Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August, 2015, pp. 38-39
Southern California Chronicle
By Pat and Samir Twair
Actor Stephan James, who played the role of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in the Academy Award-winning movie “Selma,” accepted the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s (MPAC) top entertainment media honor at MPAC’s 2015 “Voices of Courage and Conscience” awards presentation May 2 at the Los Angeles Omni Hotel. This was followed by a video comment by Congressman Lewis himself.
Also honored at the 24th annual MPAC event praising productions that cast Islam in a favorable light were the feature film “Camp X-Ray” and the documentary “The Newburgh Sting” by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner. “Camp X-Ray” writer and director Peter Sattler accepted the award for the film that tells the story of a young woman guard at Guantanamo who discovers her mission is ominous.
Accepting her award for “The Newburgh Sting,” the story of four African-American Muslims targeted by an agent provacateur in a sting operation and arrested for an alleged terror plot on May 20, 2009 in Newburgh, NY, documentarian Davis said there is a need to shift the national dialogue away from old stereotypes.
“We All Live In Gaza”
Filmmaker Maurice Jacobsen. (STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR)
Veteran newsman Maurice Jacobsen screened his documentary, “We All Live in Gaza,” April 8 at the Levantine Cultural Center. “Gazans are peaceful people,” he declared, “and are not dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
Jacobsen’s film documents the destruction of Gaza caused by constant Israeli bombing. Following Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, the Egyptian government under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi rapidly rebuilt Gaza, he pointed out, but that success was later destroyed in Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge assault.
The resiliency of Gazans is evidenced in the young people’s rap music, which Jacobsen records. The filmmaker interviewed a young Gazan musician, Ayman Jamal Magamsi, whose father was killed in an Israeli aerial bombing attack. ”Music can heal and help,” explained Magamsi, who created a website called “Windows to Gaza.”
An image from an unfinished documentary Jacobsen is working on titled “Mission to Gaza” focuses on the words: ”Gaza loves Life.” They are written on a piece of cement from a destroyed building. Jacobsen also noted that, on a weekly basis, Gazans risk their lives by going to “a no-man’s-zone” and protesting Israel’s occupation and siege.
Jacobsen clearly came to love the people of Gaza during the two and a half years he lived with them from 2011 to 2013. For more information, visit <www.in-gaza.com>.
Nakba Observed
Activists commemorate 67 years of Nakba in front of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles on May 15. (STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR)
“Obama, Obama, You will see, Palestine soon will be free,” was the deafening chant shouted May 15 by more than 60 activists in front of Israel’s Los Angeles Consulate. The demonstrators were commemorating the 67th year of the Nakba (catastrophe) marking Israel’s forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. After singing patriotic songs and waving multiple Palestinian flags, the throng departed to the Levantine Cultural Center for a recital of rousing poetry by Fady Joudah, Khadija Anderson, Armine Iknadossian, Morani Kornberg-Weiss and Arash Saedinia.
The next night, the Levantine sponsored a romantic comedy, “Peace after Marriage,” at the Harmony Gold Theatre. On hand to meet the audience was Ghazi Albuliwi, who stars in and directs the film about a Palestinian living in Brooklyn who marries an Israeli woman to get his green card.
Author Describes Her Beloved Damascus Home
Author Diana Darke. (STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR)
“It’s a matter of time until ISIS carries out a sensational assault in the U.S.—then perhaps Washington will take decisive steps about Syria,” stated British travel writer Diana Darke when asked why the U.S. should care about Syria. The occasion was an April 29 signing at the Levantine Cultural Center of her new book, My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More; see June/July 2015 Washington Report, p. 62).
In 2001, a chance meeting with a young architect started Darke on her quest to become a homeowner in the Old City of Damascus. After searching for four years she found the perfect courtyard house: Bait Baroudi, a rundown, two-story house in the Old City’s Muslim quarter. Darke showed slides of the beautiful courtyard and fountain, a self-contained upstairs apartment, and multiple first-floor rooms—including a secret room—decorated over the centuries in the fashion of the prevailing era.
At an event the previous day sponsored by the Syrian American Council-L.A., Darke explained that Iranians have bought much of the property in the Old City as well as in modern Damascus. But she has no plans to sell her beloved house in the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city: “If I sell the house,” she stated emphatically, “it means that I give up on Syria.”
Center Marks 2nd Year
Munir Iqtish speaks at the Burbank Islamic Center on May 9. (STAFF PHOTO S. TWAIR)
On the occasion of the second anniversary of the Burbank Islamic Center May 9, Islamic Relief USA raised funds for Syrian orphans. Munir Iqtish was the guest speaker at the center, which has doubled its membership and building size in the past year. Qari Youssef Edghouch gave an outstanding recitation of the Holy Qur’an at the benefit dinner.
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Posted on April 28, 2024
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