Tonight’s film is the 2012 Peabody Award winning film My Neighbourhood, the latest production by Just Vision, a team of Palestinian, Israeli, North and South American filmmakers, journalists, and human rights advocates dedicated to telling the stories of Israelis and Palestinians working nonviolently to achieve freedom, dignity, security and peace in the region. Our guest tonight is Just Vision’s Creative Director Julia Bacha, who co-directed My Neighbourhood together with independent filmmaker Rebekah Wingert-Jabi.

Thanksgiving this year fell on the 49th anniversary of JFK’s assassination. I was just 20, married only 9 months, and my husband and I spent the weekend glued to the TV in our tiny apartment, weeping. That and the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center are my only two “never forget where I was when I heard” moments.

Controversy erupted at the DNC this week when Democratic party leaders forced a party platform change to reinstate language proclaiming Jerusalem as “Israel’s undivided capital,” and to reinstate references to God in the text.

The motion had to be voted on by a two-thirds majority of the delegates for passage, and it became clear, after several vote calls by LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a major majority did NOT want the platform changed.

Responding to a hissy fit ginned up by a random Weekly Standard writer, and carried along by Fox News, Democrats just changed their platform a day after they adopted it, adding language saying that “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel,” and adding a reference to God.

As a young man, James Carroll had an epiphany deep in the diggings of an archeological excavation under Old Jerusalem. He had become a Catholic priest. In his activities there and in Bethlehem, he had failed to grow close to any sense of wonder over his physical closeness to events related to the life and death of Jesus. He had witnessed squabbling between and amongst clerics, often over petty issues. He was becoming less illuminated, more disenchanted every day. He acquired an elderly Dominican priest, who was also a renowned scholar and archeologist, as a guide. At first the man frustrated Carroll even more with his banter:

Obama Administration’s kabuki over Israeli Palestinian peace efforts continues as historic Shepherd Hotel in Palestinian neighborhood is demolished.