Well, I did have to watch it. After all, one cannot form a position on an issue (film related or otherwise) without confronting it face to face. I had to see whether Hanny Abu Assad made a film that shows the other side of the conflict or a film that gives a "stamp of approval" to suicide bombings I have reached my conclusion.
Said (pronounced:Sa-id)and Khaled are frustrated, hateful, desperate mechanics (no quotation marks in sight) that are recruited to a massive suicide mission in retaliation for the assassination of a terrorist. Of course, neither Said Nor Khaled see him as a terrorist, but as a hero who sacrificed his life against the Zionist Occupation, their immediate consent shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
Khaled, knowing that his hours are numbered (the suicide bombing in question, takes place the very next day in Tel-Aviv), needs to get some sort of validation to his decision, and who is better to provide with such a validation than Suha, the graceful, movie lover and daughter of Abu Azam, a famous Shahid.
Khaled is about to find out that Suha prefers her father to be alive and well than dead and idolized and Khaled soon looks for another source that will help him accept the decision, surely enough there is one source, the immutable rationalization. The Israelis.
According to the film, it's all the Israelis fault, Palestinians believe that settlers poison their water (fanatics believed in that idea as early as 1350, the days of the bubonic plague), the Rivoli theater in Nablus is burned down by the Palestinians because the Israelis significantly reduced the number of Palestininians with permits to work in Israel itself. The list goes on and on.
This notion is not just an anecdote. When there is an archenemy, a Nemesis that is regarded as responsible for all wrong doing, than all arguments are belittled against it. The clearest, plain view arguments of all are, why play into the Israelis hands? Why send Terrorist so the Israelis will have to build fences to stop them. Why send bombers on innocent civilians if those bombings themselves are the ones that diminished the number of Palestinians who are allowed to work in Israeli territories? The truth is that these arguments, regardless whether you believe them or not, are null and void when everything (and I do mean everything) is to blame by the Israelis. Even the collaborators that are tortured and killed by Palestinian Terrorist groups as well as by army units (called Muhabarat) should point their fingers towards the Israeli end for using their fragile state of mind.
The most disturbing ingredients in this film are the missing ones. At no point during the film, does anyone even ponder of the repercussions of killing Israeli people in a coffee shop, a Bus or a crowded center. This is where this blind fueled rage of Khaled and his friend and suicide mission colleague are the embodiment of, and they show, quite plainly, how this loathing (whether justified or not) easily makes them believe that the misery of the other side is preferable to peace of mind to their own.
Hatred, it seems, is too hard to live with and too easy to die for.
. When Said recites his statement before his departure, he says that Israel refused to a two-state solution despite this solution to be unfair to the Palestinians. This argument is not only bluntly false but is also non-genuine. The REAL Bombers never lamented over the Israeli reluctance to accept the solution, nor they contended that they are fighting because they exhausted any mean of peaceful solutions. The Bombers always proclaimed in those farewell recordings that Israel is denied of the right to exist and the Zionist enemy must be fought until it is demolished.
As I said, it doesn't matter to Said or Khaled, their lives are doomed by, according to them, the "Occupation" (although neither the west bank nor Gaza were independent territories before the 67 war- hence the quotation marks) and their will to kill themselves for what they sincerely believe to be a worthy cause (Earning eternity in paradise and killing some Jews while they're at it) is stronger than any debate, they will continue to Tel Aviv, aided by a Jewish driver (the director's way of saying "Hell, even the Jews don't care about the loss of lives of their people, why should we care?") and without revealing too much, I'll note the audience might feel feel indifferent to any Israeli lives lost. At least the audience who don't know anyone that his life were shattered to pieces by one of those atrocious bombings, the audience that never walked the streets, dreading which one of the by passers will end their lives. Audience abroad.
That is the moral of the film I cannot accept. The Israeli Arab conflict is so embedded in this region that no discussion will solve it, but rationalizing the death of innocent civilians is not heroic, candid nor compelling. When the recruiter says that the attack is an attempt to break free of the jungle law of "the strong survives" that reduces them to animals, one cannot help but think that killing innocent people (even if they do wear uniforms, not that children casualties ever deterred bombers, anyway) downgrades the bombers and those who sent them lower than any animal could ever go.
Well, I assume that my opinion of this film is pretty clear. I feel infuriated by this film for its intention to make the loss of Israeli lives a marginal sacrifice for a worthy cause.
Do I have to be an Israeli to think that human life is the worthiest cause of them all?
1 out of 10 in my filmOmeter
Said (pronounced:Sa-id)and Khaled are frustrated, hateful, desperate mechanics (no quotation marks in sight) that are recruited to a massive suicide mission in retaliation for the assassination of a terrorist. Of course, neither Said Nor Khaled see him as a terrorist, but as a hero who sacrificed his life against the Zionist Occupation, their immediate consent shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
Khaled, knowing that his hours are numbered (the suicide bombing in question, takes place the very next day in Tel-Aviv), needs to get some sort of validation to his decision, and who is better to provide with such a validation than Suha, the graceful, movie lover and daughter of Abu Azam, a famous Shahid.
Khaled is about to find out that Suha prefers her father to be alive and well than dead and idolized and Khaled soon looks for another source that will help him accept the decision, surely enough there is one source, the immutable rationalization. The Israelis.
According to the film, it's all the Israelis fault, Palestinians believe that settlers poison their water (fanatics believed in that idea as early as 1350, the days of the bubonic plague), the Rivoli theater in Nablus is burned down by the Palestinians because the Israelis significantly reduced the number of Palestininians with permits to work in Israel itself. The list goes on and on.
This notion is not just an anecdote. When there is an archenemy, a Nemesis that is regarded as responsible for all wrong doing, than all arguments are belittled against it. The clearest, plain view arguments of all are, why play into the Israelis hands? Why send Terrorist so the Israelis will have to build fences to stop them. Why send bombers on innocent civilians if those bombings themselves are the ones that diminished the number of Palestinians who are allowed to work in Israeli territories? The truth is that these arguments, regardless whether you believe them or not, are null and void when everything (and I do mean everything) is to blame by the Israelis. Even the collaborators that are tortured and killed by Palestinian Terrorist groups as well as by army units (called Muhabarat) should point their fingers towards the Israeli end for using their fragile state of mind.
The most disturbing ingredients in this film are the missing ones. At no point during the film, does anyone even ponder of the repercussions of killing Israeli people in a coffee shop, a Bus or a crowded center. This is where this blind fueled rage of Khaled and his friend and suicide mission colleague are the embodiment of, and they show, quite plainly, how this loathing (whether justified or not) easily makes them believe that the misery of the other side is preferable to peace of mind to their own.
Hatred, it seems, is too hard to live with and too easy to die for.
. When Said recites his statement before his departure, he says that Israel refused to a two-state solution despite this solution to be unfair to the Palestinians. This argument is not only bluntly false but is also non-genuine. The REAL Bombers never lamented over the Israeli reluctance to accept the solution, nor they contended that they are fighting because they exhausted any mean of peaceful solutions. The Bombers always proclaimed in those farewell recordings that Israel is denied of the right to exist and the Zionist enemy must be fought until it is demolished.
As I said, it doesn't matter to Said or Khaled, their lives are doomed by, according to them, the "Occupation" (although neither the west bank nor Gaza were independent territories before the 67 war- hence the quotation marks) and their will to kill themselves for what they sincerely believe to be a worthy cause (Earning eternity in paradise and killing some Jews while they're at it) is stronger than any debate, they will continue to Tel Aviv, aided by a Jewish driver (the director's way of saying "Hell, even the Jews don't care about the loss of lives of their people, why should we care?") and without revealing too much, I'll note the audience might feel feel indifferent to any Israeli lives lost. At least the audience who don't know anyone that his life were shattered to pieces by one of those atrocious bombings, the audience that never walked the streets, dreading which one of the by passers will end their lives. Audience abroad.
That is the moral of the film I cannot accept. The Israeli Arab conflict is so embedded in this region that no discussion will solve it, but rationalizing the death of innocent civilians is not heroic, candid nor compelling. When the recruiter says that the attack is an attempt to break free of the jungle law of "the strong survives" that reduces them to animals, one cannot help but think that killing innocent people (even if they do wear uniforms, not that children casualties ever deterred bombers, anyway) downgrades the bombers and those who sent them lower than any animal could ever go.
Well, I assume that my opinion of this film is pretty clear. I feel infuriated by this film for its intention to make the loss of Israeli lives a marginal sacrifice for a worthy cause.
Do I have to be an Israeli to think that human life is the worthiest cause of them all?
1 out of 10 in my filmOmeter