By Farid Farid

Mahmoud DarwishOne of Mahmoud Darwish's most memorable lines is "there is on this earth, what makes life worth living." The illocutionary profundity and sentimental beatitude captured in this line by the national poet of Palestine rings truer today more than ever in a world afflicted with moral bankruptcy and ethical corruption. The now finite fragrant poetry and prose of Darwish, who sadly passed away two years ago on 9th August, was one of the epicurean pleasures to be savoured as a reader. The carefully constructed stanzas and meandering rhythms were at once intellectually gratifying and spiritually nourishing. In his posthumous collection, The Butterfly's Burden, Darwish's elegant poems are prophetic as ever but also heart wrenching in their evocative descriptions of his beloved occupied homeland of Palestine.

[Note from the Editor: We re-publish this opinion from the August 1st issue of the New York Times to stimulate debate. Efraim Karsh is professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London. He is regarded as perhaps the most vocal critic of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have questioned the conventional history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. According to Howard Sachar, he is "the preeminent scholar-spokesman of the Revisionist (politically-rightist) Movement in Zionism." Daniel Pipes described him as "the preeminent historian of the modern Middle East writing today." His views would counter those of many who describe what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 as the Nakba, or "catastrophe". We will review Karsh's book Palestine Betrayed in a forthcoming issue of the Levantine Review.]

The Goldstone Report, on the Gaza war, has been one of the most polemic documents of the last decade. Certainly there are a plethora of opinions about its accuracy or even validity. This is just one of many.

By Yaniv Reich

Judge Richard Goldstone at the UNDefense Minister Ehud Barak described it as "false, distorted, and irresponsible". Information Minister Yuli Edelstein called it "anti-Semitic". Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren said it "insidiously... portrayed the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents". Foreign Minister Lieberman argued that its true purpose "was to destroy Israel's image, in service of countries where the terms ‘human rights' and ‘combat ethics' do not even appear in their dictionaries". And the US House of Representatives banded together in bipartisan harmony to pass a resolution (344-36) that called "on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration" of it.

Reviewed by Jordan Elgrably

Natacha Atlas: live at the Skirball July 29, 2010In a mellifluous voice that was at once deep, soft, beautiful and strong, former Transglobal Underground vocalist Natacha Atlas brought her east-west repertoire back to Los Angeles on July 29. The cross-over artist performed in a free open-air concert at the Skirball Center that was supported by the L.A. County Arts Commission and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. A star in parts of Europe and the Middle East, Natacha Atlas has a smaller following Stateside but certainly merits a broader audience, both among those who love world music and fusion, and others with a passion for female vocalists.

Samuel Maoz Samuel Maoz, who trained as a cameraman and worked in art direction for both film and television in Israel, was wounded as a 20-year-old soldier during the 1982 Summer War with Lebanon. 25 years later he began a process of confronting his personal feelings and experiences for his first feature film, Lebanon. His colleagues Joseph Cedar and Ari Folman were already on their way to making their own war films, Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir respectively. Lebanon describes the traumatic experiences of a four-man Israeli tank crew in a Lebanese village early in the war.

After Lebanon had been rejected by both the Berlin and Cannes film festivals, Maoz picked up a Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival. The film was nominated in ten categories for the Ophir, Israel's national film awards.

Lebanon is the first feature for Maoz, who carved out a reputation as a documentarian in Israel. Here Maoz is interviewed by Carlos Valdivia, a media assistant at the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Reviewed by Omid Arabian

Two soldiers in a tank: (outtake from "Lebanon" dir. Samuel Maoz)
Lebanon, the first feature from Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz, takes us in with a platoon of Israeli soldiers at the beginning of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The story is drawn from the personal recollections of writer-director Maoz, who was an actual participant in that attack. As events play out, the camera stays entirely within a tank to which four of the soldiers are assigned, so we are always either looking at them or through their eyes out of the tank's gunsight. Over the span of their brief first mission, the soldiers' mental state devolves from apprehension to delirium as their simple directive to search an already-airstruck Lebanese town leads them into a nightmarish trap.

By Joyce Zonana

By Jessica Proett, Staff Writer

Veiled women strolling in Barcelona: (AFP)In the West, the veil has now gone beyond a cliché symbol into a catalyst for policymaking. Whereas new dress code laws claim they aren't specifically targeting religion, banning face coverings directly affects the choice to wear certain traditional Muslim attire such as the niqab or burka. Consequently, issues of free speech, freedom of religion, public safety, and current events are all colliding with stereotypes and Islamaphobia in a cocktail for rabble-rousing debate on how religion should be dealt with in the public sphere, and more specifically, how Eastern cultural traditions should be dealt with in Western democratic societies.

Late in May 2010, the Levantine Cutural Center presented a special screening of documentarian Christopher Browne's film After the Cup: The Sons of Sakhnin United, after which he was interviewed before a live audience by Palestinian Israeli director Hanna Elias ("The Olive Harvest").