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Written by Mark Appleton, Nova Scotia All I can think is, if we are not for ourselves, who will be, and if not now, when? I’ve had a sad evening, and it’s getting sadder, as I listen to Arutz Sheva Israeli news over the Internet. Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem is closed once more to Jewish worshippers, and anti-Israel violence is flaring again round the country. Closer to home, here in Canada, I just returned from a ceremony commemorating the Night of the Burned Synagogues (jovially called Kristallnacht by those lovable Nazis) in Halifax, followed by my viewing of a Canadian made and funded film about “Palestinian refugees, their desire to return to their homes, and the Israelis who live there now” as the posters gaily advertised. After hearing only this morning what the film would depict, my friend Naomi Honey and her brother Mike made hundreds of handouts with some “additional information about the subject of the film,” as we told the students entering the theatre, in vain hopes that their having some real facts in their hands regarding the longstanding Israeli-Arab conflict would help balance the propaganda. Part of my sadness is that despite our handing out nearly a hundred flyers at the Kristallnacht ceremony asking members of the Halifax Jewish community to attend the viewing of this film, a total of only 6 Jews including us showed up at the well-filled Theatre B in the Tupper Building at Dalhousie University. This is out of over 1500 Jews in the Halifax, Nova Scotia, area, and a sharp contrast to the huge turnout of Arabs who packed the large room. I got even sadder when I realized our impression of the slant of the film had been optimistic. Israel bashing at its best was not only taking place on film, but was being eagerly lapped up as “the real truth” by the sincere Canadian students who were as shocked as I was at the conditions the poor Arab refugees had been living in for the past 52 years, but did not question why their kinfolk had not helped them resettle as the Israelis helped the Jewish refugees start new lives. There was not one single mention or interview with any Israeli who was not from a Western country or whose parents were not Holocaust survivors. The impression of the Jews as European interlopers was pressed forward so aggressively, that if didn’t know better, I would think there had never been virtually the exact same numbers of Jewish refugees from Arab countries as Arab refugees from Israel. I was flat out told by one of the many articulate Arabs who attended the event that I was wrong to imagine there had been any Jews forced from their homes in Arab countries at all, while 356 Arab villages had been destroyed by the “Jewish Troops” in 1948, without provocation, while the population was still inhabiting them, and their refugee camps had then been bombed by Israeli planes. I could not convince him that Israel did not even HAVE an air force in 1948…. I could only admire the talent of the young filmmaker, Canadian David Ridgen, who opened the viewing with a masterful introduction, and followed the skillfully made film with a question and answer period that smoothly continued the agenda that the film so successfully promoted. I felt like I was attending a fiction film, with the events taking place in some un-named part of the world I had never heard of, rather than a documentary funded by the Canadian government’s prestigious Canadian Film Board! The ubiquitous Hanan Ashwari, an avuncular philosopher of a taxi driver, and other passionate, articulate, nationalistic Arabs in exile were interviewed, tugging at the heartstrings with their heartfelt longings for “Palestine,” portrayed as a beautiful, mystical, unreachable country, a paradise on earth, stolen from them at gunpoint by the violent, alien Jews, who, kicked out of Europe by the Nazis, stole innocent Palestinian ancestral lands. “I am sorry for the Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis. I am sorry for any people who are persecuted, but it has nothing to do with us. Why should they steal our land?” was one interview subject’s take on the matter. No mention of Arafat’s Uncle Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem at the time, and a pal of Hitler, who worked diligently to pave the way for a solution to the “Jewish Problem in Palestine” and was only thwarted by a miracle which prevented the German Army by merely a few days from entering Jerusalem, no doubt to Arab cheers. No mention of the neglect the country enjoyed under Arab rule, the open sewers and unpaved roads, the high rate of malaria and of infant mortality, the lack of hospitals until Hadassah attempted to bring medicine to Jew and Arab alike, the garbage dump by the Western Wall, the refusal of Arabs to allow Jews to enter their holy sites. No mention of Jewish presence in the land for millennia preceding the birth of Islam or mention of Arab rioting and atrocities against Jews in Palestine in 1929, and in every Arab country that Jews lived in. No mention of displaced Middle Eastern Jews, only ridicule of the Israeli claim that Arabs from outside of Palestine joined the fight against the Jews in 1948. This statement was by an aged Palmach man, the only Jew interviewed in the entire film who expressed any certainty that Jews had acted ethically at all during the 48 war, and had begged the local Arabs to remain, and not to throw their lot in with outside forces nor to flee, he was followed seconds later by one of Arafat’s Jerusalem spokesman, a handsome young well spoken man, who stated the old Palmach man was either lying or forgetful, and claimed instead that it had been strictly a war of ethnic cleansing against the native Arab population, largely unarmed. The balance of the interviewees conformed to the tradition of evenhanded journalists interviewing Arabs who feel the Jews don’t belong in “Palestine” and Jews who believe the same thing. Not a single religious or Zionistic Jew, other than the man above was interviewed , and though the closing credits stated that “Many Israelis and Settlers refused to be interviewed. A list is available from the director upon request," my request for a list was brushed aside. He did admit, after being pressed, that he HAD heard back from David Wilder, the outspoken Yesha spokesman, but no explanation was given as to why he did not interview him. Too bad, as when I heard David speak some time ago, at the museum in Hebron for the 1929 massacre by Arabs who were NOT living under Jewish government at the time, he acquitted himself well enough that he would have turned the tide of misinformation in the film. Perhaps the director feared some truth would spoil the script. Instead, the Jews included the always ready to pontificate Shimon Peres, the misguided Noam Chomsky, a left wing Brooklyn professor with a pronounced New York accent, and a vacuous young art student with her umminng and uhhing friends who could barely live with the guilt of living on ancestral Arab land, all of them of European backgrounds. None but Peres would look the camera in the eye, as opposed to the Arabs who were all filmed looking straight at the camera, nobly, as they discussed the theft of their Palestine by the perfidious Jews. The most touching scenes were of the refugee camps in Lebanon, hovels that approached the depths of the worst shantytowns in South America or Africa. No one seemed to wonder why these tin and concrete dumps looked so much like the archival pictures in the film of Arab refugee tent cities of 1948. It would be like Moroccan Jews had been kept in their Mabarot tent cities since 1950, with the only improvement to their lot being the addition of more solid junk to reinforce their dwellings, supported by UNRWA fund for 53 years, an unthinkable idea. The fact that these descendents of the Arab refugees of 1948 were being kept in camps by Arabs to remain as a festering wound on the consciousness of the world was not brought up in the film, nor by the rapt audience during the discussion period afterwards. No, an enemy was needed, and the Israelis fit the bill. Why, as the director stated, even brave Israelis,like the "new historian” Benny Morris, interviewed extensively, were admitting that the Jews were responsible, so how could it be denied? For me, the most outrageous thing was the map of the Middle East that flashed on the screen each time another refugee was interviewed, showing where his stolen home had been. It showed Israel as the biggest country in the Middle East, extending nearly to Cairo, and dwarfing everything else. During the discussion period, a map was projected purported to indicate what a raw deal Oslo had been for the Arabs, with Palestinian Territory only being 24 percent of Israel. “A series of Bantustans” said the director, indicating that anything less than 100 % of Israel being “returned to the rightful owners” was highway robbery….. All in all a most depressing evening, leaving me astounded at Jewish apathy, impressed by Arab unity and public relations, and awed by the power of a competent if misguided expert filmmaker to win friends and influence people to the wrong cause. All I can think is, if we are not for ourselves, who will be, and if not now, when? Mark Appleton Nova Scotia, Canada November 9, 2000 |
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