For many children, going to school is as simple as a trip around the block. For others, it means a long and dangerous journey through deserts and war zones. In the volatile Middle East, some students have found happy refuge at Bialik-Rogozin, a public school in the heart of Tel Aviv that welcomes Jews, Christians and Muslims from 48 countries.

Many arrive fleeing violent pasts, and others have limited, if any, prior education. For every child who attends Bialik-Rogozin, the school is like a home. Here, no child is a stranger. This year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, Strangers No More tells the inspiring story of this extraordinary school and the students who struggle to acclimate to life in a new land when it debuts Monday, Dec. 5, exclusively on HBO.

Produced & directed by Karen Goodman & Kirk Simon (HBO’s “Masterclass”), Strangers No More follows three Bialik-Rogozin students over the course of a school year as they try to fit in, and slowly open up to share their stories of hardship and tragedy. Mohammed, a 16-year-old refugee from Darfur, witnessed the killing of his grandmother and father before escaping alone through Egypt to Israel.

Though he’s never been in school before, his sharp mind and tremendous determination enable him to make up for years of missed study. Johannes arrived at Bialik-Rogozin after spending most of his life in refugee camps across the Middle East. As his father struggles to obtain a work visa, 12-year-old Johannes tries to adjust to attending school for the first time.

After a slow start, his teachers realize he is nearly blind in one eye and take him to an eye clinic. With his new glasses, Johannes is reading and writing before long, and helping other newcomers to adjust. Esther and her father fled South Africa with nothing after the murder of her mother. At Bialik-Rogozin, they are welcomed with clothing, food and counsel on how to begin a new life.  Esther’s teachers try to relieve the trauma of this nine-year-old girl, who is still dealing with the loss of her mother.

Strangers No More also spotlights the school’s compassionate and dedicated faculty, including: teacher Smadar Moers, who works closely with Johannes’s family and teaches 21 hours of Hebrew classes a week to new students; elementary principal Nehana Shapira, who helped a disoriented and hungry Esther through her first days at the school; and the school’s principal, Karen Tal, who recently received The Charles Bronfman Prize for her humanitarian work at the school.

As Karen Tal notes, Bialik-Rogozin differs from other schools in that students aren’t just taught the values of human rights and tolerance – they are able to live out those values every day. Upon graduation, Mohammed provides the finest evidence of the school’s ultimate success, declaring his dream to return to Darfur and build a school for the children of the village he once fled.

In addition to their Academy Award for Strangers No More, Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman’s films have garnered four other Oscar nominations, several Emmys and the DuPont-Columbia Award for Independent Programming.

Their documentaries have screened at festivals around the world, including the New York Film Festival, Sundance, New Directors/New Films, London, Berlin and Saint Petersburg. Their other HBO credits include:  “Masterclass” (2010), “Locks of Love:  The Kindest Cut” (2008), “Rehearsing a Dream” (2006), “Kindergarten” (2001), “27th & Prospect:  One Year in the Fight Against Drugs” (1997) and “Chimps: So Like Us” (1989).

Image Courtesy of   http://www.strangersnomoremovie.com/

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As of this morning, the U.S. received official statement from Libya’s prime minister confirming Muammar Gaddafi’s death. Yesterday afternoon, precisely two months after rebel forces drove him from power, Gaddafi was captured in the coastal city of Sirte, his hometown.

A battle for control of Gaddafi’s last strongholds began around 8 a.m. local time, and ended a half-hour later with revolutionaries carrying the body of a man who resembled Gaddafi. At the time, the cell phone photo taken of the scene did not make it clear whether the dictator was still alive or not. The dictator’s remaining supporters attempted to flee Sirte in the confusion, resulting in the deaths of approximately 20 men at the hands of rebel forces.

Updates continue to trickled in, shedding light on some of the confusion that still surrounds Gadddafi’s death. Some sources claim the Libyan dictator of 42 years was captured and injured as he tried to flee a convoy that was attacked by NATO. The Washington Post reports:

“We’ve had no confirmation whether Gaddafi was in there or not,” said a NATO official who spoke to The Post’s Michael Birnbaum on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. Over the past couple weeks in Sirte, the official said, “there was a sense that given the fight they were putting up, which was concerted, that they were protecting something important.” His last words were, “Don’t shoot.”

Oddly enough, Hillary Clinton pledged 11 million dollars in aid just this week on an unannounced trip to Libya. The Obama administration has met with criticism for it’s decision to back the Libyan rebels, although the United States’ financial involvement has been far more limited than in similar conflicts across the Middle East.

Although many hoped to see him put on trial for crimes against humanity, Muammar Gaddafi’s death has still been cause for celebration in Libya today. Crowds surged around the corpse, chanting anti-Gaddafi slogans, and fired weapons into the air. Rebels burned the flag of the dictatorship, then stepped on it. With the old regime ousted, Libyans may finally be free to create a new government. Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov was quoted saying,

“I hope that the end of the former Libyan leader will herald the end of the suffering of the Libyan people and the beginning of a new era in which Libyan citizens are able to live without fear and humiliation in a united and prosperous country.”

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The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters on Saturday that he expects the Palestinian application for full United Nations membership to be seriously considered by the Security Council members. At a speech to the General Assembly on Friday, Abbas pressed for the recognition of an independent Palestinian State alongside the Israeli State.

The Palestinian leader has been expressing his government’s desire to move forward on the matter of independence for some time, to the great irritation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The bid for statehood reflects Abbas’s lack of confidence in the US-sponsored peace talks after 20 years without tangible results, and he is now taking a diplomatic step without the oversight of the Israel-American alliance. Furthermore, the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied land that Palestinians hope to constitute their future state is another strong incentive for Abbas’s request to act now.

In an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, Mahmoud Abbas is quoted for saying that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is the ‘most inflexible Israeli leader he had ever known’. “With Rabin, Peres, Sharon, Olmert, and Livni, negotiations were possible,” Abbas stated according to Haaretz.com

In response to the Palestinian statehood bid, the so-called Mideast Quartet proposed an immediate restart of peace talks. The Quartet, which comprises the US, United Nations, the European Union and Russia, laid out a timeline for peace talks in which a final status agreement would be reached by December 2012, said Businessweek.com.

But the Palestinians are unlikely to accept the conditions of the proposal because it’s based on negotiations without specifying preconditions. “The Palestinians cannot negotiate any proposal that is not based on 1967 borders and does not ensure a settlement freeze in the West Bank,” said Mahmoud Abbas.

However, the president did not reject the idea of renewed direct negotiations but said he would need to consult his government in Ramallah.

In recent years, the Palestinian people have received growing sympathy from the world community as their objection to the occupation by Israel has moved from terrorist campaigns to nonviolent resistance. Especially in the West Bank has civil demonstrations secured the world’s focus on the plight of Palestinians as opposed to the negative imagery of suicide bombers.

Foreign governments and powerful NGOs have been monumental in the organization of for example “the ‘Nakba’ and ‘Naksa’ day border marches, the weekly Bil’in and Na’lin security fence protests, and, perhaps the most prominent example, the Gaza Flotilla movement,” wrote Daniel Nisman, an Argov Fellow for leadership and Diplomacy at the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel for The Jerusalem Post.

This development has placed the Israeli government in a tough spot. Recently they were criticized by the UN for using ‘excessive and unreasonable’ violence during the 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla and more importantly, with the rise of non-violent movements in the West Bank, the Israeli argument against Palestinian statehood loses credibility.

Speaking of which, the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman warned that the Palestinian application would “bring us to an altogether new situation and this would have repercussions, severe repercussions,” according to Businessweek.com. Who the recipient of these repercussions will be was unclear.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/

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