On June 1^st, BBVA Compass stadium was host to a “friendly” soccer match between Honduras and Israel. Both countries have the same national colors and a similar look to their flags. I am a big fan of futbol and I went eagerly to the match with my alt family from Honduras. I wore a Honduras jersey and was eager to cheer on this team, dressed to represent Honduras. To represent my own heritage as a Palestinian-American, I also brought my Palestinian flag. I made sure my flag was allowed (based on the size, etc.) and I was all ready to go. For the first 15 minutes of the match I stood up and cheered and stomped my feet with the rest of the crowd chanting “HON-DU-RAS” and waving my Palestinian flag, my colors vibrant and loud against a sea of blue and white…and apparently also racist. I was told I had to sit down, which I did, only to be told to get back up again and follow the manager of security away from the stadium seats and into the concession area. I followed, and there waiting for me were three more BBVA security personnel and four police officers. When I asked them what was wrong, the manager of security, Nathan Buchanan, told me I am not allowed to carry this flag because it implies a “racial slur” and it is in BBVA Compass Stadium violation. I asked him to show me evidence of his accusations and asked him how my flag, a part of my identity as a Palestinian-American, implies a racial slur. He could not answer whether he did not know or could not articulate why he was ordered to remove my flag and me from my seat. I was getting very emotional at this point, I had my flag wrapped around my neck like a scarf, and he said he would take my flag and “check it in” for me, that I was not permitted to return to my seat until I surrendered my flag. The Israeli government has banned Palestinians from hanging their flags outside their home, and arrests the occupants of the home for having it on display on their own land. Every day, in Occupied Palestine, Palestinians are denied entry to neighboring villages, to schools or their family’s home and in many cases to hospitals thanks to Israel’s apartheid state. Yes “apartheid,” that word implies racism, yet my flag implies a racial slur? I asked him several times if I could go back to my seat and he would spread his arms out to create a blockade with his body and his arms so I could not pass. “This is private property,” he said. I told him I paid for a ticket to enter. I could not keep my eyes from gathering tears, but forced myself from letting them fall. “What country are we in again?” I asked. “Just because Israel is playing a match, does that mean you should treat me this way? Because of my Palestinian identity? I am a U.S. Citizen!” I have attended many soccer matches, many of which at the Dynamo stadium, and I have worn a different national jersey every time. Why was I pulled away that day? Who ordered this singling-out and on what grounds? When I asked him if he would feel comfortable with his actions once my treatment became public, he offered a compromise which was that I could keep my flag as long as I did not wave it. The first half was nearly over; they were extended three minutes when I was finally able to return to my seat. I had spent over 15 minutes defending myself from being bullied. I missed the first half because I waved a Palestinian flag at an international match in my hometown. I am proud and honored to be an American, to be able to enjoy the civil liberties that people in many countries are not afforded, but I would have never thought that the influence of an Israeli soccer team on U.S. soil would compromise our most basic liberties.

I asked BBVA Compass Stadium to clarify their flag policy, to explain how a flag could be “racist.”  (I suppose you could say that all flags are “racist,” but still, why single out this one?)  This is what Houston Dynamo [parent corporation] spokesperson Gina Rotolo had to say:

The decision to not allow the Palestinian flag to be displayed during the game was based on the sole intention of maintaining the safety of those in attendance. The flag bearer was instigating the crowd, and we felt it was important to diffuse a potentially volatile situation as emotions began to escalate.

Of course safety comes first, so I asked Ms. Rotolo how exactly was Hammad  “instigating the crowd?” Did she threaten anybody or called for violence? Rotolo replied:

This patron instigated the crowd by waving the Palestinian flag in front of Israeli supporters.  Given that her actions caused emotions to escalate, the appropriate course of action, in our eyes, was to ask her to please refrain from waving the flag.

So…there you have it.  “This patron instigated the crowd by waving the Palestinian flag in front of Israeli supporters.” It is now considered “racist” for an American of Palestinian descent to wave her flag at fans of the Israeli soccer team.  The First Amendment can be suspended in a stadium built with taxpayer money because some Israeli soccer fans might be moved to violence by the mere sight of the Palestinian flag.  The good people of the Houston Dynamo Organization think that it is “racist” to merely remind Israeli soccer fans that Palestine exists. I am trying to imagine what the complaint sounded like.  “Excuse me, Mr. Buchanan, that flag over there is really pissing me off–causing emotional distress–and I might have to hurt the lady holding it so you better get four cops to impound that flag or else I’m going to beat her up and it will be all her fault.”

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

Rotolo did not answer my questions about who complained, nor would she clarify the stadium policy on flags or how this flag violates that policy. She did not answer questions about which other flags are banned. According to Hammad, Honduras fans were shouting “faggots” and “motherfuckers” at Israel fans, and a fight between an Israel fan and a Honduras fan was going on just a few rows behind her, at the very time that she was removed from her seat…yet she was the one singled out for “instigating violence.”  Go figure.   [UPDATE: A previous version of this story implied that the head of security at BBVA Compass Stadium, Nathan Buchanan, reports to the Dynamo Organization. This is incorrect. Mr. Buchanan, in fact, reports the the Dynamo's parent corporation, the Anschutz Entertainment Group.  My apologies. -HS]

Omar, playing this Friday as the opening film of the Houston Palestine Film Festival, is an eye-opening story. Nominated for a best foreign film Oscar® as was director Hany Abu-Assad’s 2024 film Paradise Now, Omar speaks volumes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while also adhering to action movie conventions. The end result twists and turns the audiences’ emotion, constantly ratcheting up the tension to what is an unmistakably exciting conclusion.

Shot around Nazareth, Omar has the titular character (Adam Bakri) taking part in the murder of an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint with two of his friends. Omar’s not the shooter but friend-number-two, who pulls the trigger, is also the brother of the girl that has Omar’s eye. The third friend will figure prominently with both Omar and the girl as the plot unwinds.

Things go bad when Omar’s arrested, tortured for information and then let into the general prison population, where he inadvertently gives information to an informer. A good cop bad cop situation develops as Omar is brought before a detective who goes easy on him with one caveat. Turn on his friends and help arrest the shooter or spend the rest of his life in confinement.

Here the movie becomes a tight psychological thriller between Omar and Agent Rami (Waleed Zuaiter, also seen in Men Who Stare At Goats). Between some idyllic interludes after being released from jail Omar tries to contact his now estranged femme friend and gathers information for Rami. If the two men are ever on the same page it’s a scene where, while in Rami’s office during a terse bargaining session, Rami takes a call from his wife and then calls his mother to deal with a personal crisis. In Omar’s view here’s the guy who was just handing him a life sentence now being henpecked by family issues. It’s also the moment that Rami who’s been speaking perfect Arabic starts speaking Hebrew, much to Omar’s surprise. Omar admires the level of deception Rami displays in his craft but it also adds fuel to Omar’s hated of Rami.

Trickery rules subsequent scenes, as if someone is always hiding something in their behavior. However what makes Omar such a great film is the way it reaches its inevitable ending. It’s a moment that leaves you open-mouth but also realizing there can be only one possible finale.

Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Rice Media Center

Wherefore: Annual screenings of acclaimed films by Palestinian and other directors. Films unwinding include Omar, Under the Same Sun, May in the Summer, A World Not Ours and various Short Subjects. The MFAH hosts the first weekend (May 9 & 10), with the Rice Media Center hosting the final two weekends in May. Click here for a complete schedule.

By Nick Cooper
Illustration by John Forse

From Twitter death hoaxes to health updates to pre-obituaries, Nelson Mandela has been in the headlines constantly for the last few months (as of the print deadline, he’s still alive). However, when Mandela, South Africa, and the world most needed the media spotlight, it was conspicuously absent. The first decade of Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment was the most miserable– he spent it breaking rocks into gravel and quarrying lime on Robben Island. He was harassed, cut off from the world, and forbidden to wear sunglasses, permanently damaging his eyesight. He slept in a damp concrete cell and contracted tuberculosis, the source of his current suffering. The same newspapers that have eloquent words for him now were silent.

The mid-’60s were what Larry Shore, a South African American anti-apartheid activist and professor at Hunter College, refers to as “the worst years, when apartheid wasn’t on the radar.”  In the U.S., Martin Luther King, Jr. broke the media silence, calling for sanctions against South Africa in his speeches. Then came Robert F. Kennedy’s trip to South Africa, where he met black leaders and called apartheid evil (this trip is the subject of Shore’s film RFK in the Land of Apartheid).

By the ‘70s and ‘80s, black solidarity movements, radicals, students, and musicians built pressure for sanctions and divestment. Eventually, institutions and politicians in wealthy countries were pressured to impose sanctions and apartheid fell. Suddenly the people of the world loved Mandela and felt that they shared his victory, regardless of whether they had previously been anti-apartheid, pro-apartheid, or had never heard of apartheid. Many seemed to think they themselves, or their group, had somehow helped. Barbra Streisand gives the credit to liberals, saying:

I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberators. They fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five-day workweek! What’s to be ashamed of?

There is apartheid today in Israel/Palestine and liberals such as Streisand are not fighting it. Instead, she played a benefit concert for Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. Activists of color, radicals, communists, anarchists, socialists, and union members roll their eyes (and the dead ones roll over in their graves) when liberals try to take credit for winning rights for women, workers, or non-whites. With a few exceptions, such as RFK, liberals were not the ones being executed, imprisoned, blacklisted, and oppressed for their efforts.

Republicans and conservatives in the Global North had close ties to the apartheid government, including such allies as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pat Buchanan. Larry Shore had moved to the U.S. in 1973 and saw them slamming Mandela and the ANC, “Many Republicans called Mandela a terrorist… With some very rare exceptions, no Republican ever supported Mandela.”  Nonetheless, after apartheid fell, the Republicans weren’t going to let the liberals be the only ones to steal credit.

So, when Mandela spoke at Rice University in 1999, the Republicans were out in force, each trying to outdo the others as Mandela’s closest friend (watch the video). The event was sponsored by Shell Oil, which started things off on a bizarre note as Shell was the single corporation anti-apartheid activists had boycotted the most. Shell not only violated a U.N. embargo by providing fuel to the apartheid regime, but also hired a Washington-based firm called ‘Pagan International’ to conduct an international spying and subversion program (named the ‘Neptune Strategy’) against anti-apartheid activists. However, at Rice that day, Shell was trying to rebrand itself.  According to Larry Shore, when the sanctions against South Africa ended, “Shell wanted to get back into South Africa and donated money to the ANC.  They were sucking up to Mandela.”

Shell’s sponsorship was just the beginning of the absurdities. James Baker III, a Reagan and Bush White House official, who now lauded Mandela as the greatest among the important figures of the second half of the 20th century, introduced the program. His Royal Highness Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia (aka “Bandar Bush” from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911), introduced Nelson Mandela.  And finally, Ken Lay presented Mandela with the “Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service.”

Sharing the stage with these oil mafiosos, Mandela thanked the American students who had helped hasten the end of apartheid and the audience of Rice students applauded themselves.  However, even during the ‘80s when other universities had protests and some divested from South Africa, the Rice students who were part of the anti-apartheid movement could have been counted on one hand.

For South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the anti-apartheid struggle has never ended, it has only moved to Israel. Tutu said, “I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through.”

Activists struggling against apartheid in Israel are lobbying, making films, organizing protests, marches, boycotts, and concerts, etc. — the same type of things they did in response to South Africa. Folks such as Barbra Streisand, James Baker, and Bandar Bush are not helping out, but it seems likely that after Israel/Palestine has been transformed into a multiethnic democracy, they will show up to take credit.