Why Has This Documentary, Never Been Broadcast On U.S. Media?

John Pilger:  Twenty-five years ago, I made a film called Palestine Is Still The Issue. It was about a nation of people - the Palestinians - forced off their land and later subjected to a military occupation by Israel. An occupation condemned by the United Nations and almost every country in the world, including Britain.

But Israel is backed by a very powerful friend, the United States. So in 25 years, if we're to speak of the great injustice here, nothing has changed. What has changed is that the Palestinians have fought back.

Stateless and humiliated for so long, they've risen up against Israel's huge military machine, although they themselves have no arm, no tanks, no American planes and gun ships or missiles.

Some have committed desperate acts of terror, like suicide bombing. But for Palestinians, the overriding, routine terror, day after day, has been the ruthless control of almost every aspect of their lives, as if they live in an open prison. This film is about the Palestinians and a group of courageous Israelis united in the oldest human struggle - to be free.

The feature of John Pilger's film, Palestine is Still the Issue, that most angers the pro-Israel lobby and people like Michael Green (Carlton TV boss disowns Pilger, September 20) is that it is all too accurate a picture of life in the occupied territories. 

Mainstream television news, no longer covers Israel and the occupied territories in a manner that properly conveys the true nature of the disaster and Israel's overweening responsibility for it.

You can watch Pilger's film on your video monitor at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3499.htm

To purchase or read more about this film and world-wide reaction to it, go to:

http://www.johnpilger.com/

Family

 

Son Sam, born 1973, and daughter Zoe, born 1984

Recreations

 

Swimming, sunning, reading and mulling

 

Education

 

Sydney High School

 

Qualified journalism cadetship - Australian Consolidated Press

Career

 

1958 - 62 Reporter, freelance writer, sports writer and sub-editor - Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Sydney

 

1962 Freelance correspondent - Italy 1962

 

1962 - 63 Middle East desk, Reuter, London

 

1963 - 86 Reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and Chief Foreign Correspondent - Daily Mirror

 

1986 - 88 Editor-in-Chief and a founder, News on Sunday, London

 

1969 - 71 Reporter, World in Action, Granada Television

 

1974 - 81 Reporter/Producer, Associated Television

 

1981 - Documentary film-maker, Central and Carlton Television

 

Accredited war correspondent Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Biafra

 

Contributor

 

BBC Television, BBC Radio, BBC World Service, London Broadcasting, ABC Television, ABC Radio and 2GB Sydney

 

Publications

 

Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation: New York, The Age: Melbourne, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin: Sydney, plus French, Italian, Scandinavian, Canadian, Japanese and other newspapers and periodicals.

 

Books

 

The Last Day (1975), Aftermath: The Stuggles of Cambodia and Vietnam (1981), The Outsiders (1984), Heroes (1986), A Secret Country (1989), Distant Voices (1992 and 1994), Hidden Agendas (1998) and The New Rulers of the World (2002).

 

Play

 

The Last Day (1983)

 

Honours

 

D. Litt, Staffordshire University

D. Phil, Dublin City University

D. Arts, Oxford Brookes University

D. Laws, St.Andrew's University

D. Phil, Kingston University

1995 Edward Wilson Fellow, Deakin University, Melbourne

 

Awards include

 

1966 Descriptive Writer of the Year

1967 Reporter of the Year

1967 Journalist of the Year

1970 International Reporter of the Year

1974 News Reporter of the Year

1977 Campaigning Journalist of the Year

1979 Journalist of the Year

1979-80 UN Media Peace Prize, Australia

1980-81 UN Media Peace Prize, Gold Medal, Australia

1979 TV Times Readers' Award

1990 The George Foster Peabody Award, USA

1991 American Television Academy Award ('Emmy')

1991 British Academy of Film and Television Arts - The Richard Dimbleby Award

1990 Reporters San Frontiers Award, France

1995 International de Television Geneve Award

2001 The Monismanien Prize (Sweden)

2003 The Sophie Prize for Human Rights (Norway)

http://pilger.carlton.com/home/biography