Starting last night my school is now hosting the 9th Annual Human Rights Festival at the University of San Francisco, which, btw, will be continuing all weekend and is free and open to the public. It will feature a total of 23 films from all around the world, a variety ranging from full length documentaries with chunk-change budgets to 5 minute student films. Out of about 23 films about worldwide injustice and social activism, 3 of them are about the violation of Palestinian human rights. I suck at math but it looks to me like that’s 13-ish% of all the films being shown at the film festival. Only 9 of the festival’s films have Q&A discussions afterwards, and of those 9, discussions 2 of them are for the films Budrus and Occupation Has No Future: Militarism + Resistance in Israel/Palestine. Does that mean 22% of all film discussions at the festival, about injustice committed across the entire globe, will be about violations of Palestinian human rights? It’s hard to imagine that the Holy Land itself is only about the size of New Jersey.
Such a slender sliver of a place.
Does the Holy Land’s unique role in the history of man kind justify the world’s monomaniac obsession with it?
Among Jews I feel comfortable, at times even joyful, to delve into our fascination with Israel. It’s because of this shared love that I feel comfortable admitting that some Israelis, these people that I’ve been told from birth are my absent companions in the world, like fairies or angeles, have committed and are committing travesties against other human beings in that same place that I am told is sacred.
When I lived in Israel it was difficult for me to swallow the less than sweet truths about it, to see that it was not an other-worldly toy store with only people of biblical proportions. I also met thieves and stoners and liars and racists and radicals and people that laughed loudly at unfunny jokes. When I traveled in Palestine, in East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, and at refugee camps along the wall, it was hard not to demand that someone, anyone, stand and claim responsibility right then for the shock and offense that I now had no more shelf space to fit.
So now when Israel becomes the absent third party in my relationships with Israelis, with Jews, and even with myself, when it takes on a life of its own and caring for it starts to sound like the tangible responsibility of the household, right under taking out the trash,
it feels like an expression of love to look Israel’s cruelest sins in the face and denounce them among ourselves. True love means knowing the good, the bad, and the fugly, and still loving enough to hope and push for change.
But when I hear strangers, gentiles, and not even Palestinians express themselves about Israel, and I hear them call my friends murders and the apartments that I rented occupied territory, a war zone, it gives me the shivers.
Media activist Martha Wallner will be representing Jewish Voice for Peace in the post-Budrus screening Q&A. But that doesn’t ease my anxiety for some reason.
There are no films by or about Jews that I could see from the film descriptions. Having a representative from a Jewish organization present in the room doesn’t insulate me against the discomfort of sitting in a room full of strangers and hearing them accuse people that I know and live with of deliberately and violently dehumanizing others. It almost makes me want to tip toe up to Mary Wallner and whisper: “pssttt, its not safe to talk about the unsightly truths here. Talk about the effect and not about its cause. People may walk away with an anti-Semitic prejudice, thinking that Israelis are violent, that Jews are the only, and not just one of the many, perpetrators of violence in the Holy Land. We’re so small and scattered, putting a spotlight on Jews gone bad can be dangerous for all of us.”
Of course it’s not a bad thing to talk about, watch films about, and generally be concerned about the human rights of all people, including all the peoples in the widely disputed Holy Land.
But is there such a thing as too much attention?
I honestly don’t know if the obsessive focus on Israel and Palestine by human rights activists will cause the kind of productive discomfort that leads to innovation and reconciliation, or if it just sensationalizes our variety of relationships with the land and chops them up to fit on a screen for mass consumption.
I’m not sure yet if I’m ready to surrender ‘the situation’ to the world’s gentiles and trust them to resolve the headlines that pain me. Western powers didn’t do such a great job of divvying up homelands the last time around.
But I also don’t think that we, Jewish college students, have any time left to make up our minds. Israel is already the bread and butter of political debates from blogs and classrooms to newspapers and film festivals. And at least for myself, I must either learn how to criticize what I love in front of those that don’t, or resign myself to silence and let the only voices in the debate come from people that never held such high hopes and affection for Israel or her occupants, whether they are occupied or occupying.
