MIRAL: ” I thought we are unheard as Palestinians and as Women “….. She then continues: ” How can we ever have peace in the middle east if we do not hear both sides of the story. We have to bring the story to the front page. Something that I am trying to achieve by creating a bridge of understandings.
” It shouldn’t be illegal to have empathy for the Palestinians Cause. This story is through the eye of a 16 year old Palestinian girl “. The producer, Schnabel, continues: ” So I had to go to Israel to make it happen “….. Before this, Schnabel, had never met a Palestinian person. He knew Israel from the prayers he recited as a child (“Next year, in Israel”), and from a brief trip in 1987, just as the intifada began……..
Schnabel also revealed that the project has relevance for his own family history, figuring that he was a pretty good person to tell the other side of the story, given his background, as an American Jewish person whose mother was president, in 1948, of the Brooklyn chapter of Hadassah the Women’s Zionist Organisation of America.
“When I read the book I thought, why are these people villainized? I need to go there, and I need to see for myself what’s happening,” he said. “And in the process of doing all that, I felt like my mother’s wish—that I should go to Israel and see what it was—would be realized”.
Book Review: After the 1948 war, Hind Husseini set up an orphanage and boarding school in Jerusalem for homeless Palestinian girls. In this gripping historical novel based on Husseinis efforts, Palestinian-born Italian journalist Jebreal focuses on the girls Hind saves, including Miral, and the young men and adults they know. As Miral grows up, she teaches in desperate refugee camps in the West Bank, witnesses Israeli terror (including soldiers breaking the arms of children who throw stones), joins young activists in the Occupied Territories, and falls in love. She also befriends a young Jewish peace activist. The individual viewpoints are the strength of the story, which presents the family and political history from many sides, including Palestinian girls oppressed by Arab regimes and at home, as well as by the Israeli Occupation. There is loathing for collaborators. But are peace negotiations betrayal? After her friend is shot dead in a demonstration, should Miral throw a Molotov cocktail? There are few novels that show the personal conflict in such depth and complexity. With a movie forthcoming, this will spark passionate discussion.
The Movie opens this coming Friday in New York
“This school is the difference between you and the children in the refugee camp “
http://www.miralmovie.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck96h97y9Vs
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