Paradise Now is a Palestinian film about two young men on their way to suicide. The quality of the story, direction, and acting has won it serious international review. The film gives a human face to terrorists, and explains the combination of personal distress and other motives for the act. It also portrays an attractive woman who argues against the futility of the action. It will not help Palestine, and it will not provide a personal reward in Paradise.
There are some smooth operators who manage the men on their way to death: "you will be met immediately by two angels, and we will take care of your family." There are Israeli Jews who drive the killers to their target and fit an anti-Semitic stereotype ("They will not get their money until they have done their job."
The budget for the film came from Europe. Perhaps it was not sufficient. The director should have hired at least one more actor. The opening scene portrays the pretty woman as she encounters an ugly Israeli soldier at a check point. He neither smiles nor speaks. After he rummages through her personal goods he indicates she may pass by moving his head in the direction of the gate. Later in the film we see why he did not speak. Hebrew is not his language. The same actor plays one of the guards who struts about with the man who manages the suicide operation.
The morning after we saw the film I received a letter from Hebron. Khalid Amayreh is on my list and I am on his. He was writing about Holocaust Memorial Day. He is not a Holocaust denier or minimizer. "Nobody does or should question the enormity of the holocaust. . ."
His view of Holocaust Memorial Day is something else:
". . . the usual fanfare of sanctimonious rituals, never-again speeches and glorification of Zionism. . . .The solemn but also highly propagandistic occasion is manipulated to the fullest by Zionist leaders in order to justify the crime against humanity, otherwise known as the state of Israel. This year, too, Zionist leaders preyed on the memories of holocaust victims by seeking to blackmail the collective conscience of the world into recognizing the "uniqueness of Jewish pain" " as if non-Jews were children of a lesser God and their pain was unimportant."
So far, not too bad. I can view those sentiments as an expression of Palestinian pain. But then Israel becomes another Holocaust perpetrator.
"Today, in the name of the holocaust, Israel wants the world to give her a carte blanch to commit another holocaust against the helpless and virtually completely unprotected Palestinians.
In the name of the holocaust and the "never-again mantra," Israel wants the world to allow it to commit every conceivable crime and every abominable violation of human rights in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, from murdering school children on their way to school "for security reasons" to shooting pregnant women on their way to hospital (also for security reasons) to dumping tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians into modern-day concentration camps deep in the Negev desert."
At this point I would paraphrase the woman in Paradise Now. This action (accusing Israel of conducting a Holocaust) is so extreme as to become part of Palestinian collective suicide. It infuriates Jews by hurling our national tragedy against us. It cannot help Palestinians among non-Jews who recognize the difference between the defensive actions of Israelis against Palestinian violence, beset to be sure by innocent victims, and the systematic murder of people who did not threaten violence.
The same week brought news that Azmi Beshara had submitted a letter of resignation from the Knesset to the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, and that he is accused of aiding the enemy during the war in Lebanon. We are a long way from an arrest, indictment, and trial. Beshara says that he will not return to Israel in the near future, and extradition is unlikely. However, the accusations are credible on the basis of much that we have seen and heard.
From Israeli Arabs there is both a defense of Beshara (he is persecuted for speaking and acting as an Arab), and anger against him for adding to the friction between Jews and Arabs. The ambivalence is part of the Israeli Arab condition. Beshara is an articulate spokesman of Arab and Palestinian demands, but is so extreme as to make it difficult for Arab politicians or citizens who want to get on with their lives and improve their opportunities.
We have seen ambivalence on other occasions. During the war in Lebanon, when Arab communities suffered damage and death from Hezbollah rockets, the residents expressed anger against the Lebanese for hurting them, and the Israelis for not protecting them. Some of them also cheered when rockets fell on Jewish communities.
It is not for an Israeli Jew to tell his neighbors how to do their public relations and their politics. Anything we say is likely to be tainted and discarded. Someone else must tell them that there must be a better way, but will anyone hear such a Gentile amidst many others who are telling them, "Right on?"