Amreeka
A tale of dispossession, emigration, hope ___ 9/10

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Written by Cherien Dabis
Directed by Cherien Dabis

Nisreen Faour Muna Farah
Melkar Muallem Fadi Farah
Hiam Abbass Raghda Halaby
Alia Shawkat Salma
Jenna Kawar Rana Halaby
Selena Haddad Lamis Halaby
Yussuf Abu-Warda Nabeel Halaby
Joseph Ziegler Mr. Novatski

Immigration Official: Occupation?
Muna Farah: Yes... 40 years.

"What's with "the Wall," man?"

After watching Amreeka, I can put faces on the effects of a twisted foreign policy that sends American tax funds to the Zionist occupational government (ZOG) of Israel.[1] And they're friendly faces, too... at least the Palestinians. The film begins with Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour) performing some errands in her Palestinian village amidst the rubble and random patrols of ZOG police and soldiers, ca. 2003, just before the American invasion of Iraq. You see the story geminating right there; her husband has taken up with some hottie and basically abandoned Muna... who, with her young teenage boy Fadi (Melkar Muallem), lives with her mother and other extended family, scraping by.

Muna works as an administrator in a bank. The Wall—this monstrous despoiler of anything resembling human communities erected by the ZOGs in the West Bank, for, well, the same reasons the communists erected the Berlin Wall, or that any state erects barriers: apartheid, dispossession, genocide—is going up. What used to take 20 minutes now requires two hours. More, if she is stopped and questioned at the numerous ZOG checkpoints.

We accompany her and her son on a weekend shopping trip. The digital video camera captures the essence of any occupation: "Papers?"

A couple of ZOG security officers interrogate her for no reason, they want to know her street address. She informs them they don't use house numbers where she lives. It's obvious the officers are aware of that fact, and, indeed, they make a point of it, proceeding to ridicule her and the boy as members of a race of inferior beings... so savage and primitive they don't even use house numbers. Ha Ha Ha.

Then Fadi talks back to the ZOGsters. They don't like that at all, and proceed to get him out of the car, forcing him to lift his shirt up time and time again, as if to prove he's not carrying a bomb. It's humiliating, it's dehumanizing, and Muna pleads with the ZOGs to let them go. "He's only a boy, he's sorry, he didn't mean anything by it." She realizes these uniformed guys can cart away her son without so much as a "Have a Nice Day." And she'll never see him again. Happens all the time.

The Story We Never See

That's the one thing most viewers will take away from this simple little movie about desperate human beings under the Occupation. [Any occupation of land by a government that hasn't been freely chosen by the inhabitants is the same. Armed men—nowadays, women, too—walk around acting like customs agents and border officials... only the border is your doorstep, and once you cross it you're under their arbitrary power. "Show me your papers." You always have to justify your existence to the security state. (Like the way it is in the United States, now, especially near the southern boundary with Mexico.)]

Really quite a mess. But what amazes you is you never heard this sort of story before about "our friend" Israel. "What is with the Wall? I didn't know about that. Katy and Brian and Charles never bring it up. 700 miles long? No way! The Wall has to be some fairy tale made up those darned Arab terrorists." Seriously, if you only watch the mainstream media, you'll hear about the Wall as much as you'll hear about World Trade Center Building #7.[3]

Well, in this fictional story, Muna does prevail on the authorized hoodlums to let them be on their way. But she's had it. This is the last straw. When she comes back from her errand and throughout the next week, she informs her family she's going to get the heck out of Dodge City. She will go to America, to Illinois, where her sister Raghda (Hiam Abbass) and family have been living for some time. The problem: these are the days after 9/11, in early 2003, when George Bush II and the Neocons have invaded Iraq... and when 90% of the American public has been brainwashed, not only about 9/11 but, about thinking Saddam Hussein and a "bunch of Arabs" have committed the (9/11) attacks.

Amreeka is the story of Muna's experience, which is based loosely on similar experiences by writer/director, Cherien Dabis, a second generation Lebanese woman who grew up in the Midwest. From Roger Ebert's review:

Cherien Dabis incorporates some of her own story in her film. A Jordanian raised in Dayton, Ohio, during the years of the Gulf War, she was discriminated against. American anti-Arab prejudice apparently considers all Arabs to be on the wrong side of every problem. To explain that Palestinians had no involvement with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait would be a waste of time with such people, who seem to believe Arabs shouldn't exist at all, or at the very least should stay at home.

And that's the story in the eyes of the prevalent culture where she and her boy land: Muna and the Palestinians have the appearance of everyone Americans have been brainwashed by the "Terror Contrivers"[4] to hate. The film tells the tale of a peaceful "invasion" of our land by the victims of the American government's client state invasion of their land.

At this stage it becomes important to learn the truth about 9/11. Because if you accept the official story (published in detail with pictures within 48 hours of the attacks), that 19 Muslim radicals with boltcutters overwhelmed the defenses of the greatest and most fortified military power in history, then it won't be difficult to see how every Arab is a fearsome terrorist: "What sort of diabolical and incredibly potent enemy could do such a thing... without millions and millions of brainwashed automatons doing its bidding?"

Sorry, but that was necessary: Every American, every natural human individual, is being systematically lied to in virtually every area by the mainstream media... for a purpose. When you succumb to the lies, you also succumb to the emotional-perceptual result that the <central dominating entity> wants for you. Again from Ebert's review:

"Amreeka" isn't a story of American prejudice, but of American reality, the good and the bad. When Fadi is bullied, fights back and is called into the principal's office, his mother sheds her White Castle uniform and hurries to the school, deeply concerned. Here she finds the Jewish principal (Joseph Ziegler), not only sympathetic but responding to her own warmth and charisma. He wonders if she'd like to join him for coffee ...

What I found enchanting about the movie is its reality. Especially the political reality: Raghda's husband Nabeel is a doctor who is losing his customers because of 9/11 and the war. He watches TV and exclaims at the lunacy of invading Iraq and the fact that his taxes support the ZOG who have expropriated his homeland. Ron Paul couldn't express it better. But the human element is the best part, and Faour has an adorable screen presence. An entertaining and hopeful story well worth a view.

This is a film that makes justice seem so reasonable.

[1] The abbreviation ZOG I have read years ago, usually though describing the government of the United States. And if you read anything about the Zionist[2] Israeli lobby, chiefly AIPAC, you'll realize that the Zionists are extremely influential in directing American foreign and domestic affairs to be consistent with Zionist programs. [The Rothschild banking dynasty is the founder and financier of Zionism.]

[2] Zionism is a militant sect (claiming to be) within the religion of Judaism that advocates creation of a Homeland State for ethnic Jews (non-Jews are allowed to live there, in Jewish-state-imposed conditions, often analogous to those imposed on the American Indians in the late 19th century) situated roughly inside the modern borders of the State of Israel. My stipulated term for that geographical region is Palestine. [Here's the Wikipedia description of Zionism.]

[3] World Trade Center Building #7 was brought down on 9/11/2001 in the afternoon, several hours after airplanes had struck WTC1 and WTC2. WTC7 came down without any airplane impact, and was certainly demolished using sophisticated controlled implosion techniques. Only one video image exists for the demolition and it has not been shown on mainstream media outlets since 9/11 (when it was broadcast accidentally). Ref. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Also my column 9/11 Truth Catharsis.

[4] Webster Tarpley's book, Synthetic Terror, which I have just ordered, I understand—from Dan Stuart Network (DSN) sources—is quite a devastating expose of the "contrived terror" industry, contrived of course by the same people who benefit from any war.