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Today They Took My Son

By Rebecca Stead | MEMO | December 11, 2017

The heart wrenching story of a mother’s loss is laid bare in “Today They Took My Son”. Released online yesterday to coincide with International Human Rights Day, Farah Nabulsi’s short film beams the pain and suffering of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank into the home of every viewer.

The story begins with Khalid, “the hero”, riding his bike through the narrow streets of a nameless town, his father’s voice narrating his adventure from somewhere in the background. Reminiscent of many a home video the world over, any sense of familiarity is quickly jolted away as the film cuts to documentary footage of a house demolition, of men in army uniforms surrounding an unknown figure, of the agony of an old, bearded man as he sits among the rubble of his home.

This juxtaposition of home video-style footage, of birthday cakes and makeshift football matches, and of raw, distressing scenes of Khalid’s arrest is an ongoing theme throughout the film. Narrated by his mother, her eyes dark and harrowed, she asks how “they who have taken everything else” could take her son away. “The body refuses to hear what it has always feared,” she says, as she runs in vain through the streets to the spot where Khalid was taken.

Yet these scenes are simultaneously all too recognisable. In fact, “Today They Took My Son” narrates a situation that has become daily reality for many Palestinians living in the West Bank, as the film points out, “every 12 hours, a Palestinian child is detained, interrogated, prosecuted and/or imprisoned”, according to a 2013 UNICEF report. Others have confirmed such figures, with Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem estimating that as of August 2017 “331 Palestinian minors were held in Israeli prisons”.

The words of Khalid’s mother: “I know the earth will keep spinning around my pain, ignorant of all that has now changed in my world”, strike at the heart of the matter, that such accounts of suffering so often fall on deaf ears among the international community. For Farah Nabulsi, herself a Palestinian living in diaspora in London, “Today They Took My Son” is a vehicle for allowing others to see and feel what Palestinians in the Occupied Territories experience on a regular basis.

Nabulsi explains that although she “always thought she understood the injustices suffered by her people”, it wasn’t until she visited the territories and witnessed the treatment of children that she began to ask “what if that was my child?” As a mother of five, Nabulsi told the Institute for Middle East Understanding in an interview back in May that

There is nothing more excruciating in this life than not being able to help your child.

“These are people whose land was taken, whose homes were taken, whose dignity was taken, whose freedom has been taken, but to also have your children taken?”

What we are seeing is a systematised process of breaking a society through their children.

In the belief that “the arts play a crucial role in changing the world”, Nabulsi hopes that, by documenting the suffering of Palestinians through accessible art forms, awareness and empathy can be brought about. By “giving voice to the silenced”, what the late Edward Said once termed “permission to narrate”, Nabulsi seeks to “rehumanise” the Palestinian situation and provide a counter narrative to that espoused by the powerful lobbyists and international players who seek to deny the Palestinian situation.

“Today They Took My Son” challenges any viewer, irrespective of their geography, family situation or political affiliation, to watch a mother’s heartbreak and not be moved. Her final line “When will he come back? Will he come back? What shall we tell him of the world when he does?” asks us all to consider our silence.

December 11, 2017 - Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , ,

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  1. THE JEWISH CV

    A VILE GOD, A VILE BOOK AND A VILE PEOPLE

    THE GENOCIDAL GOD OF THE JEWS

    “I form the LIGHT, and create DARKNESS. I make PEACE, and create EVIL.
    I the LORD do all these things.” – Isaiah 45.7.

    All cultures have anthropomorphized their gods into humanoid (if sometimes grotesque) form. Were the Jews the exception? Hardly. We know precisely what the Hebrew god looked like. We are, after all, fashioned in his own likeness! “Yahweh”, in fact, is an abbreviation of the longer name, “Yahweh Sabaoth.” It means, “He who musters armies.” Thus Yahweh’s name identifies the god primarily as the military leader of the tribe. No wonder the God bequeathed to the world by the Jews turned out to be a monster.

    A GOD IN THE IMAGE OF THE JEW

    “The Lord is a man of war; Yahweh is his name.” – Exodus 15.3.

    Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

    Without a doubt, the human race has been bludgeoned with books about this one tome, the Jewish Bible. The Jewish Bible is full of violence and ugly stories, with a few “feel-good” platitudes and parables interspersed. It’s hardly worth reading. Other than a handful of spiritual gems that can be found in virtually any religion, the Jewish Bible is irrelevant. A person with an innate sense of right and wrong needs none of its teachings, sparse as they are. Reading the Jewish Bible, in fact, can make one highly depraved. Many a serial rapist and killer has also been a Jewish Bible fanatic. They have taken seriously the punishments exacted throughout the Old Testament, such as stoning for “adulterous” women, “the Lord” punishing “his chosen” by making them eat each other, etc., ad nauseam.

    In Numbers 31:14-18, Moses becomes enraged that his minions hadn’t finished off the people of Midian after the Hebrews had destroyed and pillaged the Midianites’ cities and enslaved the survivors. Moses immediately orders his thugs to kill all the male children and married women but to reserve the virgin girls for themselves – to rape, of course.

    Hardly something we should be teaching our children. The Jewish Bible is the ultimate controlling device.

    NATURAL BORN KILLERS

    God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
    (Genesis 22.2)

    Boy terrified in ritual abuse in the mountains -Yahweh cult’s ‘Test of Fear’
    “God put Abraham to the test … Abraham built an altar … bound Isaac hand & foot … took the slaughtering knife to kill his son … But the angel of the Lord began calling … ‘Do not put out your hand against the boy …. for now I know that you fear the Lord …’ (Genesis 22.1,12)

    The story of Isaac is NOT a condemnation of child sacrifice. Isaac was spared not because human sacrifice was seen to be wrong but because Isaac was the “child of promise” and needed to survive. The yarn requires the normality of human sacrifice. Abraham was praised for his willingness to appease Yahweh by killing his own son. The sham murder of Isaac (the ‘Aquedah’) was the prototype for a ‘redemptive sacrificial death’ subsequently re-worked as the crucified Jesus.

    It should be noted that in the biblical text, Isaac (like Jesus) is repeatedly called “the only son” of Abraham (Genesis 22.2., 12., 16.) even though Abraham actually has another, older son, Ishmael.

    Moses orders Levite fanatics to murder 3000 golden-calf enthusiasts.
    (Exodus 32.27,29)

    BLESSED MURDERERS

    “‘Today,’ Moses said, ‘you have consecrated yourself to Yahweh, at the cost of your sons and brothers. And so he bestows a blessing on you today.'”

    When the Lord says kill everyone He means EVERYONE!
    Saul loses out:
    “You didn’t kill enough,” says the Lord. “You can’t be king!”

    “And Saul defeated the Amalekites … and devoted to destruction all the people … But Saul spared Agag and … all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.
    And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” … Then Samuel said, “Bring here to me Agag the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him cheerfully … And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the LORD in Gilgal. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.”
    – 1 Samuel 15

    The LORD delivers 10,000 Canaanites and Perizzites for slaughter in Bezek. As part of the fun 71 kings have their thumbs and big toes cut off.
    (Judges 1.2,7)

    “And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand … Then Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they killed ten thousand men at Bezek.”
    – Judges 1.2-4.

    Elisha orders the assassination of Jezebel.
    (2 Kings 9,5,37)

    Joshua Slaughters 31 kings
    (Joshua 12.1,24)

    Elijah Murders 450 Priests of Baal.
    (1 Kings 18.40)

    Samson Slays 1000 Philistines (with an ass’s jawbone! )
    (Judges 15.16)

    King Amaziah of Judah (c. 801–783 BC) throws 10,000 captive Edomites from the top of a rock.
    (2 Chronicles 25.12)

    Usurper Jehu tricks all the priests of Baal into temple slaughter.
    (2 Kings 10.19.30)

    “Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, slay them; let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal. And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.”

    THE JEWISH GOD WAS DELIGHTED WITH THE MASSACRE

    “And the LORD said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing right in mine eyes, hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the 4th generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”

    In Joshua’s (supposed) wars of conquest, God gets right in there. He throws down ‘great stones from heaven’ (Joshua 10.11) and scores a better body-count than his Israelites with mere swords. When the Lord gets up a real head of steam the slaughter reaches a truly epic scale. For merely looking into his Ark, Yahweh wipes out fifty thousand and seventy unfortunate men of Bethshemesh (1 Samuel 6.19). When King David slips up and orders a national census, an enraged God zaps seventy thousand.

    Quite apart from the celestial superman’s own killing, he animates his favourites into wiping out whole cities and nations. Jericho, Sodom, Gomorrah, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah etc., etc., are ‘smote and consumed’ – men, women, young, old, ox, sheep and ass!

    ‘You shall annihilate them – Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites – as Yahweh your God commanded you.’

    – Deuteronomy 20.11,18.

    In the largest single god-inspired massacre in the Bible, one million (1,000,000) Ethiopians are slaughtered! (2 Chronicles 14).

    Like

    Buddy Silver's avatar Comment by Buddy Silver | December 12, 2017 | Reply


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