Arts/Review

Essays show women’s | The moral bankruptcy |
roles in Middle East | ofthe U.S. in Vietnam .

WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
Khamsin Collective. Zed Books Limited.
$9.95 paperback. Available at People’s
Co-op Bookstore

Women in the Middle East’is a series
of articles by six women from the Arab
world and Israel written for Khamsin,
which is a publication by and primarily
for revolutionary socialists of the Middle
East.

The writers who take on the diversi-
fied subjects in this book state that all
movements in the Arab world are influ-
enced by, or dominated by, Islamic law.

Selma Botman writes on women’s
participation in radical Egyptian politics
during 1935-1952: “This period, from
World War II to the military coup d’etat
of 1952, was a particularly important one
in Egypt’s modern history. The political
hierarchy of the state was steadily deteri-
orating and unable to win full independ-
ence from the British, which brought
forth growing social and political radical-
ism. Small groups of feminists (always
from the upper and educated middle
classes) began to organize progressive
women’s groups and participate in
broad-based and nationalist activity.
Leftist women flourished as artists, polit-
ical activists and student leaders.”

Labour disputes and strikes were
becoming prevalent, and it was in this
environment that the feminist movement
became active. The Marxist movement,
Botman says, “despite its structural and
organizational limitations, was capable
of exerting sporadic influence on the
national, labour, feminist and student
scenes ... Communism had a significant
ideological impact on Egyptian society
and was able to help undermine Egypt’s
ineffectual political system and create an
atmosphere in which radical nationalist
military officials could ultimately over-
throw Egypt’s Royalist regime.”

The Egyptian Communist Party was
largely male, but women were more and
more involved with the movement and
were recruited as equals and were equally
dedicated.

general resistance to the Israeli occupa-

tion.
Kazi says that although there are
women in the forefront of armed strug-

gle, such as the legendary Laila Khalid,

these are exceptions. “While exceptions
indicate the beginning of women’s full
participation, it is an illusionary percep-
tion that women have gained equality in
the movement ... The patriarchy that

dominates the social system also shapes

the political structure of the movement.”

A very poignant personal account is
told by Laila al-Hamdani in her article,
“Palestinian Women in an Israeli Pri-
son.” The prison was divided into Arab
and Jewish women prisoners. The two
groups did not often communicate and
the Arab women, to keep from going
crazy, formed classrooms and taught
each other English, mathematics, Hebrew
and so on.

They were repeatedly shown films
about the first Zionist pioneers and films
of the Holocaust and Jewish suffering,
“as if they were responsible for the Holo-
caust.”

Once they went on a hunger strike
over terrible conditions and lack of med-
ical care and were brutally beaten by the

guards, but did win some concessions.

She met a Jewish social worker, Ruth,
who was doing a research study of crimi-

nology, and they became great friends;
but finally, because one was the occupier
and one the occupied, the political bar-

rier became too great and Ruth never

came to see her again. I think this is the

tragic story of thousands of young peo-

ple in Palestine today.

In her contribution, “The Jewish Col-

lective and National Reproduction in

Israel,’ Nira Yuval-Davis writes: “The
need for a Jewish majority has always

been a cornerstone of Zionist thinking.”

Former president David Ben-Gurion,

debating during the war which expanded

Israel’s territory way beyond the terri-
tory allocated by the United Nations,

stated: ““A Jewish state, even if only in

the west of Palestine, is impossible, if it is
to be a democratic Jewish state, because

Michael J. Fox, Thuy Thu Lee, Sean Penn in Casualties of War.

CASUALTIES OF WAR. Directed by
Brian De Palma. Starring Sean Penn and

Michael J. Fox. At local theatres.

A war epic teeming with massive special
effects and a cast of thousands does not
necessarily bring us any closer to a fuller
understanding of that war. This is obvious
after viewing many Hollywood movies

about Vietnam.

Casualties of War, though not without its
own political limitations regarding the
Vietnamese popular struggle, does reveal,
through the interplay of just a few principal
characters, some of the greater moral com-
plexities that made up the tragedy that was

Vietnam.

The movie is based on a horrifying yet
barely known _ real-life incident. In 1966,
Sven Eriksson, a new, young recruit,
brought charges against his squad for kid-

dragged away from her hysterical family?
the middle of the night and forced to lug® '
soldiers’ equipment barefoot across moun
tainous paths. She is hideously abused, 1%
tured, raped, and later stabbed and shot.
Fox, stunned and shaken, protests, bu!
threatened and rendered helpless to oppo®
the men or comfort and assist the terrifiet
girl. Her screams and wails, in a languae
frustratingly incomprehensible to Fox, ”)
the theatre itself with an unbearable,
lessly chilling echo, like an intrusive, hav®
ing memory of the horror of Vietnam. —
There is evidently much more on

Palma’s mind than revelations about
atrocities and the dehumanization of sold
ers in combat. In the charged, gruelli
double-barrelled image of USS. soldiet
methodically firing on a Viet Com
stronghold while one of them savagely s!#
in the girl in the background, there ist
wordless, yet emotion-packed metaphor fo

napping, raping and brutally murdering a
teenage Vietnamese farm girl. The story was
reported three years later in the New Yorker
magazine.

Little did Eriksson anticipate that in pur-
suit of these allegations his most bitter foes
would be the U.S. Army. The men, who
were found guilty, received minimal senten-
ces and served only a fraction of that time.
Director Brian De Palma reveals, through

the war’s madness. “
The “casualties” include morality 4%
humanity lost by the U.S. in that conflict
Here, war and murder searingly merge, ™
in the conflict of soldier against soldier, 7,
in an implication of the senseless and 4
nous genocide of a people. Fox’s charac”
is the symbol of the excruciating m0
burden of a protesting U.S. populationt i

the number of Arabs in the western part
of Palestine is higher than that of Jews.”
So plans for the transfer of the Palestini-
ans outside the Zionist state have existed
throughout the history of Zionism.
Yuval-Davis writes that the religious
code within the Israeli state apparatus
has had a very negative effect on women,

However, when Egyptians themselves
achieved state power — most notably
under Gamal Al Nasser (1952-1970)
— the militancy of women receded and
it is only in the last few years that the
Egyptian feminist movement has been
revived. ;

Writer Hamida Kazi focusses on

Palestine and the national liberation
movement, and how women are very
supportive of this struggle, but not lead-
ing it. Women have become more prom-
inent with the development of the
Palestine Liberation Organization and
the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine but, Kazi says, it is impossible
to separate the role of women from the

particularly regarding women’s position
in family law. Women are not allowed to
become judges in the Orthodox state
courts, which decide cases such as
divorce, marriage and settlement claims.
She feels that the Zionist “imagined
Jewish community” is in fact becoming a

nightmare.
— Jonnie Rankin

the details of that one war atrocity, the
bankruptcy characterizing U.S.
involvement in what was essentially the rape

moral

of an entire people and land.

In Casualties of War, Sean Penn stars as
the crazed, out-of-control squad leader who
involved his men in the kidnapping.
Michael J. Fox, as the fresh recruit,
observes in disbelief as the screaming girl is

Vancouver’s El Salvador Refugee
Association is holding a dance with
Mango Dub and Sensacion Latina at the
Commodore ballroom on Sept. 28, 8 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased at La Quena and
Black Swan Records.

* * *

Recording artist David Campbell hosts
“Creative Voices”, a forum for artists, each
Thursday night at the Extra Extra Bistro
at 3359 W. Broadway Ave. in Vancouver.
The sessions begin at 8 p.m. Phone 734-
5020, 736-9872.

a: igak? ook
Television: KCTS public television

EI Salvador dance;
films on AIDS

presents Other Faces of AIDS, which
interviews among others Rev. Jesse Jack-
son in examining how AIDS affects
minority communities in the U.S. It airs
Saturday, Sept. 30, 10 p.m. and is closed-
captioned. Also on KCTS is The AIDS

Quarterly on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m.

‘and Friday, Sept. 29, 2:05 p.m. Closed-
captioned.

Knowledge Network presents The Mar-

riage Bed, in which a young woman exam-

ines the pitfalls of marriage after her
husband leaves her. It stars Linda Grif-

fiths (Samuel Lount)and Layne Coleman, .

and airs Saturday, Sept. 23, 9 p.m. Also on
is Cross Currents: The War in the Desert,
about the Polisario movement of the
Saharwi tribespeople fighting for inde-
pendence against U.S. supported Morocco
in the Western Sahara. It’s on Thursday,
Sept. 28, 9 p.m. and Monday, Oct. 2, 10
p.m. And there’s Seeing Windows, a doc-
umentary that follows a family which
migrates to the slums of Tegucigalpa, the
capital of Honduras in an examination of
shelter and human services shortages in
the poorest nation in Central America. It
airs Monday, Sept. 25, 9 p.m.

10 ¢ Pacific Tribune, September 18, 1989

was powerless for so long to end the victii™
zation of the Vietnamese people.

Casualties of War was picked up y
Columbia after it was originally tum™®
down by Paramount. Paramount repo"
edly said it was, under Reaganism, too N°
ative a view of the U.S. Army. For
Palma it was a continuation of the the™
of “power, sex, and a kind of madness ¢ ai
manifested itself in violence tow4 /
women” that have dominated his hor"
movies Carrie, Body Double and Dress?
to Kill.

In Casualties of War, these theses ast
intensified to illuminate the horror of tH
real, and of contemporary political dep!
ity. “I wanted a violence that made peop!
feel the agony of the fighting, not somethit
that numbed them,” De Palma
explained.

He did not want it like Rambo Ww!
mania movies which are “truly ugly reve”
fantasies. It’s appalling to think of kids wh?
might enlist to fight in Nicaragua or som
place because of movies like that ... I vi
people watching Casualties of War to ff
what violence can do to human lives.”

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