Metier Productions, a non-profit 501c3 organization, has nearly finished an exciting short documentary on this divestment campaign (“Full Court Press”) and I seek your help so that we can finish the film and bring it to a wide audience in 2011, beginning with the London Palestine Film Festival in April. You can view a rough cut of the first few minutes of "Full Court Press" at http://vimeo.com/18328658 (password: divest).
The divestment resolution provoked an extraordinary debate within the Berkeley community, involving students, faculty, Nobel laureates, and a Holocaust survivor. It brought an Israeli diplomat to the campus. It provided a forum for testimony by Palestinians and their supporters. But as our documentary shows, a large contingent of the key proponents of the divestment measure were Jewish. Israel was extremely concerned about the resolution, because it knew the significance of Berkeley hosting such a debate. As Israeli consul Akiva Tor told the student senate, "The whole world is watching—not just this campus, the whole world."
The divestment campaign will become one of the defining human rights issues of this century. "Full Court Press" combines interviews, films of protests in the West Bank and Cairo, and archival footage with dramatic testimony from the student senate hearings. Metier Productions hopes to coordinate with student groups across the country to gain maximum exposure for the Berkeley debate.
As you know, Israel, which has long enjoyed the moral sympathy of the world, is perfecting its own version of apartheid, complete with a separation wall in the West Bank and a sealed-off population in Gaza. Your donation will help bring this injustice to the court of public opinion. We will complete the editing of the film and organize a distribution campaign that will give broad exposure to the Berkeley student senate's campaign.
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