The story of Isaac.

The story of Isaac.

Few days ago seven Israeli innocent tourists have been killed in Bulgaria after a suicide attack on their bus. Those people have been killed for the simple reason that they have the citizenship of a certain country. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hezbollah and Iran of committing the crime. The attack can never be seen out side the context of Arab-Israeli conflict. The ramifications of this conflict seem have extended to every single part of the world only with few exceptions.

Away from all this gloomy news about suicide attacks and boomings, a small village Sixty kilometer away from the city of Agadir in Morocco seems to make another type of news.  The village is made up mainly of Berber population, although there are some Arabs. One cannot, but notice the poverty of the people of this town, and clearly see that they are fighting to earn their very day living. What is interesting about this town is not the well of its people to survive, but rather how they treat each other. The town boasts of having few Jewish families still living there.

The news about some Jewish families living in some small town in north Africa would have been boring, but if you consider the experience of the Jews in the Arab world, this town would seem to you utopia. The lives of the Jews in the Arab world can be described by everything except being peaceful. Just few kilometers away from away from this town, the Jews in Algeria had a different life ,just after independence their number dropped from to 40.000 into ziro just ine few years.For some reason this town seems to be immune from all the hatred that is hovering around in the area.

Isaac is the father of one of families living in this village. Before I talked to him I expected that he would be telling me stories about his fight to survive in this hostile area or the reconciliations and compromises he makes so he can co-exist with his Muslim neighbors, but I was mistaken. Isaac s life seems to be so normal that is boring, his life contains no stories about epic fights for survival and running a way from massacres. He might be the last one you would think of writing a story about. He wakes up in the morning have his breakfast goes to work then gets back at the afternoon for lunch and so on. His life is very ordinary, but as they say, out of the ordinary come the extraordinary.

Isaac is making jewelries He speaks Hebrew, Arabic, French and Berber, so he could communicate with a lot of people, although this town was isolated and very few tourists came to the area and so he really didn’t get the chance to practice his French. Maybe the villages is living in such peace because of its isolation, I mean news inciting media content.  In this village there is no place for derogatory words to refer to Jews or any cranky jokes about them. For some unknown reason the people of this village fail to recognize that they are different. Those people are so busy with enhancing their own lives that they don’t have time to pay attention to their differences.

One would make the assumption that those people have takes extensive courses in cultural diversity or some thing like that. One would think that they have learned to be tolerant are culturally sensitive, but it is not the case.  Ironically Many of them say they tolerance has nothing to do with their situation. “For a start we don’t have anything to tolerate and second you have to have problem so I can have tolerance, but we don’t have problems. I don’t know what I mean by cultural sensitivity but I know that we don’t see each other as different so we don’t have to be sensitive towards each other.”

Militainment :The Collaboration between Hollywood and the Pentagon

 The Collaboration between Hollywood and the Pentagon

The relationship between Hollywood and the U.S military was something that always raised many questions. People could clearly detected that the military is interfering in filmmaking, but no one could define how. Many critics say that the army is providing high-tech and military equipments for Hollywood in return for a good representation of the army in movies. It was not till the late days that this relationship became so rude and bold that when watching a movie makes one fells like he is watching recruiting ads.

The collaboration between Hollywood and the pentagon is something that goes back in history. The founding of Hollywood Anti-Nazi league was said to be done after a sign from the U.S military. The filmmakers who belonged to the league contributed to the making of many films demeaning the Germans, such as “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” and  “The Mortal Storm.”. the U.S military have been very supportive of wartime propaganda ,even the president Roosevelt himself “engaged Hollywood writers, producers, animators, and directors to create works intended to direct popular sentiments toward a government-approved opinion of our enemies ”.especially after the finding of the bureau of motion pictures.

During the cold war Hollywood have been very active in denouncing the soviet union policies both on the internal level and the external level. Producing movies to the forging market to win the heart and the mind of people around the world. Between the year 1960 and 1970 more then 20 movie was produced and displayed in public squares in the many middle eastern cities, like Baghdad .Such movie were not financially successful but that did pot matter since making money was not the objective

The collaboration lasted till our present day and  like (independence day , fighters ..)were produced. The objective of such movies is to positively represent the military and make the army or the navy interesting for the youth. The problem is that many young fellows will buy the crape Hollywood sells them. They all think that the military is all about having fun, shooting guns and hunting the bad guys. The problem is that they go to the battlefield it is not like video game where you get resurrected by a click. When the sky rains mortar shells and Ak bullets , they will say this is not what we have signed for.

After all it seems that it is the only way to do things since no one wants to see the dark side of the American military. I mean depicting pictures of American soldiers with their legs or hands shopped off or in coffins. No one wants to watch movies about Abu graib or Guantanamo simply because it is not fun.

In the past years we used to have actors who served in the military, but now who have soldiers who serve in the movies. In the past we had great movie stars who served in the army, like Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Ted Knight, Kirk Douglas, Lee Marvin, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Rock Hudson, Charles Bronson, Werner Klemperer, Audie Murphy. In the movie act of valor active-duty military personnel have been working the production of the movies. The collaboration between Hollywood the the U.S military seems to have moved from giving some equipments or even military advisors into providing with active-duty soldiers. Such act will certainly make people unable to decide whether they are watching a movie or recruiting ads for the military. The line between the real and imaginary will also grow vague and am afraid that some people will even get the impression that war is all fun..