Since you're on this free speech expose, I thought I'd pass on some related stories from time to time that you can use for countries of future interest....this is a new angle. Banned speech because it's "propaganda and gives a false depiction of events."..that would be a real killer for Rush and newsmax.
----------------
By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press
RAMALLAH, West Bank (December 19, 2002 8:15 a.m. EST) - The film opens with an apparently mute Palestinian man waving his arms almost as if he's dancing, mimicking Israeli soldiers crouched in alleyways and pointing to parts of his body as if bullets were striking him.
He swirls his hand in the air to indicate there were helicopters as the loud chopping sound of blade rotors are edited into the film.
The 53-minute documentary, "Jenin Jenin: A One-sided Story," which shows the aftermath of an April battle that destroyed part of the Jenin refugee camp, has touched a nerve in Israel.
Last week, Israel's censorship board banned cinemas from showing the film, produced by Mohammed Bakri, an Arab citizen of Israel.
After a screening of the film Wednesday in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Bakri said he would petition the Supreme Court to overturn the ban.
"I want them (Israelis) to understand my reality, another truth, which is not explained in their media," Bakri, 49, said.
In April, Israeli soldiers fought eight days of intense, close-quarters battles with Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin camp's dark, narrow alleyways. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians were killed.
Soldiers hunted militants in the crowded camp, a stronghold for groups that sent many suicide bombers into Israel, part of a large-scale Israeli incursion into the West Bank that began March 29 after a Palestinian bomber killed 29 people at an Israeli hotel on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday.
Palestinians officials initially claimed that Israelis massacred hundreds of civilians. The Palestinian officials no longer make the claim, though many ordinary Palestinians still believe it. Human rights groups and journalists found no evidence of a massacre, though Amnesty International and the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Israeli forces of abuses such as using Palestinian civilians as human shields and preventing rescue teams from entering the camp during the fighting.
Bakri's film, shot over five days, juxtaposes tearful, angry interviews with camp residents, including a 12-year-old girl and an elderly man with bullet wounds in a hand and foot. He weeps as he tells of the moment when, in his words: "I understood I was about to be killed."
The film includes footage of a body, charred and blackened by fire, and an Israeli tank rumbling toward a row of Palestinians lying near its path. One of the men closest to the tank lurches his body trying to get out of its way just as the image goes black.
The impression left is that the tank crushes the line of about a dozen men, Israeli critics argue, something that never happened.
"It was going to crush the people and it stopped at the last moment," Bakri explained. "I didn't want to say that it is crushing the people, but I want to tell people how frightened people were there."
The central character, a middle-aged father with a shaved head, says, "Israel is the loser, not the Palestinians. What was destroyed can be rebuilt. Widowers will marry again."
Israel's censorship board banned the movie on the grounds that it is propaganda and gives a false depiction of events. It was the first time in 15 years that Israel has banned a movie. The Japanese film "Empire of the Senses" was blocked from Israeli theaters in 1987 because it was deemed too violent and pornographic. ........
nandotimes.com |
