Palestine Is Still the Issue (2003) Reviews

• Palestine Is Still the Issue: Essential viewing

  Platypuschow2017-08-07

  Though Palestine Is Still the Issue doesn't bring any new facts to the table it's an awareness documentary that I believe everyone should watch. Perhaps if more people knew of the travesty's taking place and had the mainstream medias lies about Israel explained to them then something could be done about it. This is the third John Pilger film I've watched and I very much enjoy his work. If I were to criticize in anyway I'd point out that his documentaries are a tad on the short side. If you are not aware of what is going on in Palestine and what has been for a very very long time then I suggest you give these 52 minutes your time. Another drawn out genocide, another cover up, another group of people demonised by the media while the truly evil ones are defended by our governments. And yet again all the death, all the intolerance, all the acts of purely evil taking place are directly attributed to religion. To quote Bill Maher "For mankind to survive, religion must die"

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• Hot topic well tackled and argued

  alainenglish2007-05-07

  John Pilger tackles another hot topic in a documentary about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the effects of this occupation on Israelis and native Palestinians. Pilger likens the occupation to South Africa's apartheid regime, and goes against much of the usual coverage of the conflict which he says has tended to be biased towards the occupying Israelis against the Palestinians, whose desperation has turned some of them towards suicide bombing. Pilger looks at both sides of the argument here, talking to Palestinians affected by the occupation but also dissenting Israelis who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. He also examines the history of modern Israel, and how a recent compromise by Yassir Arafat (head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation) with the occupying Israelis did virtually nothing for ordinary Palestinians and in fact paved the way for the occupation to get worse. This is capped by an interview with Dori Gold, Israel's senior adviser to the Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Pilger can occasionally be judgemental when interviewing political figures, allowing his accusations to get in the way of the interview. This doesn't happen here and Gold's words in themselves display his complicity in his own governments terrorism and occupation, along with total disregard for the Palestinians. This is backed by Western governments, who supply the occupying forces with arms in return for looking after their oil supply. Pilger's examination of history, while strong, could have been more thorough. As it is, it seems a little sketchy in places and I would liked more detail to have been shown, particularly on the founding of modern Israel. Pilger ends the documentary for a plea for compassion for the Palestinians and to end the destructive silence on their plight. He also looks for a solution to the problem which has become marred in endless negotiation and violence.

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• excellent flick; the most important side of the story

  ceymooney2005-03-09

  i know that many do not like that this movie is one-sided, but where you stand determines what you see. in discussing the israeli occupation of palestine and all the other elements of this conflict, actually tackling the occupation itself is the most important element of the conflict to include. pilgier does it a gain by going straight to the heart of the matter and raising all the tough questions; in israel, these types of discussions are commonplace, but in the u.s., unfortunately, the most important parts of the story are taboo. discussion of the situation from which the violence grows are taboo. you can't discuss the israel/palestine conflict without tackling the reason for the season...the israeli occupation. as every story has a few dozen (at least) sides to it, if you're gonna pick one side to cover, pick the one that addresses the root causes of the subject matter. pilgier has done it again. equal time would be something like this--ordinary palestnian life under military occupation--12 hrs/day, 7 days/week. but this is a good start.

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• Palestina is, indeed, still the issue.

  fbossert2010-07-28

  This is a good documentary film about life in the occupied territories of Gaza and Transjordania; it also includes a short outline of the basic historic facts of the conflict, as well as some –otherwise obvious and self-imposed- ideas on the origin of inter-ethnic violence between Palestina and Israel. As many other documentaries around on the subject, this film does a lot by simply exposing some facts that are evident in Middle East, but rarely reach Western medias. After watching some of these films (made both by independent Israeli film-makers as Mograbi or European as Pilger) you realize that what they show is not at all some "unique footage" got by means of deep research, chance or perseverance, nor the product of a good deal of careful edition: once the crew can make it into the occupied territories (which apparently isn't that easy) they only need to shoot for a while the army checkpoints, the Israeli weapons everywhere, the 8 meters wall built in 2002, the "Jews-only" highways, the devastated lands or the towns destroyed by Israeli bombs to show what the Israeli occupation means. Anyway, the most shocking thing in this film -at least for me- are perhaps not these images, but the interviews to Israeli authorities and common-citizens; it is only then that you get to understand how this situation could happen and persists. Now, one of the reviews here shows exactly that point of view (look around for it). This reviewer tries to contest the whole film by pointing-out two alleged "mistakes" made by Pilger (which would show his total dishonesty about the subject): 1) Israel doesn't have the 4th most powerful army in the world, as Pilger claims; and 2) "Pilger makes the mistake of saying that Israel controlled 78% of the land after the 1948 War of Independence". As for number 1), maybe Israel was actually ranked number 4 for year 2002 (but where? by whom? on which standards?) maybe not: it doesn't matter at all. The only point here is that Israel has an army -and a very strong one, including nuclear weapons- and Palestine doesn't have any army at all, nor big or small – in the touching words of the Israeli that close the film: compared to us, Palestine is a mosquito. As for number 2), I'm afraid Pilger is right: even though Israel was given 55% of Palestine by the ONU in 1947, in the facts they were never restricted to that territory. The war began the next day and after it Israel was occupying 78% of Palestine -throwing out 750.000 Palestinians in the meanwhile, who would become refugees and would grow up to be more than 5.000.000 today. Other than this, the review doesn 't say a thing about what we see in the film. Some of its expressions, though, are in perfect harmony with the shocking opinions that I commented before. For instance, it accuses Pilger of using "Nazi-style tactics". In fact, critics to Israeli politics -even when made by reputed Jew intellectuals as Hannah Arendt- are commonly labeled as "antisemitism" or even –as here- Nazism. Far from it, in this case: the most important voices of the film are precisely those of Israeli Jew citizens who give a different insight on the situation and on the deep causes of violence, and even confess to be ashamed of their government politics against the Palestinians. A second example: this film "goes to discredit the only free democracy in the Middle East", says the reviewer. Leaving aside the military occupied territories of Gaza and Transjordania –which wouldn't be called "a democracy" by the drunkest madman on earth- and focusing on Israel itself, it would be a little funny to call that a sparkling democracy, if we remember that non-Jew Israeli citizens just don't have many of the rights granted to Jew citizens: different access –if any access at all- to land, to jobs and -more dramatically- to Law. Depending on your religious beliefs or political ideology, you may or not agree with this discrimination, you may justify it or not; but what you can not do is to call it a "free democracy", not under any available definition of the term.

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• An accurate, honest, and impassioned video-essay on Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

  lbohne2004-10-29

  British writer DH Lawrence once classified the passion for justice as the finest and noblest of all emotions. John Pilger's accurate and fair account of the conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the finest examples of this passion. Pilger is now teaching at Cornell University and is the recipient of countless journalistic awards. A renowned veteran war reporter, he has covered some of the most war-torn regions of the world: Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Afghanistan and many others. Only the most sullen opponents to his commitment to freedom and justice would deny him the status he enjoys as a first-class journalist. "Palestine Is Still the Issue" is a must-see for Americans, who are kept in the dark by the media and political elites by the real nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a conflict about land, which the documentary makes clear. The brutality of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in dealing with the people it occupies--the Palestinians--is, indeed, uncomfortable to watch for people who wish to shrink from the truth, but the film is replete with interviews with conscientious Israelis who oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands--including a traumatic interview with an Israeli father of a victim of a suicide bomber.

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