All right, Shel, welcome back to the show, Sands High Ward Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Jim Hannon.
He is the writer, director, and filmer of the new movie documentary, it's called The Little Town of Bethlehem, and the website is littletownofbethlehem.org, a very compelling flick.
I hope you guys have opportunity to check it out.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Jim?
I'm doing very well, thank you.
Well, I really appreciate you joining us on the show today, and I really appreciate this movie.
It's very interesting stuff.
I'm sorry I didn't get to watch all of it all the way through to the end, but I watched the vast majority of it last night, this morning.
And basically, it's the story of three men who live in Israel/Palestine.
Why don't you tell us about them?
Well, it's a Palestinian Christian, Sammy Awad, who sort of grew up and was born right before the 72 Olympic, you know, sort of tragedy that we all kind of know about.
Ahmad Al-Azha is a Palestinian Muslim, and then Yonatan Shapiro is an Israeli Jew.
The three of these people sort of look at the conflict from their respective sides, and they inherited the conflict from their grandfathers and their fathers, but they found each other by the non-violence movement and wanting to sort of change the status quo and see what else they could do.
Well now, I believe it's the Palestinian Christian who says that he found, or maybe it was the Israeli Jew, I forget, who says that he found Martin Luther King as a young person.
Yeah, that's really Sammy Awad.
Sammy Awad, you know, he was young when the first intifada happened, but his uncle, Mubarak Awad, had founded the non-violent center in Jerusalem, Palestinian non-violent center in Jerusalem, and really had done a lot of research and really was modeling after Dr. Martin Luther King.
They found a lot of connection because of the equality.
They really felt like their struggle was one of being able to be seen as an equal human being and being able to be treated that way, you know, being under occupation.
So that really was a model for them, but I found all three protagonists referencing Dr. King and a lot of Dr. King's quotes, as well as Mahatma Gandhi.
Well, you know, what's so important, in fact, you play this clip, or I think the part of the I Have a Dream speech that you play in there about equality there, that's the single most important thing that Martin Luther King ever did, as far as I can tell, was give that speech and basically call out the American people, whether we believe in the Declaration of Independence or don't we, that everybody's created with the same natural right to themselves and their own destiny as each other or not.
And so, you know, this is our creed in this country.
You're either for it or you're not.
And it's interesting to me that, I mean, obviously that has a lot of appeal to underdogs all over the world, but it's not necessarily that, you know, natural rights theory, John Lockean kind of point of view, that doesn't necessarily have to be intertwined with, you know, pacifism and nonviolence.
After all, he's just paraphrasing our Declaration of Independence, which was really a declaration of war against the king.
So I think it's interesting that these guys really picked up on, you know, what Dr. King had to say about natural rights theory, but then secondly, they also picked up on his strategy and tactics as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And really, I'm glad you sort of referenced the whole history of that, because it's the basis of a civil society.
Dr. King was referencing equality as an inherent human right, but he was also working in America, saying, well, here we have an inequality in America that's contrary to what America says it is established and doing, and therefore it is the right of the citizenry to vocalize and protest inequality in a non-violent way.
And then the Civil Rights Movement, it was pretty powerful, because it gave an identity to the African-American community at a time when everybody in the world was sort of looking at it, feeling it may be wrong, feeling, you know, or even sort of taking a pass at it.
And then there were, there was, you know, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, who had different tactics than King in the Civil Rights Movement that, you know, somebody from the outside couldn't join.
But because King was non-violent, it sort of made it possible for Jews and whites and anybody to sort of say, hey, this segregation thing, this lack of equality, this treating another American citizen as less than a human being is not right, and we need to change it.
And guess what happened?
Our country became better because of it.
You know, it became better for, you know, white people because of it as well, because, you know, it's like what Dr. King had said.
He said that freedom is to free the oppressed, but also to free the oppressor from being an oppressor.
So the fact that, you know, the Palestinians and the Israelis and the non-violence movement are taking all of this in and sort of saying, what does it mean for a civil society to emerge in Palestine and Israel?
Because the alternative is a police state.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's interesting to me, too, about, I believe the Christian in your movie talks about support from evangelical Christians for Zionism, for the occupation, and how it's so interesting to me that, you know, in America, pretty much everybody assumes that all Palestinians are Muslims.
And you can't really even get Christians in America to recognize that there are Christian Palestinians.
And, geez, if Muslim Palestinians aren't human beings, what about the Christian ones?
Like, not even them, you know?
And it turns out that, you know, the way they act is in favor of those who would slaughter and steal land from Palestinian Christians.
I'm not talking about Israel.
I'm talking about the right-wing settlers who are occupying the West Bank.
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, one of the toughest, you know, person to ever be would be a Palestinian Christian, because according to a lot of Christian theology, you know, the land is given to Israel, it's a biblical kind of a mandate, and therefore, you know, if you're a Palestinian Christian and you kind of have a Christian community in the United States telling you that, well, really, you have to get out of the way or not exist in order for prophecy to be fulfilled, I mean, that's really tough.
I mean, not only are you sort of branded a terrorist because there are factions that have done that, and because you haven't, you know, you don't have a voice, but to face that as well is really difficult.
And so, you know, Sammy's journey in the film shares a bit of that, and I think it's sort of important for people to realize.
Yeah, it certainly is.
And, you know, we have this problem always with, you know, trying to convince Americans that foreigners are people, too, and it seems like if we can point out that, hey, some of them are Christians, you know, their soul is saved the same way as yours, you know, what about them?
Is it okay to just, you know, occupy them?
But then that brings up the other question of whether, you know, substantial numbers of the American people even understand that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are occupied territory.
You know, a lot of times, I think, you know, the information is so scarce and vague, and it's only referred to kind of offhand on TV, people might think that these Palestinians just won't leave the Israelis alone.
Yeah, yeah, and that's something that we're seeing as the film is screened on colleges and universities.
I mean, to a man, I mean, we hear people say, man, there's so much here we didn't know, so much here that we wish we would have known.
This really does show us another side of this coin that we really didn't have any sense of, and that, I think, is an indictment against Western media, you know, kind of in general, but this idea that here is a civil rights issue and an issue that, I mean, these people have been in refugee camps since 1948, and, you know, it's sort of untenable.
I mean, I really believe that Israel should be safe and secure, but if their freedom is built on the prison of the Palestinians, then I think we're not really seeing the issue.
We're not actually ever going to solve the issue until we solve the issue of equality.
All right, now, so tell us about The Little Town of Bethlehem, or give us a short little overview before we go out to this first break, if you can.
Absolutely.
It's a film that just tells the story of three people that grew up in the conflict from different sides, and how they found each other through the non-violence movement, and how they found inspiration through Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi.
Okay, well, hold it right there, Jim.
Everybody, it's Jim Hannon.
The website is littletownofbethlehem.org, and we'll be right back after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm talking with Jim Hannon.
He put together this movie, Little Town of Bethlehem, and you can find the website at littletownofbethlehem.org, and it's really cool.
It features three inter-edited interviews, basically, with one Palestinian Christian, one Palestinian Muslim, and one veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, all of whom have adopted Martin Luther King's standard for individual liberty and dignity, as well as his tactics of non-violence to resolve violent conflicts, and it really is good stuff.
I highly urge you guys to check it out.
So, that's the movie.
Now, tell me about the town of Bethlehem.
Jim?
Well, I mean, it's not like you think of it in the history books at all.
It's right now, it's really behind a very large separation wall, and people there have a bit of a tough go of it, getting around.
You can't really get in and out of Israel if you're Palestinian.
Also, traveling through Palestinian land is pretty difficult, because of the checkpoints and because of how the wall sort of extends into there.
I don't think a lot of people realize about the wall that it's really not built on the Green Line, but it's really built sort of zigzagging through Palestinian territory.
The Green Line being the 67 borders.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, what the UN sort of recognizes is like the borders between Palestine and Israel.
But, you know, you can almost do anything in the name of security.
So, you can say, well, some attacks might happen there.
Let's build the wall, you know, into here, into there.
But if you're a Palestinian, and you're trying to run a business, you're trying to farm, you're trying to do stuff, it's really disruptive.
It's almost shocking.
And I hope people seeing the film can at least sort of understand that these are everyday people in intense situations.
And I think the film does a pretty good job in saying that violence of any kind is horrible.
And this idea that, you know, you could have suicide bombers is absolutely terrible.
What are the conditions that sort of birth a suicide bomber?
I mean, when we were there, and we were staying in Bethlehem, we got a taste of those conditions.
Again, I don't sanction it at all.
But I think to push people to desperation is a problem.
And I don't think the world is too aware of what that is.
So, I really admire these people that are there, that have chosen to stay there, that have chosen to sort of put even their lives on the line in a way, you know, in these rallies and these different things to bring a voice of humanity back to both the Palestinian and the Israeli people.
Well, you know, there's a headline today on antiwar.com about how there's a fear among the right-wing settlers that Netanyahu is about to broker a deal that will extend the so-called freeze, even though they've been expanding the settlements during the so-called freeze of expansion of settlements anyway.
But that he's going to, you know, I don't know what they're afraid of exactly, but I guess that he's going to stop them.
So now the New York Times is reporting today that settlers are racing to build more units in the West Bank before any potential freeze on new settlements goes into effect.
And it's ironic, obviously, that, you know, if there's really any kind of progress being made, it ends up in a way, not every time necessarily, but in a couple of ways, it ends up helping the antagonists that make things worse.
And one of the things you talk about in the movie is that the expansion of the settlements across the West Bank really was spurred by the Oslo so-called peace process to nowhere that went on for years and years.
The assumption was that eventually they're going to give up the West Bank.
Well, we know how to stop them from giving up the West Bank.
We'll just build settlements everywhere.
And no power in Tel Aviv has been able to stop them or has wanted to.
So now, now, if you want to give up the West Bank, like you said, the wall isn't on the green zone.
The wall snakes all over the place, protecting these settlements.
The West Bank has been cut into a million little Bantu stands.
How are they supposed to give that up?
Yeah, I mean, I think people have a different idea of settlement.
If you're in the U.S., you kind of think settlement might be going out on a prairie on Indian land and just sort of setting up a little house and you're sort of friendly and stuff.
But that's really not the case.
What settlements are is going in where people, where Palestinians live and saying, we're going to live there instead.
And we're going to evict you or move you out or we're going to divide your land and make it impossible for you to live there.
So the whole idea of settlement, I don't, I just don't think that the West has a real clear idea that that's not just people going in, but it's people going in where somebody else is and continuing to do that.
And if you're struggling in those conditions as a Palestinian, I mean, what recourse do you really have?
I mean, I mean, the idea of of a armed resistance is, I mean, imagine if Oklahoma did that to Texas, for instance.
I mean, I think we would have an armed resistance.
I think there would be something, you know, dramatic.
Yeah, or if Mexico did that, you know, you hear nothing but complaints about the Mexican invasion, the Mexican invasion.
It's referring to civilians with their families walking.
Right.
But in this case, we'd be talking about if Mexico's military, if, you know, our, you know, say, for example, Ben Bernanke was finished having his way with our economy and we were powerless really to stop them and their military was coming in and building Mexican cities inside Texas and protecting them with fire.
Well, more than that, building a Mexican city inside of El Paso, building it inside of a city, as in Hebron, for instance.
I mean, they had to evict and take people out of their homes in Hebron in order for settlers to kind of be there.
And there's only a few hundred settlers and there's three thousand soldiers needed to protect them.
So, you know, the idea of peace, the idea of I just think it looks entirely differently from a political point of view and from what is reported to when you're on the ground and trying to live there and trying to find a way to exist.
Okay.
Now, I told you, Jim, I actually ran out of time to finish watching the end of the movie here.
But so can you tell us a little bit about the nonviolent tactics that these men are using and what goals they're actually working toward?
Yeah, even though this sounds really like an impossible situation, the idea is that peace can't really be achieved unless it's peace for Israel as well as peace for Palestine.
So the movie, even though it raises all of these questions, in the end, we're not saying we don't want to say that Israel shouldn't be secure and shouldn't be there.
I believe that it should.
But what does a civil society look like for Israel?
What does a civil society look like for Palestine?
For Palestine to have that voice, for that voice to be incurred, is just going to help them as they, you know, hopefully one day are able to form their government.
I mean, the basics of what Dr. King had done in saying we should have a civil society and people should be empowered and have a voice is going to help the Palestinians.
I think it's going to help the Israelis as well.
And in the film, Sammy Awad at the very end shares what that dream might be like, and that it won't be the Palestinians that tear down the wall, but it'll be the Israelis themselves when they realize they don't need it.
It's true.
Although, you know, with the Likud in power, you know, they always try to act like they're dealing as equal partners, but when one side's really occupying the other, and, you know, I mean, I would agree, I guess, an ideal world, I'd like to see that too.
All the Palestinians just renounce violence so that the Israeli government can't get away with pretending they need, you know, their violence, but it's going to not be easy.
No, no, it's really not as simple as that.
All right, I'm sorry, and we're all out of time, man.
I sincerely apologize, but I urge everyone to go and check out this movie.
The website is littletownofbethlehem.org.
Thanks very much, Jim.
Thanks, man.
Great to talk to you.
