Old and New

Old:
I realize this is a bit delayed, but I wanted to post a response to our meeting with PYALRA and for some reason never got around to it till now. There were two things in particular that I remember from our conversation with the members of PYALARA. The first thing that struck me was when they talked about the concept of "normalization," and viewed it as a form of betrayal. It was particularly interesting that they mentioned this in light of the conversation we had with the students and professor from the Israeli University where they made it a point to illustrate that life was in fact normal in many aspects and that the conflict was not the defining factor of everyday life. I think these two very different views in and of themselves illustrate the importance of talking to different groups of people to gain a more holistic perspective of any given situation. The second bit of conversation that particularly struck me was when the members of PYALARA were talking about the international community's view of Palestine and the surrounding Arab/Muslim countries in relation to Israel. In regards to Israel being located in the midst of predominantly Arab/Muslim countries, they said that Israel plays the victim card and the international community believes them. In particular, they said that it is absurd that Israel says that Arabs/Muslims want to get rid of them (want them to fall into the sea) and the world actually believes them. This comment just struck me as particularly interesting, especially given the previous conversation we had just had with Professor Hermmann. In talking about the region and the conflict, I think we often neglect to see the international community's views and actions from the perspective of those actually involved in the conflict.

New:
On a completely different note, I realized that I also never posted what specifically my final project is about. Although you will see it in a couple days, here is a brief description. It is about the Palestinian musical group Sabreen. My interest in the group was sparked with the very first video we watched in class. I'm not sure if any of you remember the video we watched towards the beginning of the quarter depicting life in East and West Jerusalem, but the music in the intro was a piece by Sabreen. Although I didn't know it at the time, I really liked the music and decided to just follow up and see if I could find some other songs. And since I was looking them up anyway, I decided it would be a good topic for my project. It turns out that Dr. Horowitz actually has a lot of material on Sabreen and in fact did a radio program about them a while ago. So for my project, I am using her production of the program as a framework and am also using some interviews of members of the group along with some other footage and pictures. I've never done a multi-media project before, so this is going to be an experiment. I have bits of audio and a lot of text I'm incorporating into this, so this may be an unusual viewer experience as well. I hope it turns out ok.