Movies & Television-Israel News - Haaretz Israeli News source

TV show ’Fauda’ offers angle that Israelis usually prefer not to see - The Israeli action-drama series was created by Israelis who know what is really going on. As such, it does not try to present a ’balanced view’ of the conflict with the Palestinians.
By Michael Handelzalts | May 15, 2015 | | Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/life/movies-television/.premium-1.656438

Each of the 12 episodes of “Fauda” (an Israeli action-drama series on the Israeli-Palestinian rift that takes place in the very here-and-now, and which just finished its run on Yes Action) opens with a disclaimer: that it is “a work of fiction, and not based on facts.” This in itself sort of prods the viewer to disbelieve it and seek grains of truth in the soil of the on-screen action.

“Fauda” means, literally, “chaos” in Arabic. It was a general term for what was going on in the occupied Palestinian territories (a.k.a Palestine, the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, Greater Israel or The Land of Our Forefathers) before 1987, when it became an intifada (of which we have had opus 1 and 2, and are gearing up for 3, God forbid). More specifically, it is the code word of alert in a particular Israeli undercover unit operating in the territories, meaning that their cover has been blown and they must “act” or “abort” and flee immediately. In both instances it means, “hell has just broken loose.”

It has been common knowledge, at least since the mid-1990s, that in order to maintain its control over the Palestinian territories, the IDF must resort to a sort of overtly black op tactic. Volunteers who served in elite fighting units and are willing and ready to assume an Arab guise – false biography, alias, language, manners, looks – infiltrate into the fabric of life on the West Bank with the aim of providing firsthand intelligence and act with lethal efficiency if need be.

To clarify – though any clarification is a sort of obfuscation: Such units are anything but covert, as their existence is openly confirmed; and yet they 
certainly fall under the category of “black op” stuff by the very nature of their activities.

That is the fertile ground that spawned the 12 episodes of the first season of “Fauda” and you can still – and it is certainly worthwhile – binge-watch it on Yes VOD. A second season is in the planning stages, and talks are underway for the series to be broadcast as is – not as a remake – both in the U.S. and Europe.

Don’t feel deterred from watching it for fear you may not be able to follow the Hebrew. Most of it is in Arabic anyway (there are Hebrew subtitles), as more than half the characters are Palestinian and settings are in the Palestinian territories. That was, by the way, one of the series’ distinctions in Israeli TV viewing: For the first time the Israeli mainstream viewer was presented, on prime time TV, with a not-too-distorted mirror of his or her reality in a language that has – 
regretfully – a mainly menacing sound to many Israeli ears.

The series is the brainchild of Lior Raz (writing and acting as the main character) and Avi Issacharoff (at one time a Haaretz reporter on Palestinian matters). Both have considerable mileage in double-and-triple lives on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide – Raz as a member of one of those undercover units, and Issacharoff who has been covering this very confusing reality on a day-to-day basis. The expressed aim was to present the everyday reality that most Israelis prefer not to see up close, and instead of simplifying it in black and white, to show that it is made up of more than 50 shades of all-too-human gray that can explode at any moment into the most crimson red.

Tangled story

It is basically the story of a showdown in the making (and remaking). The team leader of an undercover crypto-
Palestinian unit (Doron Kavillio, played by Raz) has retired after assassinating a Hamas arch-villain, Abu Ahmed, a.k.a. “The Panther,” and is leading an uneasy family life producing wine. When it transpires that The Panther is very much alive and planning to unleash another wave of atrocities on the Israelis, Doron succumbs to the temptation to enlist again and execute the “second killing” of his now personal nemesis. What was, at least theoretically, a national-security affair in which there are good and bad guys, with “our” side being “good” and the “other” (i.e. Palestinian) being “bad,” becomes a tangled story of conflicted 
individuals who are all, in their own way, very human, meaning deeply flawed.

There are Doron’s team members – a family of men, all-for-one and one-for-all, with possible male rivalry issues – and their assorted nearest and dearest, women and children included and extracting all expected emotional value. There is one woman, as befits any action series; she is Nurit, played by Rona-Lee Shimon. There are the Palestinians with their warring political factions and family entanglements, which are more convoluted due to characters living in constant hiding and fear. Waves of personal and political confusion flow constantly from one side to another, and the viewer finds himself constantly tempted to identify with the other side of the conflict from the one he or she lives in.

The series was created by Israelis who know what is really going on. As such it takes the Israeli side for granted and does not try to present a “balanced view” of the conflict. It assumes – rightly in my mind – that for Israeli viewers, the dice is loaded for the home (Israeli) team. As a result, it sometimes looks as though the Palestinian side of the story is presented with an extra dose of understanding and compassion. If indeed this is so, it is a belated and much needed redress: It is high time for Israelis to accept that there are human beings on the other side as well.

The series was shot in Israel in Hebrew and Arabic, with the cast and crew being Israeli and Palestinian, during the days of the war in Gaza last summer. The production teams for the “Tyrant” and “Dig” series – which also take place in the Middle East – fled. But the “Fauda” team remained on location in Kafr Qasem, as if to prove that while it claims to be “fiction,” it is an extremely gripping and terribly depressing story based on true and painful facts – very well made and brilliantly acted. And hell keeps breaking loose around us as we watch.

Israeli artist Shira Geffen takes the heat for criticizing the war in Gaza - Movies & Television - Israel News | Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/life/movies-television/.premium-1.653671

In the last few months writer and filmmaker Shira Geffen found herself in the eye of two media storms sparked by the explosive friction between artists who dare to express an opinion about their surrounding reality — and that painful, forlorn reality, which displays ever decreasing tolerance of criticism.

It first happened last summer during Operation Protective Edge at the Jerusalem Film Festival, when Geffen asked the audience at a screening of her film to stand for a minute of silence in memory of four Palestinian children killed that day by Israel Defense Forces fire. The second time was a few weeks ago when her father, the songwriter Yehonatan Geffen, was assaulted at home for comments he made about the left’s less of the election.

In an interview two weeks after the incident, Shira Geffen demonstrated steadfastness and determination by not retracting previous statements. Instead of panicking over the venomous criticism directed at her, she explains her position. Instead of caving into pressure she insists she will keep expressing her views the way she was taught to do. Instead of apologizing for politics penetrating her work, she expresses hope it will engender change.

Amid the storms, Gefen’s creative projects still remain at the core, and as usual she skips with surprising ease between different, varied fields. Last December her sixth children’s book, “Sea of Tears,” was published. She is now promoting her second film, “Self Made,” while writing her first television drama series with her partner writer Etgar Keret. She is also busy writing her next feature film, “Accompanying Parent,” about a girl’s coming of age. Her other interests — theater, dance, acting and songwriting — have to patiently wait their turn. Even Geffen has her limits.

Being multidisciplinary does not make her work shallower, Geffen says. She certainly isn’t sorry her multiplicity of tasks prevents her from specializing in one profession.

“I’m not a linear person at all. I’m all about breadth, being associative,” she says. “That’s how I write and think. That’s how I think I develop.”

Geffen, born in 1971, never studied film, but this fact didn’t stop “Jellyfish” — the film based on her script and co–directed with Keret (who also has no film education) — from debuting at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It even won the Camera d’Or, the prize for best first feature film. Seven years later, when she finished the first film she had written and directed on her own, she was invited back to the prestigious French film festival. The critics praised “Self Made,” and the film made the long festival circuit around the globe. Along the way, Geffen won AFI’s New Auteurs Critics’ Award and picked up two awards at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

The heroine of “Self Made,” which will debut next weekend (translated into English) in Israel, is Michal (Sarah Adler), a successful Jerusalem artist. One morning, just before going abroad for an important event, her bed breaks. She hits her head and loses her memory. One army roadblock away lives Nadine (Samira Saraya), a young Palestinian woman whose internal reality is also a bit shaken. By coincidence, the two women exchange identities at the roadblock. Nadine is sent off to live the life of the Jerusalem artist, and Michal is sent to live Nadine’s life in her Palestinian village.

Shopping instead of exploding

Geffen conceived the film’s original idea a decade ago, when she read a Haaretz interview with Arin Ahmad, a Bethlehem student whose fiance was killed by soldiers.

“They contacted her when she was in pain and sadness, and recruited her for a suicide operation, to be a shahida ("women martyrs"). They dressed her as an Israeli woman, put an explosive belt on her and sent her to the Rishon Lezion pedestrian mall,” recalls Geffen. In the interview she said she reached the mall, saw people shopping, and what she wanted to do was go into the stores and shop. That moment aroused in me the question when and where does the will to live awaken? Suddenly, I imagined the continuation. What would have happened if she had entered the stores and because of the explosive belt looked like a pregnant woman, and would start trying on maternity dresses and buying things for the expected baby. My imagination suddenly went there. In reality, Arin Ahmad suddenly had regrets and decided not to blow herself up, but this moment basically drove me to write the script.”

Geffen consequently researched the subject of shahidas. She visited Ramallah six years ago to see the home of the first female suicide bomber, Wafa Idris.

“I was scared. It was my first time in Ramallah, and before I entered her home, I was really afraid of what I would say, how I would speak with her mother. I had a lot of fears,” she says. “And then, when I went in, I saw an elderly, tired woman, and the first thing she did when she saw me was hug me. I saw behind her a huge poster of her dead daughter, and during this hug I suddenly felt her daughter, the one she didn’t have. It was all mixed in my head. I was suddenly her daughter, who wanted to kill me, and this confusion — the understanding that all is one, and suffering is suffering, and that a woman who loses her daughter is a woman who loses her daughter no matter where, and that I can be anyone’s daughter — is basically one of the things that brought me to writing the script.”

Geffen recalls that she then said to herself that if she chose to live in this complex, volatile place, she had to say something about it, so she decided that would be the next thing she’d do.

Neither shock nor dismay

Last summer, “Self Made” was screened in Jerusalem’s International Film Festival just as Operation Protective Edge was beginning. The directors whose films were competing in the Israeli festival got together and decided to use this stage to protest the war. They convened a press conference and called on the government to agree to a ceasefire. They protested the tendency of the local press not to investigate what was transpiring in Gaza and read the names of 30 Palestinian children killed in IDF bombings there.

Culture Minister Limor Livnat called the protest a “disgrace” on her Facebook page, but Geffen and her colleagues kept protesting throughout the festival. Geffen took the most flak after calling for a moment of silence. Some in the audience jeered her. Some left the hall in protest. Social media went wild. The curses and invectives spread across the Internet, and the news broadcasts and newspapers reported it widely.

Looking back, Geffen explains that she had read the headline about the children’s deaths that morning and was filled with pain and sorrow. She felt she couldn’t remain quiet.

“I felt the need to present the names of the children, who in another moment would be forgotten. So I did what I did. I didn’t think at that moment about how it would reverberate, and I was surprised to discover how much rage people have,” she recalls. “When I mentioned the minute of silence, a minute when people are used to standing and remembering the soldiers, it was suddenly perceived as treason. But for me it was instinctive, and I’m not sorry about it. I am not sorry that I am humane. I think I acted from a place of connectedness, and all the harsh criticism about me was very sad and also very scary.”

The threats she endured for expressing her opinion are nothing new to the Geffen family. Eight months later, a man showed up at her father’s front door, and attacked and beat him, calling him a murderer and traitor, a few days after comments he made at a concern. The elder Geffen had said that Election Day, March 17, would be declared “the peace camp’s Nakba Day,” referring to what Palestinians call their catastrophe, the day Israel was established. Gefen also called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “racist,” and charged that Netanyahu’s regime was based on “scaring the people.”

Ynet wrote the Geffen family was in shock and dismay [over the election results], but Shira Geffen says the family was neither in shock nor dismay.

“All these years, which have encouraged polarization, have led to this. All the walls and barriers between the Palestinians and us, and among us, this racism, what Netanyahu said (on Election Day) about Arab droves — these things don’t come out of nowhere,” she says, referring to the prime minister’s warning that the Arabs are “coming out to vote in droves.”

“My father said it most precisely: It’s not a matter of right and left. There is no more right and left. There’s humanism and fascism. And in this place they’ve already forgotten what it is to be humanistic, what it is to be a human being,” she says. “My father was attacked because he spoke against the [last] war and the next war. And people, like Michal Kayam, the character from my film, have a very short memory. Repressing wars is something this place is expert at. No one here talks anymore about Protective Edge and the people who died and the soldiers who died, except for Michal Kasten Keidar (widow of Lt. Col. Dolev Keidar, who fell in the operation), who broke the automatic circle of mourning and expressed pain, and even then they came down hard on her,” she says referring to the widow who spoke out against the Gaza war in a recent interview in Haaretz. "Why was my father attacked? Because he spoke about this taboo, about the war that was and the children who will die in the next superfluous war.”

#Shira-Geffen

Israel’s official religion is not Judaism; it’s the Holocaust - Movies & Television - Israel News | Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/life/movies-television/.premium-1.641004

the Holocaust acts as a kind of wall that excludes all those who did not receive a Holocaust lineage certificate, and turns them into a kind of sect of the impure.

When Albert Einstein flirted with Holy Land girls
New documentary based on Albert Einstein’s travel diary from his visit in pre-state Israel reveals prophetic insights about Zionism - but he was most impressed by the women and Jewish laborers.
By Gili Izikovich | Feb. 3, 2015 Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/life/movies-television/.premium-1.640652

Albert Einstein, the most famous Jewish scientist in history, wrote a letter in 1929 to his friend Chaim Weizmann, an accomplished chemist who would later become Israel’s first president. But their correspondence had little to do with scientific subjects. Weizmann served then as president of the British Zionist Federation, and his friend Einstein was writing to him about the Jewish and Zionist question.

“Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us,” he wrote, adding, “Should the Jews not learn to live in peace with the Arabs, the struggle against them will follow them for decades in the future.”

What seems to be a prophetic statement may be attributed to Einstein’s experience in the Holy Land. Four years previously, in early February 1923, Einstein and his wife Elsa came to the reviving Jewish Yishuv in Palestine for a historic visit. Einstein received a royal reception and the crowd sang “Here comes the messiah” in his honor, but the “messiah” was in no hurry to give in to that. He summed up his visit with succinct humor in his travel diary, which has become the basis of a documentary entitled “Einstein Be’eretz Hakodesh” (“Einstein in the Holy Land”) .

Protests in #Israel staged by asylum seekers from Africa | World news | theguardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/22/protests-israel-asylum-seekers-africa

Thousands of asylum-seekers who entered Israel illegally from Sudan and Eritrea have staged protests outside UN offices and foreign embassies in Tel Aviv, accusing Israel of neglecting its responsibilities under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. At the same time, supporters held parallel protests at Israeli embassies in 12 capitals, including London, Washington and Paris.

“We left our homeland and our beloved families because of intimidation, persecution and genocide,” said Filmon Rezene, 26, who said he risked death if he returned to his native Eritrea. Rezene escaped in a jailbreak six years ago after he was imprisoned for questioning the military’s role in his university studies. Three years ago, he was smuggled into Israel over the border with Egypt, across the Sinai desert after a long journey via Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya.

“We are demanding that the UN Human Rights Commission and the international community intervene to stop Israel arresting asylum seekers in the street and make sure there is transparent and fair processing of our requests for refugee status,” he said.

#demandeurs_d'asile #réfugiés #répression #manif