه لن يتسنى تحرير الأراضي الفلسطينية بدون قتال ما أسماها “حكومات عربية تؤيد إسرائيل”.

Fareed Zakaria, Who’s the Real Appeaser? Newsweek.com, May 17, 2008

The foundation of Hizbullah’s strength is not just its rockets but the support it can command from 1 million Lebanese Shiites. That’s why dealing with the group as a military problem is counterproductive. Augustus Richard Norton, author of the best recent study of Hizbullah, argues that the 2006 war strengthened the group. “I was in Lebanon in late 2007,” he told me. “And Shia families that had been neutral for 20 years now accepted Hizbullah’s argument that the Shia needed the protection it provided.”

The Bush administration’s response to the current setback has again been a military one—promising more arms for the Lebanese Army. But the reason Hizbullah was able to wrest control of so much of Beirut was that the Army sat back and refused to intervene. The Army—which mirrors the diversity of the society—was wary of getting involved in a struggle in which it would likely lose militarily and politically.

It’s not just Hizbullah. In dealing with many such groups—Hamas, the Taliban—the Bush administration has adopted a macho, exclusively military approach. All three of these groups have a political base in their societies that is deep and enduring. Denouncing them as evil and promising to destroy them will not change that; in fact, doing so only adds to their mystique of resistance and struggle. What we need is a political strategy to combat, contest and weaken the appeal of these groups or to marginalize their violent factions. Such a policy would naturally involve some contact with their leaders, but as part of a much broader effort to engage all groups in these societies politically.