Last Thursday I went to what was the most interesting talk I’ve heard in a long time.

Paul Martin is a British journalist who has the “honor” of being the first (and still only) foreign journalist ever arrested by Hamas.

He narrated his story:

He had been working on a documentary about Mohammed Abu Muaileq, a Palestinian man who used to be part of the Abu Rish Brigades and would launch rockets against Israeli civilian populations, and later changed his mind about these tactics after befriending an Israeli over the Internet.

Abu Muaileq was accused of collaborating with Israel (death sentence) and asked Martin to testify. Martin flew to Gaza and was arrested on the spot. Obviously he made it out, but this was all but uncertain to him at the time.

He tried to show footage of his in-work documentary but there were several techinalc glitches (the ancient Windows XP laptop playing the clips ran out of battery). In spite of this, the talk was fascinating. I’m really looking forward to seeing a full documentary or reading a book once it is finished.