Avatar: Planet Pandora or Palestine

Dr Bouthaina Shaaban

Despite the technological effects which the director of Aavatar crams his movie with, the reason behind its popularity is not only these technological effects but the themes which touch every human conscience. This is in addition to the symbolism of the movie: details of the conflict between peoples and their invaders form Iraq to Afghanistan , Pakistan , and first and foremost, Palestine . The source of all these conflicts is, as usual, the greed which is usually masked by other pretexts and justifications.

It is not true that the theme of the movie is simple or that it addresses “the rupture in the link between man and nature,” as the movie director James Cameron says. It symbolically portrays the essence of conflicts in today’s world and their physical, moral and human implications in cinematic language without the blood scenes that the world can no longer stand.

Through this movie I lived the story of the Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan and Lebanese peoples and the brutal wars waged against them; where the West treats these peoples as if they were the children of the “Navi” tribe with their blue clothes in their planet Pandora. Viewers all over the world can see the essence of the conflict which is masked by games that have become facts in the minds of Westerners in order to purge their consciences of the necessity of fighting for justice and the human rights of the natives who are being robbed, destroyed and distorted everyday. Viewers are made to feel the need for the Western Value systems to be developed so that they accept the existence and diversity of other cultures.

Settlers landed on planet Pandora driven by the greed for its wealth. Their calculations were focussed on the material gains which they can only get through possessing the land and its natural resources. To be able to do that they had either to kill or expel the Navi who strongly belong to their land, nature, holy tree and their customs which show equal respect to human life and nature in utter contrast to the attitude of the invading settlers who mock sanctities and human respect for nature. They only see the things which give them large amounts of money.

This contrast between the values of the two cultures is at the essence of the creation of Israel . For seventy years, it has killed the Palestinians on a daily basis, Judaized their holy places, settled their land, confiscated their water, uprooted their trees, mocked their beliefs, their commitment to their land and their lifestyle. Those who created this settlement, armed to the teeth with hatred, and provided it with the weapons of destruction are well known for their greed for oil.

The movie needs only the Navi natives of planet Pandora to raise the Palestinian flag and the invaders to carry the Israeli flag to become a detailed reading of the Israeli settlement of Palestine with modern cinematic technique, but also with symbolic nuance that illustrates the nature of this conflict. This applies to the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the same way it applies to the fate of peoples and tribes annihilated in the United States , Australia and Latin America .

I suggest that demonstrators against Israeli occupation wear the blue shirts of the Navi tribe in order to make it easier for westerners to understand their cause. Invaders always target the people’s beliefs and holy places; that is why Israel is committing another robbery by confiscating Islamic holy places in the Sanctuary of Abraham (al-Haram al-Ibrahimi) in Hebron, Bilal Mosque, which like al-Aqsa Mosque, are branches of the holy tree for hundreds of millions of Muslims who defend them in as much as they defend their land.

What Israeli occupation authorities are doing, in addition to spreading war and terrorism throughout the region and the world, is the destruction of a civilization, a people, a value system, a lifestyle and a coherent natural and social environment in order to control resources, water and land, to the extent that the Israeli prime Minister says that these Muslim holy places he is usurping to be Jewish are “as important as the Israeli army”. This is because the objective is to destroy the original identity of the land and the population and replace it with the identity of the settlers which knows nothing but looting, and is willing to commit the ugliest crimes for this objective.

No American movie can address such a subject without resorting to symbolism. The destruction of a civilization makes it necessary for the invaders, as usual, to accuse the natives of the ugliest crimes. Although the movie included hints made by the invaders about “the brutality of the natives” and the mocking of their sanctities and lifestyle, the translation of this part in the context of today’s conflicts constitutes an important part of the political and media reality on planet earth today. How can waging a war on the Iraqi people, who are steeped in civilization, tradition, knowledge and moral values, be justified? And how could massacres be committed for over seven decades against civilians in Palestine and their leaders assassinated in all corners of the glob? This is in addition to distorting the image of the natives in the media, the natives who are in this case Arabs and Muslims, so that killing or persecuting them because their women wear headscarves becomes justified. They claim that killing the native is “necessary for saving Western civilization from a great danger”. Even an architectural element like a minaret becomes a “dangerous threat”.

The media machine divides people into two types: the first is definitely a native, strictly a Muslim Arab; and the second is the Israeli settler who cannot be touched by the charge of terrorism even if he committed the most heinous terrorist crime in full sight of the whole world. Otherwise, how can we explain that Muslims are accused of terrorism and assassinated for mere suspicion, while those who converged in Dubai from different capitals of the world, armed with cutting edge technology and equipped with European and Australian passports to carry out a terrorist operation are not accused of terrorism?

Avatar tells the story of the natives of planet Pandora and shows the injustice meted out by the greedy invaders against the Navi people. Who would dare produce a movie about Palestine which tells the story of Arabs’ struggle for justice and freedom on planet earth and for salvation from the oppression of Israeli settlers and their biblical pretexts.