Film Screening: Palestine is still the Issue

Palestine Is Still The Issue (2002) Written and Presented by John Pilger In 1977, the award-winning journalist and film-maker, John Pilger, made a documentary called Palestine Is Still The Issue (1977). In this film Pilger tells how nearly a million Palestinians had been forced off their land in 1948, and again in 1967. In this new in-depth documentary, he has returned to the West Bank and to Israel, to ask why the Palestinians, whose right of return was affirmed by the United Nations more than half a century ago, are still caught in a terrible limbo -- refugees in their own land, controlled by Israel in the longest military occupation of modern times. "The fate and struggle of the Palestinians," says Pilger, "are not just critical to the overdue recognition of their basic human rights, but are also central to whether the region, and the wider world, are plunged into war. Israel is now one of the biggest military powers in the world. While nothing changes, the dangers become greater. This is a film about a nation of people, traumatized, humiliated and yet resilient. In trying to liberate less than a quarter of historic Palestine, they have had no army, no air force, and no powerful friends -- and have fought back.” This screening of Palestine is Still the Issue is to benefit a delegation of Arab-American youth activists from the Bay Area who plan to go to Palestine this coming summer. The delegation plans on working to support grassroots Palestinian organizations and their programs, work with youth, build international alliances, and upon return, report back to the Bay Area activist communities on the most current situations effecting Palestinian people and their youth. Already widely viewed in Britain and Australia, John Pilger's informative and chilling documentary could not be more timely. It is a film that deserves to be watched by everyone in the US, who unknowingly perhaps, has been subsidising Israel's 37-year-old military occupation, illegal under international law.