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Who Destroyed the Cinemas in Gaza?

(Shalom Life-Canada) Jonathan Dahoah Halevi - Five hundred artists from Montreal recently signed a statement "to support the international campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israeli apartheid." Their statement charges: "During the first and second intifadas, Israel invaded, ransacked, and even closed down cinemas, theatres and cultural centers." True, not a single cinema house exists in Gaza, but Hamas - not Israel - is responsible. Saud Abu Ramadan, a Palestinian reporter working for the Chinese Xinhua news service, published an interview on July 26, 2009, with Adnan Abu Beid, 57, who used to run the biggest movie house in Gaza city called al-Nasser. In 1994, there were nine movie houses in Gaza. Abu Ramadan notes that the al-Nasser was burned and destroyed by angry Islamic Hamas demonstrators in 1995. Abu Beid said, "I hid my film archives and decided to become a vegetable vendor." He added that his archives "are the only that remained after all the movie houses had either shut down or been destroyed by Hamas" in 1995. "Many people who think about reopening movie houses in Gaza are afraid that it would be attacked, burned and destroyed." The first and only movie produced by the Hamas government was "Imad Aqel," which tells the heroic story of a senior Hamas terrorist who was responsible for the killing of 13 Israeli soldiers and civilians. As Reuters reporter Nidal al-Mughrabi noted, "The audience in Gaza clapped and cheered as the actor delivered the movie's most memorable line: 'To kill Israeli soldiers is to worship God.'" It is hard to comprehend how such a large group of Canadian artists speaking the language of human rights are silent about Hamas oppression of any free cultural activity or, even worse, its pursuit of a culture of death.
2010-03-05 08:10:30
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