Freedom for Palestine song- evil and pure propaganda?

Maxi Jazz, Dave Randall, LSK, the Durban Gospel Choir, Jamie Catto, Andrea Britton, Harry Collier, Sudha Kheterpal, Andy Treacy, Attab Haddad, Joelle Barker and Tony Reed are singers featured in a campaign song calling for freedom for Palestine.

Although, it’s expected to be released during early July yet it’s getting a good head start especially with some hot controversial comments heating up already.

Freedom for Palestine is the song’s name. The lyrics speak of the dramatic situation, the extreme violation of human rights, the refugees, the prison camps, children and justice.

The clip features the division wall (or as American and Israelis calls it the security barrier), footages from Gaza and also the signers in the recording studio along with a female Break Dancer.

Although the great success and positive feedback the campaign is getting, yet it’s quite shocking that negative responses go into calling the campaign as “evil” and “amazing piece of propaganda” as Glenn Beck a US media host did on his Fox News show.

Referring to the song’s lyrics, he questioned if these people referring to the campaigner know what they are doing or if they know what it means to destroy Israel.  He goes sarcastic and asks if they done their work on history… then he said “Before you know it, ‘Israeli occupation’ will be standard fare. Everyone will just see it as they’re just occupying that land. That is a lie.”

As a chart featuring the freedom flotilla to Gaza displays behind him, he goes saying that these sorts of campaigns are packaged in a form that everyone would embrace and that is evil.

The guardian says: “If the song makes it into the UK charts, it is likely to cause a dilemma for the BBC. The corporation ran into controversy last month for masking out the words “free Palestine” from a number recorded by Mic Righteous. It did it in order “to ensure impartiality was maintained”, it said. On another recent occasion, the word “Palestine” was excised from a BBC script.”

On March 5^th, Coldplay posted a link to the “Freedom for Palestine” video which features lyrics like ‘it could be you and your family/forced from your home and your history,’ and images of Israeli army checkpoints and the security fence, angering a large number of its Jewish and pro-Israel fan base.

According to the Washington post, there were 12,000 comments on their post, including promises to boycott the band and a Facebook group that demanded an apology to Israel within less than a day.

Anti-Israeli fans also posted comments to support Palestine, such as “Zionism is racism” and “Israel is an apartheid state.

After some facebook users reported the URL to the song as “abusive,” the link was blocked by facebook. But OneWorld quickly created a new site here.

No one can predict if this campaign can achieve some success with all the hate reactions around it, yet the controversy building around it even before release is an indication of what could be yet to come.

Everyone is a change maker

Dear friends and readers,
With everything happening in Tunisia and the world, I decided to take to the time to share with you the story of a remarkable young man who just made his mission to bring positive change in the lives of his community and beyond.

Funny how this article seems so relevant to me after spending a whole afternoon listening to a politician lecturing me about how young people lack effectiveness, creativity and are more likely considered as a burden instead of solution holders!

Well, Saed Karzoun, 26, a young Palestinian person who invested in his musical, photography and social media skills to spread his ideas and visions in a creative way.
Studied journalism and media in Birzeit University, he now spends his busy days making short movies and documentaries. Saed also hosts a weekly radio show on Raya FM called “Palestine Al-Shabab” or “Palestine of Youth”. He can also be found teaching young kids how to play musical instruments or volunteer somewhere at a youth led organization.
His latest project is training young people on blogging and using social media to promote positive social change.

Saed Karzoun

However, “Beautiful Palestine” is a particular initiative that I want to drag under the spot light.
“Beautiful Palestine” a project initiated by Saed through which he hopes to spread impactful messages around Palestine that would bypass the borders around on the place where he lives to echo in Europe and the USA.

Let me tell you, I have a syndrome that pushes me away from people who get too much attention or if you wish to call them super stars. I’d rather be with and speak about “invisible” people or those representing minorities and that’s what attracted me to write about Saed Karzoun.
He mentioned “I desire to be known as Saed, a simple human being who is not separated from the ordinary people, I want to be identified as the regular Saed who works and volunteers with people who act all together as a one hand”.

At Raya FM Radio- "Palestine of Youth Program"

Saed had a funny start with music, being a bad student at school, his father –a music professor and song writer- decided to teach his son how to play the Oud at the age of 10.
“The school of Music was very different to me, I was seeing and interacting with new and different people. The study of music was different itself, I had to pay extra attention to the musical notes and how to play them” says Saed Karzoun.

He also shared his attraction to this one girl at the music school and how he worked his ass off to learn how to play just to impress her. At the end, results came disappointing as the girl turned out to be older than him yet looking at the filled part of the cup Saed did learn something at the end.

Saed Karzound and Saleh Dawabsheh -best friends and extraordinary change makers

At a later stage Saed thought that music alone isn’t enough to promote his ideas and that’s how he turned to writing articles in his unique style by making a combination between the sensitive musical universe and the reality that is made up of the people miseries but also happy stories.
It’s on September 2010 when a number of his articles started being published on local Palestinian newspapers. He says he likes to reflect reality through his writings in an innovative vibrant way, cutting down with the classic and desperate type of articles.

Usually young people are not taken seriously, even newly graduate students when they show up with project ideas they get ignored and considered as nobody. There is no reason that makes corporate listen to them as they lack experience or mostly in our world, they have no connections!

Saed Karzoun says that he been always aware of that point and sends out and advice to young people telling that a person should work on building a strong profile and that can happen through volunteering in an NGO or starting own initiative…those are excellent ways to gain experience, skills, self confidence and connections . But furthermore, a person will be adding to your country and benefiting your community on the way!

Samer Jradat, one of Saed’s friends says “Saed is an ambitious person and that’s what I like about him. When I sit with him -even during early school days-, he fills me with positive energy; he always has some ideas and new stuff. I certainly like meeting him when I’m stressed or tired; he gives me power to carry on”.

Saed Says “Beautiful Palestine project is not something for the elite. When I first started it, it was a gallery of photos and articles done in Europe and Palestine. I made sure that the people working with me would be newbie’s and of mixed cultured and backgrounds and such diversity was really beneficial. I had the French Cultural Center impressed.”

Beautiful Palestine Project is both executed offline through a series of gatherings, galleries and festivals and online by a campaign promoting the image of Palestine defeating the thought that it’s a hostel place where only bombing happens.

Planting trees

To finish, I would add that one of things that touch me in all this is the very poor cultural and artistic life that we have in Tunisia. I believe we have so much to learn from Saed and Palestinian artists and change makers.

Thank you Saed.

Check out this TV package about Saed Karzoun (in Arabic):

Potential revolutions in Palestine, will it make any change?!

This post was originally written by my friend Saleh Dawabsheh

As you know Palestine had been the first Arab country that experienced revolutions and demonstrations, this was called “Intifada”, and there was a first Intifada that took place between 1987-1992 and a second Intifada happened between 2000-2004.

After 2005 Palestinians have been silent, and there were no resistance except in some places here and there.

Gaza is a different case, the situation there is not peaceful like in the West bank; Israeli attacks continued, and the war on Gaza that all of you know about was very bad.

Anyway as a result of the second Intifada, the relative peace after it, the Palestinian elections and the winning of Hamas, all of that led Palestine to being divided into two states: Gaza and West bank (bear in mind that I mean by Palestine the part that was not occupied on 1948), two opposite parties, Hamas (the government in Hamas) and Fateh/the Palestinian authority (the government in West Bank).

Now after the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia some Palestinians wanted to do the same, some groups and pages on Facebook are calling for resisting the occupation in a peaceful way, other are calling for resisting using weapons and guns, other are saying that we should first unite, and become one people and to forget that we belong either to Hamas or to Fateh.

This is nice, but the shit in this is that these groups are fighting each other; people are accusing each other that they are not honest, and they’re not doing this for the benefit of Palestine, they’re doing this to establish organizations to get fund from donors from outside.

Those who want to resist the occupation are saying once we defeat occupation we will be united, the others are replying that we can not defeat the occupation if we’re not united, and all are fighting each other.

so will there be any positive change? To be honest I do not know, but I still expect things to get worse than before if these revolutions took the wrong pathes, and if Palestinian people keep on accusing and fighting each other.

Palestine is messed up, there is no leader, no clear goals, no strategic planning for the Palestinian state, negotiation failed, more than 11,000 are in jail, and millions are refugees out of Palestine.

Palestine seems to be a hopeless case as long as Palestinians do not change the way they think.

Saleh is a Palestinian blogger and activist; connect with him here