BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/Detroit X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Detroit BEGIN:VEVENT UID:31318@arabamerica.com DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20230716T150000 DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20230716T173000 DTSTAMP:20230628T230404Z URL:https://www.arabamerica.com/events/my-tree-free-documentary-and-panel- discussion/ SUMMARY:"MY TREE" Free Documentary and Panel Discussion DESCRIPTION:Voices from the Holy Land Online Film Salon presents a panel discussion about the documentary “My Tree” on Sunday\, July 16\, 2023\ , at 3:00pm ET. Register at Tinyurl.com/VFHL-July2023 to see the film f ree before Sunday\, then join the salon on Zoom.\nUsing donations collecte d by children via “little blue boxes\,” the Jewish National Fund has p lanted more than 250 million trees in Israel/Palestine. Ostensibly to “m ake the desert bloom\,” the planting has radically altered the land’s biodiversity.\n“My Tree” follows filmmaker Jason Sherman’s journey t o find the tree planted in his name on the occasion of his bar mitzvah. Wh en he discovers that “his” tree is in a forest covering up a Palestini an village destroyed in 1967—one of many forests hiding scores of destro yed villages—he seeks to learn the motivations behind JNF’s tree-plant ing enterprise and to understand his own culpability.\n\nPanelists and Mod erator:\nJason Sherman is a playwright and screenwriter\, with a multi-aw ard-winning body of work for stage and screen. Among his many plays are "T hree in the Back\, Two in the Head\," which received the Governor General ’s Award for Drama\; and a trilogy of plays about the connections betwee n Israel\, Palestine and diasporic Jews: "The League of Nathans\," "Readin g Hebron\," and "United Nathans." Jason also wrote the docudrama "We Were Children\," about Canada’s residential schools system. "My Tree" won the 2023 Canadian Writers Guild Award for Best Documentary and was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards.\n\nSeth Morrison  has held leadership posts in many local\, regional and national nonprofi t and political organizations. He’s the Immediate Past Chair of Jewish V oice for Peace and he serves as Treasurer for Jewish Voice for Peace Actio n. Other advocacy issues he has been active in include HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ advocacy\, environment\, health care and local progressive politics.  Mor rison publicly resigned from the Washington\, D.C. JNF board when he learn ed that the Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael was covertly stea ling Palestinian homes in Occupied East Jerusalem and giving them to Israe li settlers.\n\nMazin Qumsiyeh is founder and director of the Palestine M useum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University\, where he teaches. He taugh t at Yale and Duke Universities and returned to Palestine in 2008. The aut hor of more than 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural her itage to biodiversity\, he is best known for his books on the Israeli/Pale stinian conflict: "Sharing the Land of Canaan" and "Popular Resistance in Palestine." Qumsiyeh serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations such as Al-Rowwad Children Theater and Siraj Cen ter.\n\nIymen Chehade (moderator) is a professor of Middle Eastern histor y at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chica go. He is active on public policy and is a staunch advocate for the human rights of Palestinian and other peoples. He is the founder of the nonprofi t Uprising Theater\, which uses art as a tool to link the Palestinian move ment for liberation with movements of other marginalized communities. Cheh ade has served as a foreign policy adviser and in 2022 ran for Congress in Illinois' 3rd Congressional District\; in his electoral campaign he highl ighted the apartheid system Israel operates against the Palestinian people .\n\nView the trailer at Tinyurl.com/VFHL-MyTreeTrailer\nVisit the collec tion of 38 VFHL Online Film Salons at www.voicesfromtheholyland.org/featu red-videos\nThe July 2023 VFHL Online Film Salon is co-sponsored by\n* K ehilla Community Synagogue Middle East Peace Committee\n* Israel-Palestine Mission Network\, PCUSA\n\n \;\n\nwww.facebook.com/VoicesHolyLand\nww w.voicesfromtheholyland.org\nvfhlonlinefilmsalon@gmail.com\n\n \;\n\n& nbsp\;\n\n \; ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.arabamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2 023/06/my-tree-POSTER.jpg CATEGORIES:Documentary END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Detroit X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Detroit BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20230312T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR