These are very hard days for me. I’m a committed anti-Zionist Jew.   A Jew from and of Canada. A founding member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada.  A Jew who is seeing not just the “mowing” of Gaza which has been what the last 15 years and five vicious attacks or “wars” on Gaza have been – but in the last week, the virtual carpet bombing of an area 6.6% the size as Halifax Regional Municipality.  In the first week of Israel’s war on Gaza (I mean that), Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza.  In each year of 2018 and 2019—the US dropped 7,000 bombs throughout Afghanistan.  Gaza is 1800 times smaller than Afghanistan.

My days in Berlin

I’m now on a visit to Berlin.  I’m here to visit my son, who has lived here for a couple of years. I used to like visiting the Jewish Museum, and even walking through The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. No longer. I can no longer see Jews as victims.  I haven’t been able to see them as victims for some time. Now it’s much worse.  Israeli Jews along the cruel border between Israel and Gaza were killed by Hamas in the shocking events of Sat. Oct. 7.  However, history didn’t start on that Saturday. 

From homes to refugee camps

It started with the 750,000 Palestinians forcibly ejected and marched out of Palestine by Jews in 1948. Then homeless, the Palestinians were forced into refugee camps. Did you know that 95% of refugee camps for Palestinians are less than one square kilometre, each housing tens of thousands of Palestinians? While on a study tour I’ve been to several including Aida Camp and Balata Camp.  On most streets, if you stretch out your arms as I did, you can touch the concrete buildings on two sides of the street. The Palestinians were driven out of their own country into camps and sometimes into towns in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.  They were the victims of a rapacious, lawless victimizer – the state of Israel.   Let’s think about why Hamas fought back.

The Fight for the “right of return”

On Oct. 7 Hamas and Palestinian fighters fought back. They wanted to take their land back, and their “right to return” home. Since 1967, Israel has killed and maimed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.  Israel has stolen their land,  condemned them to lives of grinding poverty, unemployment and hopelessness.  All at the hands of the Jewish state.   Just let that sink in. Here is my recent blog post about that.

In an article from the Middle East Eye by a critical British journalist, Jonathan Cook, he wrote, “ 

“How did we get to the point where Israel can order half of Gaza’s population — more than one million people — to move from the north of their tiny prison to the south of their tiny prison, in one of the most overcrowded places on Earth? Palestinians in Gaza were given 24 hours to do so or face dire consequences.”

–from “Western Media’s Parroting of Official Lies is Paving Way to Genocide in Gaza“

So, it’s with a heavy heart and rage, I write What to watch and what to read this month

What to Watch

Jim Stanford, from the Centre For Future Work, and cartoonist Tony Biddle, have just created a wonderful 11 minute cartoon Have a Say at Your Job: Why Workers’ Voices build better workplaces, a better economy and better lives.  It’s about workers and the need to create activist unions.  Well worth watching and sharing here.

In the short category is Six Words Crash Course, will help you tell the story of your life.  It takes 2 minutes to tell you how to being to think about writing a memoir! Just the thing on Vimeo. 

Again in the 5 minute film genre, have a look at the Great Malaise (2019) cartoon by Catherine Lepage on the NFB site.  Here is the dilemma of most women I know, hard-working, team players, skilled and wanting to learn and frankly how society (men) holds them back.  You got to watch it here.    

US Films and one from the UK …

Fair Play. It’s a new feature film (2023) on Netflix and very good, sexy, startling and believable.  You can read The Guardian’s review which I don’t think does it justice.  A young couple, just out of Ivy-league university business school, get jobs at a hedge fund in New York City.  The competition to earn big money for the firm is fierce, the management even fiercer, and the out of hours pastimes will make you yearn to spend your extra hours in a library study carrel.  Here’s the trailer.  

I meant to watch Nomadland (2021) sooner; my husband liked it more than I did. Sure the acting was good, but somehow, we just got a glimpse the exploitation of the key character (played by Frances McDormand) at work in an Amazon fulfilment centre, then cleaning toilets in a trailer park.  Most of the film was a deeper look at grief – what it can do to the poor and the dispossessed.  The film focuses on a woman who wanted things to change, but didn’t want things to change too much in her life.  She needed to remain alone and independent.  That was the interesting part.  I rented it on Amazon Prime.   Here’s the trailer.

For a decent American policier, you should watch To Catch A Killer (2023). Who killed 29 people on New Year’s Eve in Baltimore, the story is very loosely based on the story of John Gacy.  It’s nicely directed by Argentinian filmmaker Damian Szifon. The first film I saw by him I loved.  You can watch it too! It’s called Wild Tales – about anger and revenge — and takes place in and around Buenos Aires, brilliant.  You can see both films on Netflix. Trailer’s here for To Catch A Killer.

Above Suspicion on Britbox, is a high quality policier.  There are four series or seasons– each are three tightly-knit and tightly-written episodes.  I liked the first and the fourth series the best.  Sexism writ large, and what it takes to rise to the top of the London “Met”, makes for riveting watching.  Here is the trailer.

French Film Jag

I went on a big French film jag, and here’s what I liked:

Caution: Watch early enough in the evening or before you start drinking, so you can read the subtitles! Unless you’re going to Paris anytime soon – you can see a lot of Paris in a couple of these.  Or you can watch the Emily in Paris trailer here, which few my friends liked but I did!

Gold Brick (2023) on Netflix is fun to watch in part because it’s only 95 minutes long.  Gold Brick takes place in Chartres, central France, in a do-little town (according to the film’s main character Daniel Sauveur).  Sauveur is a working-class guy just out of his teens; he resents the rich especially the Breuils family – whom just about everyone in town has to work for.  The Breuils own a packaging plant/warehouse where they box up expensive French perfume and send it all over the world.  One year, the employer gifts a bottle to every employee:  Sauveur sells his on the internet for several times its value.  Suddenly he thinks of a plan to steal and sell cases of perfume – and he’s clever enough not to be discovered.  It’s a madcap scheme, but charming and funny.  Here’s the trailer.

Class Act is a series that shows a lot of Paris! Well worth watching as the key figure, Bernard Tapie, was a real man who grew up in a working-class family with the idea he would make it “big” one day. With little more than a high school education he first became an electronics salesman and ran several lucrative appliance shops, then he was an entertainer, a factory owner of note, and a financier.  France’s prime minister François Mitterand gave him a cabinet job to help disaffected Black and immigrant youth in Paris’ banlieues.  As asocial-democratic politician, Tapie tried to fight the good fight – but always by force of his magnetic personality and from the top down.  Fascinating series. On Netflix!

The Women and the Murderer, (2021) is on Netflix.  It’s a documentary that takes place in Paris. In the late 1980s, into the ‘90s and later more than five young and vibrant women are killed in Paris by a serial killer.  Rather than focusing on police action exclusively, the film zeroes in on the mother of one of the victims who demands to join the investigation – though she is not invited.  Unusually, the woman police detective asks “why not?”.  In a very unusual tale, the 65 year old mother manages to find out a lot and pursue the case for decades.  There is also a female journalist involved.  All three women play a role – it’s a feminist whodunit.   Worth watching:  here’s the trailer.

Finally, for a wonderful fun diversion, watch the seven episodes of latest French TV series Lupin (on Netflix).  Paris has never sparkled or looked so inviting as this series will show.  Lupin is about an incredible thief.  Assane Diop emigrates from Sénégal as a child, with his father – who is jailed for theft.  Diop grows up an orphan in Paris; all the while, he hones his skills as a gentleman thief.  What’s wonderful is that he models himself on the hero, Arsène Lupin, from a favourite classic children’s books.  Here’s the trailer for the series.  You can also watch the previous two series, but you don’t need to in order to enjoy this last series. 

What I watched on the Condor flight to Frankfurt….

I watched Locked Down (2021) Not sure where it is currently streaming. But it’s British about a separating couple forced to continue to share a (lovely) London house during the Covid lockdown. They plan a heist to make enough money to set up each partner for life. Quite nice and funny.

Also The Menu (2023) with Ralph Fiennes is a thriller and a horror film together. Nicely done, rich in hatred for the monied classes. If you love food and hanker after a meal at a four or five star restaurant– this is for you. I really liked it.

What to Read

These days, read anything by writer and journalist Jonathan Cook.  This British journalist has worked for The Guardian and The Observer.  He’s written freelance for  New Statesman, International Herald Tribune, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al-Ahram Weekly, Al Jazeera, The National in Abu Dhabi, CounterPunch, The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and AlterNet. For nearly a decade he lived in Nazareth, a mainly Christian-Palestinian town in Israel proper (meaning within the Green Line).  It was about a decade ago, my husband Larry and I met with Cook in Nazareth when we were on a study tour of Israel-Palestine. I’m a great fan of Jonathan Cook. He writes for the Middle East Eye, and has a good blog here on Substack. 

Chatelaine has a good article on Islamophobia in Canada, “Inside Canada’s Growing Islamophbia Problem” by Radiyah Chowdhury here and well worth reading.  It’s enough to make me consider subscribing to Chatelaine!  Here it is.

In The Guardian, it’s worth reading Moustafa Bayoumi’s article “Standing up for Palestine is also standing up to save the west from the worst of itself” – here.

Here’s an article  from The Guardian about France banning high school girls’ wearing the abaya. In “Muslims are already excluded from French political life: that’s the real issue in the school abayas row” by Kaoutar Harchi, she points out,

“The ban on wearing the abaya should be seen as part of the colonial relationship that exists between the French state and French citizens descended from postcolonial immigration.”

-Kaoutar Harchi

Short stories

A great book of short stories is American Estrangement (2021), by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.  Sayrafiezadeh is the author of a well done story “Civil Disturbance” here  in the New Yorker.  It is about a young couple who go on a date to canvas door-to-door during a US election campaign. You can read an interview with the author here. In American Estrangement, I especially liked the stories “Last Meal at Whole Foods”, and “Fairground”.  The final story, “A Beginners Guide to Estrangement” may have been modelled on the author’s own life.  A young man of 20, whose mother is American, goes to visit his father, an engineer in Iran.  Father and son haven’t seen one another and have not spoken for 15 years. This is a disquieting story full of missed social cues and lost opportunity.  Excellent.

Murder and Mayhem: Mommy Don’t

Turning to Canada – actually to Nova Scotia– here’s my review of Mommy Don’t: From Mother to Murderer, the True Story of Penny and Karissa Boudreau by Sherri Aikenhead (2023) Nimbus Publishing.

It was still rather summery in Nova Scotia, so I read yet another book about a murder — this one is nonfiction and took place on the south shore of Nova Scotia.  The book is about 33-year-old Penny Boudreau in Bridgewater, NS who in 2008 murdered her 12-year-old daughter, Karissa. For months, Penny managed to evade capture.   She cooperated fully with local police. She went on TV and implored the “stranger”, whom she insisted kidnapped Karissa, to return her to her loving family and community.  Penny herself looked for the girl and joined community members in their searches and postering.  After three weeks, Karissa’s body was discovered under heavy snow and underbrush along the LaHavre River. 

Then Penny and  her boyfriend, Vernon, were arrested for the girl’s murder. They were jailed for only one night — because there was no solid evidence either was involved.  Neither Penny nor Vernon confessed, despite the cops setting up jailhouse snitches in each suspect’s cell.

Ultimately — and the most interesting part of the book — was the Mr Big operation  launched by the local police in conjunction with the RCMP. It is fascinating (and ugly) to read that “UC Steve” (UC= undercover cop) “bumped” into Vernon at the town’s liquor store and offered him jobs delivering packages, driving items to New Brunswick and doing odd tasks for what UC Steve told him was  a criminal gang.  Vernon derived a sense of importance and self-esteem from his new “friendship ” with UC Steve.  The two went to restaurants, drove around, and visited the mall. Vernon got well-paid for his deliveries — better than what he earned at his job stocking shelves at the Atlantic Superstore.

Mr Big sting

When Vern’s lawyer advised him to beware if a stranger befriends him or offers him a job or help because these actions are the hallmark of a Mr Big sting, Vern ignores the lawyer’s warning.  After reeling in Vernon, UC Steve ensnared Vernon’s common-law wife Penny and that was when the story got interesting.  Penny told UC Steve that the police were on to her; she asked him to help protect her from the police.

Unfortunately, the book drips with sentiment and righteous anger toward Penny, who deliberately killed her own child.  Of course murder is wrong — no one will argue differently.  But the author seems to lack curiosity.  Aikenhead never unpacks the dangers Mr Big stings present to civil liberties. For instance Mr Big techniques (or entrapment) are illegal in the UK and the US — but not in Canada.  

The convicted deputy-chief of police “would not pose an undue risk to society”

The book boosts the police, and portrays the justice system as squeaky clean.  The author writes one paragraph in the endnotes about Bridgewater’s Deputy Chief John Collyer. Collyer was charged a decade after the Boudreau case with sexual exploitation of a young girl. Convicted, he was sentenced to 15 months in jail.  Collyer was out after five months because –according to author Aikenhead– the parole board “concluded he would not pose an undue risk to society.”   Oh really? Why didn’t Aikenhead question that? A key cop in the Boudreau investigation assaulted a young girl years later yet the author asked no questions.  Indeed, central to the book is Aikenhead’s over the top praise for the work of the police on this case.  They are held up as paragons of virtue.  How is that for unquestioning respect for authority? 

It’s a long book, often repetitive and even prurient.  The author paints the picture of an angry small town community  tricked into looking for  a missing girl –who was already dead.  Mothers and fathers in Bridgewater, according to the author, were so furious with the child-murderer that they sent a petition with 4,000 names to the parole board to block Penny Boudreau being allowed a four-hour pass from jail.  The pass was merely to attend church– accompanied by a jail guard.

I wouldn’t rush to read this book, unless you like a book that obstinately refuses to wade into the depths of why a mother would kill her daughter. Unless you like a paean to the police, this book is not for you.  

What to Listen to

The Globe and Mail has a new podcast out on Spotify (or wherever you get podcasts) called In Her Defence.  This is the true story of Helen Naslund.  You may recall that Naslund, a battered woman and a victim of domestic violence, lived on a farm in Alberta.  She killed her abusive husband of 27 years—before he could kill her.  I’m very interested and sympathetic to this case; I wrote Naslund many letters while she was in jail—and she wrote me back.  Scores of women (and some men including Ottawa-based peace and social justice activist Matthew Behrens) worked hard to appeal her original 18-year prison sentence in 2020 for manslaughter.  On appeal, her sentence was cut in half.  After just over two years in prison, Naslund was paroled.  Journalist Jana G Pruden met with her in jail, and then put together this podcast.  I’m about to listen to it free on Spotify. 

There have been other cases about this type of horrifying – but not uncommon – situation.  In Nova Scotia 41 years ago, Jane Hurshman who had suffered unimaginable abuse and terror from her husband Billy Stafford, shot him dead as he slept hunched behind the wheel of his truck.  After she was acquitted of murder, the crown charged her with manslaughter.  She served two months of a six-month sentence in jail.  On her release, she began to speak publicly against domestic abuse and demand action be taken to stop it.  In 1992, Hurshman was found dead in her car in a parking lot on Halifax’s waterfront.  At 43 years of age, Hurshman was killed with one bullet to her chest.  At the time, some thought she had taken her own life.  Others believed she was assassinated, as there was evidence she had been under threat by a man (or men) who didn’t like her activism.  An award-winning film Life With Billy was released in 1994; in 1998, Brian Vallée published Life and Death with Billy which became a best-selling book.

Finally, from Guantánamo

Many of the single men captured by the Americans knew little to nothing about women, about love or about marriage.  Some other prisoners in Gitmo decided to teach them.  This is an amazing and very human podcast “How One Man Learned About Love and Marriage While Detained in Guantánamo” is a must to listen to.  It’s amazing.  Listen to this – 27 minutes.

Mansoor Adayfi, was incarcerated in Guantánamo from 2002 to 2016– 14 long torturous years. He was never tried, nor charged wtih anything. Hundreds and hundreds of prisoners were never charged, and never found guilty. Yet they remained in the horrible black-spot of an offshore US prison. Adayfi is the author of an excellent 2021 book that I’m now reading, Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo. It is the best book about imprisonment, US supremacy and torture I’ve ever read. It’s shocking, insightful and inspiring. Here was a 20-year-old Yemeni, who had seen his first television show a year before he suffered rendition to Gitmo.

Featured image at the top. How they see it & How we see it by Gazan artist Bushra Shanan. She created this artwork about the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza. For more on this artist read this. Photo is from The Times of Israel.