Hanan Ashrawi Movies

Exhausted from listening to empty rhetoric about the fight against terrorism from Washington, D.C. neoconservatives (and suspicious of many assertions made by the Bush administration), Arab-American filmmaker Bassam Haddad decided to seek the truth for himself, camera-in-hand, and thus spark an impassioned dialogue between right-wing American policymakers and Middle Eastern political factions. Thus began the penetrating investigative documentary Arabs and Terrorism. Haddad's method of activism involves shooting interviews with political power-players on each side of the transcontinental (and transideological) fence - American and Middle Eastern; recording each interview on his laptop; and having each interviewee view and respond to allegations made by the other side. The result is a documentary that dares to journey into waters seldom treaded by other filmmakers, by traveling right to the core of the ideological debate that lies behind the war on terror and investigating what the Arab people actually think, believe and desire -- independent of media bias. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

An ambitious female reporter finds herself unable to remain an objective, third party observer while covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in this made for television war drama starring Faye Dunaway. Upon arriving Israel on her first foreign assignment, American photojournalist Faye Milano is greeted by David (Amos Kollek), an Israeli reserve officer and writer is also the nephew of Jerusalem Mayor Kollek. Later, while conducting a series of interviews with actual political representatives on both sides of the issue, Faye discovers the identity of David's uncle and skillfully manipulates him into getting her an interview with the mayor. The resulting story, which runs with a photograph of an Israeli police officer clubbing a young Palestinian girl, raises the ire of authorities - who deplore the reporter's penchant sensationalizing the details and seldom bothering to confirm the facts. When Faye learns that a young Palestinian boy was recently shot after hurling a brick at an Israeli soldier, she travels to Jerusalem in order to meet with Mustafa (Mohammad Bakri), the dead boy's brother. As tensions begin to thicken and Mustafa is arrested, Faye snaps a candid shot of the boy being taken into custody. Faye's press credentials are subsequently revoked, however, when the arresting officer is discovered with his throat slashed and the authorities place the blame for the killing on her photograph, which clearly shows the arresting officer's face. After submitting a story about an injured Palestinian boy who had actually suffered from a household accident and not in the conflict as she read leaders to believe, the inexperienced reporter finds that she has unexpectedly gotten in far over her head. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi