In the Big Easy

I'm in New Orleans with Noor this weekend to present Tunnel Trade at the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival.

Several other Palestinian films being screened include Bilin my Love, Driving to Zigzigland, Digital Resistance, and the Truth from Palestine.

I am staying with a Lebanese family who live in-yes its true-the West Bank (suburban New Orleans west of the Mississippi).




Hana is an oncologist and Mustapha is a Pediatrician. They have three children-aged 13, 14, and 17. They graduated from AUB and came to specialize in the US in the late '80s. Hana's house in Beirut was just overlooking the camps of Sabra and Shatila, where she says she used to volunteer. "I remember carrying corpses of mutilated children-of children... in my arms."

She says she remembers seeing [Mahmoud] Abbas, corrupt even then, driving into the camps in his black Mercedes to meet with Fatah's Force 17, pushing his way through the crowds.

"Now, when I hear talk about 'negotiations' and about Abbas doing this or that, I am nauseated. I am really nauseated in every sense of the word. What have they turned into? They are basically policing for the Israelis."