By Waleed Najmeddine, IOL’s U.S. Correspondent

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, November 23 (IslamOnline) - A documentary film aimed at educating westerners about the occupation of Palestine is scheduled to be released this fall in the United States.

Occupation 101 is a film produced by UN-DA GROUND Films, a division of Triple Eye Films out of Southern California. Inspiration for producing the film came from visits to the occupied territories in December 2000 during the Al Aqsa Intifada.

According to the official website of the film, the goal of the documentary is: “to capture the essence of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine along with the consequences that result from the regime. The film presents the situation in an informative and educational manner. Our targeted audience are Westerners that are not well informed (and misinformed) about the subject.”

The film, which is now in post-production, includes numerous interviews with notable personalities such as Middle East analyst and author Noam Chomsky, Amira Hass, journalist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, and Richard Falk of the UN Commission on Human Rights fact-finding mission. Other interviews include ordinary citizens, refugees, students, hospital officials and other victims of human and civil rights abuses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Also included in the documentary is video footage of home demolitions, targeted assassinations, uprooting of agricultural trees, the daily humiliations at checkpoints and use of excessive military force on civilian populations, said the site.

A wide range of representatives of human rights organizations was also interviewed for the film, which began shooting in April 2001. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization based in Jerusalem, are among the list of over 30 non-governmental organizations, politicians and professors interviewed for the documentary.

The film’s producers plan to present copies to all major national and international film festivals, major international and U.S. universities and colleges and to U.S. public broadcasting television stations, as well as European and Middle Eastern satellite television stations.

The documentary was originally scheduled for release in June 2002 but, due to recent events in the occupied territories, the producers felt the need to include the latest developments.

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