Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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speaking truth to power .....

speaking truth to power .....

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

We urgently need you to write in support of the SBS series “The Promise”

I am sure that most of you watched the SBS series “The Promise” shown just before Christmas and found it a refreshing change to see the Palestinian predicament given fair treatment in this political thriller.  

The director, Peter Kosminsky took eight years to research and make the film for the British Channel 4 network which follows the Israeli-Palestine conflict from the end of British mandate Palestine to the present. A letter from a British army veteran had sparked his interest because no one had ever paid any attention to the 100,000 British soldiers stationed in Palestine between 1945 and when Israel was created in 1948.   Kosminsky, who is of Jewish background, says:  "The almost universal view among the soldiers we interviewed was that they were intensely sympathetic to the Jews when they arrived. But in the three-and-a-bit years that followed, their attitudes changed. They were attacked by Jewish fighters, they were increasingly confined to quarters, their families were sent home, they were kidnapped and in one case, two sergeants were hanged. The soldiers began to see the Arabs as the underdogs and sympathy for them increased. The soldiers also felt aggrieved about what they felt was the ingratitude of Palestinian Jews, whom they felt they had helped in the Second World War."

We have had many people write to say how much the series opened their eyes to the historical background of the Israel-Palestine conflict, something that is rarely presented or discussed in our media.  

Naturally, it also aroused the ire of the Israel apologists much as it did in the UK where the UK regulator, Ofcom, received more than 40 written complaints about anti-Semitic depictions in the series.  Hoping to stop the series from being shown in Australia, WA Labor Senator Glenn Sterle wrote to the SBS Ombudsman claiming that the program “would be viewed as anti-Semitic by any reasonable person.” His letter is attached as published by Vex News, a Zionist blog. Unable to stop the program from being shown, numerous members of the Jewish community wrote to the Senate Complaints committee which is now holding a hearing in February at which the Managing Director of SBS Michael Ebeid must defend his decision to run “The Promise”.

Although people had written to SBS commending it for showing “The Promise”, Mr Ebeid received only one supportive letter addressed to him personally from Anisa Hamood in Adelaide. Many more are needed in defence of the series for the hearing.

If we want SBS to run more programs that give a fair and balanced depiction of the Israel-Palestine conflict and a human representation of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice, then we ask you please to write to Mr Ebeid commending SBS for the four-part series of “The Promise” and asking for it to be replayed.  We are writing to those of you who have expressed a desire to help in the past and who have seen “The Promise”.  Without a groundswell of support from people wanting to see the Palestinian narrative get a fair run, we may well see the Israel apologists once again dominate what can and what cannot be shown, aired or written. Please write to:

 

Mr Michael Ebeid, Managing Director, SBS Locked Bag 028, Crows Nest, NSW, 1585 and mark it “Private and Confidential”. 

 

Since SBS funding is currently being reviewed, it would also be worthwhile to write to Wayne Swan MP, Senator Penny Wong and Prime Minister Julia Gillard suggesting that extra funding be allocated to SBS so that more quality programs will be shown, especially those that provide an even-handed representation of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

 

Senator Penny Wong  <[email protected]>

The Hon Wayne Swan MP <[email protected]>

The Hon Julia Gillard MP, Prime Minister of Australia, PO Box 6022, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600,  Fax No (02) 6273 4100

 

Sonja Karkar

Editor
http://australiansforpalestine.com

 

slam dunk .....

Mr Michael Ebeid

Managing Director

SBS

Dear Mr Ebeid

 

That a Senate Complaints Committee will be holding a hearing on your showing  the BBC  series  The Promise is testimony to the egregious influence of the Zionist lobby in Australia.

It is ironic that  Holocaust denial has been criminalised in many European countries  but in Israel, where  thousands of holocaust survivors  reside, Nakba denial  i.e. the denial of the  ethnic cleansing of Palestine  with its  destruction of over 500 villages and  forced deportations  by Zionist militia (deemed terrorists by Britain) is state policy.

In 2009, the Israeli Education Ministry ordered the removal of the word, Nakba from  a school textbook for Arab children.

In March 2011, the Knesset passed the Nakba law.: “The Nakba law, once implemented, will make it illegal for public bodies, or agencies that receive funding from the State of Israel, to claim that Israel should not be a Jewish state, and that the practices of the government are not democratic. Furthermore the commemoration of ‘Nakba Day,’ the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, following the Yishuv’s ethnic cleansing of the majority of indigenous Palestinians from what became Israel, has also been made illegal.“

And today - High Court rejects petition against Israel's controversial 'Nakba Law' Arab, Jewish citizens submit petition against law granting finance minister power to reduce budget of state-funded bodies that reject Israel as Jewish state or mark the Palestinian Nakba.

The flurry of complaints about the screening of The Promise, here and in Britain, is yet another facet of the Zionist Nakba denial campaign.

I most  certainly congratulate and support  you for  giving  the Australian audience the opportunity to view this  superb drama  about the Palestinian Nakba and the ongoing  conflict of  the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The Promise fulfils the standards of historic truth within its fictional frame and confirms that in the Palestinian tragic narrative, the past and the present are in an inhumane grip of death and violence.

The Promise  is not anti-Semitic. Every enacted or alluded to historic event can  be verified...the  Zionist Irgun terrorists with their attacks on the British forces and the massacre of the villagers of Deir Yassin, the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians who still have no right of return, the suicide bombings  by Palestinians, the  Israeli refuseniks, the  daily harassment of  Palestinians by extremist colonists, the demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli Occupation Forces, the inhumane siege of Gaza, the solidarity of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists..by  historians such as in Israeli  Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and Professor Adel Safty's Might over Right as well as Hareetz and  Amnesty International.

The Australian government and mainstream media (including SBS though the ABC is worse) have regularly shamefully capitulated to Zionist pressure and  its cynically fabricated anti-Semitic paranoia in Australia thereby abandoning  truth and  the Palestinian people to systematic Israeli brutality  which daily violates international law.

So, considering  the moral spinelessness of our  media, your decision to show The Promise was an act of  courage and integrity and I hope SBS will replay it soon and I expect that the Senate Complaints hearing has the intelligence to throw out the absurd complaint of anti-Semitism.

Sincerely

Dr Vacy Vlazna

exposing hypocrisy of zionist lobby .....

exposing hypocrisy of zionist lobby & its role as shills for Israeli state ……

from Antony Loewenstein ….

Following the ongoing pressure by the Australian Zionist establishment to censor The Promise, a wonderful letter appeared in yesterday’s Age which was spot-on:

A leading Jewish body, in an effort to suppress DVD sales of the SBS series The Promise, has likened the program to Nazi propaganda. This shameful attempt at censorship is bad enough without the use of such loaded language. If the Executive Council of Australian Jewry thinks the show is unbalanced, fine; if they think it is bad television, say so; but to label it Nazi propaganda diminishes the credibility of the council and the dignity of Jews everywhere. I have no doubt that the council would have had no trouble at all with the program if the “consistently negative portrayals” were of Palestinians or British characters or if the “historical inaccuracies” fell in their favour. You may call the program propaganda; I call your public-relations efforts hypocrisy.

Jeremy Kenner, Mordialloc